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Program Overview
Before we’re going to test the new features found in this latest PlexTools version let’s start with an overview of the program and show you how it works and how it looks.
PlexTools Overview:
When you start PlexTools you will get the following screen. The program is divided into three smaller windows as you can see from the screenshot below:
As you can see from the screenshot you can choose a device in the top left window of the program. Some of the PlexTools options will only work with Plextor drives and in the screenshot above we’ve selected the PleXCombo PX-320A drive. Below the window where you can select your drive you can see another window where can select the program features. Here you can find the following options:
- General Information:
More information on the selected drive like type, firmware version, jumper settings, IDE set-up, buffer size, etc. Via the PlexTools software you can check for a newer firmware version for your drive.
- Drive Settings:
You can set the advanced options of your drive here like the read speeds and spindown time but you can also enable/disable settings like DMA, BURN-Proof, Hide CD-R Media, VariRec and SpeedRead. We’ll get back to this later.
- Drive Information:
More information on what kind of media your Plextor drive can read and at which speeds. On this page you can also check if your Plextor drive can read CD-Text, can report C2 error information, its access time and its firmware version and the latest version that is available (upon the release of the PlexTools version you’re currently using). Besides that you can also check the drive’s audio read and write offset settings.
- CD/DVD Info:
More information on the inserted CD of DVD disc like size, number of tracks, sessions, disc title and disc manufacturer.
- Multimedia Player:
Player with which you can play all kinds of media such as video’s and audio. Support for a playlist (.M3U, .PLS) is also supported.
- Audio CD Player:
An audio CD player with support for CD-Text which can be read from the disc itself or via freedb.
- Digital Audio Extraction:
A digital audio extractor with an option to add CD-Text via freedb and advanced ‘DAE Error Recovery’ options which we’ll test later on in this PlexTools review.
- AudioCD Maker:
With this feature you can create your own audio compilations. The AudioCD Maker option also support ‘dragging&dropping’ of audio files (.WAV or .MP3).
- CD Copy:
Directly copy a CD from source to destination drive (on-the-fly). You can of course also use a non Plextor drive for reading and/or recording.
- CD-RW Functions:
Options to do a quick or full erase of a CD-ReWriteable disc.
- CD Test:
An option to test your (created) discs for possible C2 errors.
In this small PlexTools review we’re not going to test all the features since most features are self-explaining and as we’ve experienced during our reviews of Plextor drives, the program works very well. What we are going to test is some of the new features found in this PlexTools version compared to the older versions. Some new settings have been implemented for the latest Plextor drives (the PX-W4824A and PX-W4824TU) and besides that we can now also find some interesting new features in this new PlexTools version. On the next page we’re going to explain these new setting and features.
11 Comments
Quote:
| As you can see from the table the PlexTools software showed some excellent results and the program could decrease the amount of errors in track two with 67%! |
- guest
- Posts: 15284
- Posted on: 03 Sep 02 17:31
Very nice. But a question Why binary comparison did was made with Plextor utility? why with only one track, probabily different from the tree of preceding comparison?
- guest
- Posts: 15284
- Posted on: 03 Sep 02 18:25
TBZ: Mode 1: Track 2 - 500.613 errors Mode 5: Track 2 - 162.028 errors A decrease of 67%. Unfortunately EAC doesn't have a detailed LOG-file with all the errors so we can't compare both programs here and that's why we did a binary comparison. pippocalo: we did some more tests and got the same result: EAC extracted damaged audio tracks that were different from the original file. PlexTools created the exact same files regardless if the track was damaged or not. It's very hard to tell the quality otherwise so we did a binary comparison. Yes we used a utility developed by Plextor but that doesn't make a difference in the achieved results.
I'd like to know the ripping speed with clean CDs. EAC is often slow in secure mode.
hmz very strange EAC didnt do better in the binary comparison... did EAC actually said there were problems with extracting? or did it just say everything was ok? and have u noticed any hearable difference once? cause i dont think that 1000 bytes are hearable... would love to see a reaction from the creators of eac on this one 
As I understood, there were no errors reported. However, 1032 bytes are 258 samples, that is at most 258 errors, at least 43. Unfortunately we don't know the number of errors detected during EAC's rip. Keep in mind that errors are erratic : look at the EAC logs, in low, track 1 has no errors while track 3 has, while in medium, it is the opposite. It is possible that the Plextor success and EAC failure are within the same uncertainty, and can be reversed in another rip. More tests must be conducted. I can send you some killer CDs for error recovery : bad CDRs that always make EAC report no error while there are (on my Memorex-Teac-Sony drives)
- guest
- Posts: 15284
- Posted on: 05 Sep 02 09:20
Maybe they should retry the EAC test, but WITHOUT using C2, I don't think C2 is reliable on new plextors.
- guest
- Posts: 15284
- Posted on: 05 Sep 02 17:54
For more results confirming our test results please check out this thread on our Plextor forum.
I've been very close to the development of the new PlexTools software, so let me shred some light on it... First let me say the audio extraction engine is completely renewed. Earlier versions of PlexTools don't even come close to the new PlexTools version when it comes to extraction quality. Pio2001:
On an undamaged CD the extraction speed will be equal or very close to that of regular burst extraction software (AudioGrabber, CDex,...). In other words, as fast as possible.
I've done extensive tests of which I cannot publish the results (but when I have more time to get a new site online, I'll redo 'em). The conclusion is: the new PlexTools is superior to EAC. This thanks to the use of burst extraction mode to read data and C2 information to detect errors. When an error occurs PlexTools can choose from 5 different extraction schemes, ranked from normal to extreme secure. Let's say that scheme 5 is selected. Because of the C2 information PlexTools knows exactly which samples (not just sectors!) are correct and which are not. PlexTools will then recover the correct samples whereas EAC may not find enough matching sectors to restore the original data. sikkek:
Au contraire! In fact, the C2 error detection of the newer Plextor drives is so reliable that the whole error detection/correction mechanism is built around it. And the numbers don't lie... Older plextor drives (8/4/32 for example) have a rather unreliable C2 error detection. These drives will not benefit from this software. The new PlexTools will only work reliable when the C2 information is reliable. Drives with no or non-reliable C2 error detection will still get the best results with EAC. Of course, at the price of a much lower extraction speed.
Quote:
| I'd like to know the ripping speed with clean CDs. EAC is often slow in secure mode. |
Quote:
| It is possible that the Plextor success and EAC failure are within the same uncertainty, and can be reversed in another rip. More tests must be conducted. |
Quote:
| Maybe they should retry the EAC test, but WITHOUT using C2, I don't think C2 is reliable on new plextors. |
- guest
- Posts: 15284
- Posted on: 05 Sep 02 19:32
Thank you for your input SatCP!
This is great software. Its easy and the final product is great, if you want to put movies on your IPOD, this is the program to do it with.