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CD Performance Tests -
Teac CD-W552E |
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It's NERO Time! |
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Nero DAE
Test
Another test we like to run is Digital Audio Extraction which clocks the time it takes to
copy a full audio CD to a hard drive. In this case we
used a 63 minute audio disk with each drive and let Nero DAE
Test do its thing.
Teac CD-W552E
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Plextor PlexWriter PX-W4012A
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Both drives showed 4% CPU
utilization, with the Teac topping out at 48X and the Plextor hitting just under 40X. In the end, while the Teac was
obviously
the faster drive, but it was faster by a mere 11 seconds compared to
the PlexWriter. We also noticed that during the process
the Plextor was smooth throughout the extraction process while the
Teac had slight pauses occur while each track was being copied. We suspect
with a 4MB buffer we would see smoother performance and faster DAE
times, although we're really not complaining. We should also
note that these pauses had no obvious effect on the quality of the
extracted files
MP3
Encoding With MusicMatch 8.0
Another test we like to run is MP3
encoding with MusicMatch, although we used the latest version
instead of the copy included with the drive. For this test
we used the same CD as the DAE test, set the MP3 quality to 128Kps
and turned off error correction.
Here we see the difference between the
two drives to be a bit more significant than in the DAE test.
The Plextor drive completed the job in a little more than two
and a half minutes while the Teac CD-W552 shaved 25 seconds off of that
time completing the job in a brisk 2:13.
CD-R Write
Comparison
In our final test we wanted to show
the performance of the Teac CD-W552E with several different brands
of media. For this test we used a Philips 40X and TDK 48X
CD-R, copying a 698MB AVI file from the hard drive to the CD.
This is where things got a little
interesting. With the first test we burned to the Philips
40X media with each drive. The Plextor did exactly what we
expected, recognizing the disk as 40X and burning at that speed.
With the Teac drive however, it recognized the same disk as 52X
and burned at that speed through out the write process. This
resulted in significant improvements over a 40X drive. The
same thing occurred with the 48X TDK media, with the Teac burning
at the full 52X and posting even better performance over the
Philips disk, coming in 14 seconds faster. Sure 14 seconds
may not sound like a lot, but when you are talking about burning a
disk in two and half minutes, 14 seconds adds up. 
It's no secret that we are big
fans of Plextor drives, however, with companies like Teac pushing out high
quality drives at a low price point, Plextor has some
major competition. The Teac CD-W552E turned out to be
a pretty nice CD-RW drive, offering competitive performance
even compared to the
PlexWriter 52X we reviewed a few weeks ago. While
the Plextor drive may have some more advanced features, the
Teac trims some of the fat, providing a lean, quality CD-RW
drive. In all of our tests, the drive performed
perfectly with no serious problems to
report. We would have preferred to see this model with
a 4MB buffer, but that would surely raise the price, as seen with Plextor's 8MB 52X drive
which sells for $78. In the end, the buffer size
would not be noticed in everyday use and the 52X write
speeds more than make up for it. While all of the
hardware was included to set up the drive, we would have
hoped for more current software. Nonetheless,
the software included is in line with what you would find
with competing products, so we can't strike them too hard
for it. In the end, we think the Teac CD-W552E is a
top quality CD burner that competes solidly with the
competition.
If you are looking for a simple, capable, fast CD-R/RW drive
for a great price, you can't go wrong with the Teac CD-W552E
CD-R/RW drive. We give the Teac CD-W552-E CD-R/RW drive a
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