Plextor Premium CD-RW vs. DVD-R/CD-R

<b>Hey...</b>

Not sure if this is the right forum...but here goes.

My mixing & mastering engineer friends tell me that the Plextor <i>Premium</i> is the CD-R/RW drive of choice for burning pre-master CD-A's to be used for replication. My replication house basically confirms this; & even uses Plextor drives in their OTA's (Optical Transport Assembly.)

Plextor no longer mfg.'s the Premium as an external unit, which is the unit I wanted. They're telling me that their newer DVD/CD combo units offer all the advantages of their legendary CD-RW drives.

To me (from what I know...which is somewhat limited), the lasers are implemented differently in a combo drive (in regard to the CD burn.)

Is this true? Should I do with a combi? If I do...does it burn as accurately as a purely CD-R/RW drive.

The reason I ask is...various ME's have tested the Plextor <i>Premium</i>'s up against other drives; & the burned disks have a much lower error rate. In addition, the Plextor drives come packaged with <i>PlexTools</i> software, which is super accurate for error rates checking on a burned disk.

Should I get the combo drive, or look for a <i>Premium</i> on e-bay?

Thanks,

<b>mark4man</b>


BTW - Plextor still mfg.'s the <i>internal</i> Premium CD-RW...but I've always been leery of burning in the box.

The Plextor drives are really good. I have a PX-716A and love it. Plextools alows you to change the laser intensity for different burns, so you can play around with it and see what works best for you. There are other features in there that alow you to customize your burn as well. And I do believe that it uses a different laser for burning to a CD or a DVD so you shouldn't have to worry to much. And there is plenty of tests to check the quality of the burn after words.