Audio CD Read(80 Min, Audio Catalyst2.1 w/ Dynamic Sync)
12min 59s
~80min
11min 13s
Copy CD to HDD(647 MB)
3min 34s
3min 38s
3min 46s
Write Time at 12x
6min 40s
n.a.
n.a.
Write Time at 8x
9min 48s
9min 50s
n.a.
Write Time at 4x
19min 22s
19min 28s
n.a.
Write Time at 10x RW
8min 5s
n.a.
n.a.
Special MP3-Compatibility?
On the box of AOpen's CDR you will find a comment saying '200 music titles on one CD!'. Looking closer reveals the reason for that claim. Of course it's 'MP3' AOpen is talking about. The bundled 'Nero 5' recording software is able to handle both, MP3 as well as WAV music files and can convert one to the other format. You know that CDs with 200 songs using the MP3 compression format cannot be played in a normal CD-player. You either have to use your computer's CDROM or you need a special MP3-player. There's more and more CD and DVD-players that include MP3-functionality and even some car radios are nowadays able to handle MP3-CDs. Still, people who don't know about MP3 might get the wrong impression when reading '200 music titles on one CD'.
Of course, besides the provided 'Nero 5' software there is nothing that would make the AOpen drive better suited for MP3 files than any other CD-recorder. People who don't have either the experience or tools to handle MP3 files will get useful features thanks to Nero. However, there are hundreds of useful tools available all over the web for encoding, playing or extracting MP3 files. Therefore the '200 music titles' claim could basically be printed on the box of any other CD-recorder as well.
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Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.
