The drive can retrieve C2 error information and delivers a low-jitter datastream. The fact that Waitec's newest product caches the audio data is more of a hindrance than a help to accurate reading with EAC.
Features in brief
*Accurate Stream The drive delivers a clean datastream low in jitter, making time-consuming active jitter correction unnecessary.
Caching EAC always reads each audio sector twice and than compares the results to make sure that the data has been read correctly. If a drive caches the data, EAC will always believe its has the correct data, as the second read attempt takes the data from the cache.
C2 Error Info A drive with this feature will notify EAC whenever there is a read error. This provides a very real benefit, because EAC doesn't need to read each individual sector twice; it simply relies on the drive to provide an error message at the appropriate time. This speeds up the copying of data considerably.
For our test we transferred all 20 tracks as non-compressed wav files from CD to the hard disk. We copied the data onto the hard disk using two different modes.
Burst Mode
In this mode, the audio data is copied sector by sector without any error checking. This is EAC's fastest mode.
Secure Mode
The data being copied is checked for errors. If a read error occurs, EAC tries to correct it.
The EAC screenshots below show how both extraction methods fared:
EAC Burst Mode: Waitec FrisbyII
EAC Secure Mode: Waitec FrisbyII
In burst mode, the drive reaches a very good 41.8x - not quite as fast as the CRW-F1UX, but that particular drive is supposed to be a 44x model anyway.
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