Summary Of Write Performance, Part III
There were problems at maximum write speed with two out of the five CDR media we tested. So, in practice, the lack of write speeds between 16x and 44x represents something of a failing. At 16x, there are no problems of any sort. We grade the media compatibility as good.
When you are writing to CDRW media, it very much depends on what medium is at hand. Writing at 24x speed is only possible with the Ultra-Speed medium supplied. LiteOn's Highspeed-RW could only be written to at 10x speed. However, very high-quality media, such as the one from Fujifilm, permit even higher write speeds than those specified.
Backup Copies Of Protected Audio CDs
Every user has been faced with this problem at some time. You've spent a lot of money on a new audio CD. In order to protect this valuable original from wear and scratches in your car CD player, you want to make a backup copy on your home PC. It is becoming increasingly the case, however, that audio CDs have copy protection, such as Key2Audio or Cactus-Datashield. Some CDs that are protected in this way cannot be played on a PC, or are occasionally not so easy to copy. THG ran tests to see if this is possible with the CRW-FIUX.
The following titles are used as test CDs:
| Interpret | CD-Title |
|---|---|
| Natalie Imbruglia | White Lilies Island |
| Celine Dion | A new day has come |
| Avril Lavigne | Let Go |
| Various Artists | Ibiza Summerhits 2002 CD2 |
We used Exact Audio Copy 0.9b4 and Clone-CD to read the tracks.
For example, as the screenshot shows, the content of the title "A new day has come" is made up of 17 audio tracks and one data track.
In the case of "well-known" copy-protection mechanisms, the audio tracks were read with no problem at all, using both EAC and Clone-CD.
It was a different scenario for CDs with copy-protection mechanisms that we could not recognize. In these cases, the read performance was way below the usual values, at 6x speed.
