Plextor PX-W4012S (SCSI)

On the previous page where we showed you the PlexTools screenshot with the listed supported read speeds we could see that audio could be read at the same speed as normal data. Let’s check if the PlexWriter can indeed do DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) at 40x. For the audio read tests we used our usual ‘tools’, Exact Audio Copy (EAC), Nero CD Speed and PlexTools.

Features:

First we checked the features the Plextor PX-W4012S supports using EAC:

As you can see from the screenshot on the left the Plextor PX-W4012S drive supports all features. Below some more information on these terms:

• ‘Caching’:
  If your drive caches the audio that was just read, it would be a problem to read this data again in order to compare both extractions to find out if they match.
  
• ‘Accurate Stream’:
  This means the drive won’t jitter, thus no jitter correction has to be done anymore.
  
• ‘C2 Error Info’:
  Some newer drives are able to return C2 error information beside the actual audio data. In that case EAC doesn’t need to read all data twice anymore, which will result in a big speedup.

Digital Audio Extraction:

For the Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) tests we started Exact Audio Copy (EAC) and simply extracted the separate audio tracks in uncompressed WAV format to our hard disk. Our test disc (DJ Promo – Last Men Standing) had 16 tracks and a total playing time of 77 minutes and 3 seconds. We used both the ‘Burst’ mode and the ‘Secure’ mode:

• ‘Burst Mode’:
  Burst mode is the fastest mode available. The audio sectors are just read without any error-detection and error-correction.
  
  
• ‘Secure Mode’:
  The extracted audio is checked for correctness and if errors occur, EAC will try to recover them.

Below the screenshots of the speeds the SCSI Plextor drive reached in both extraction modes. We also included a screenshot of the Plextor drive doing DAE of the same disc using the PlexTools software:

Plextor PX-W4012S DAE speed – EAC – Burst Mode

Plextor PX-W4012S DAE speed – EAC – Secure Mode

Plextor PX-W4012S DAE speed – PlexTools

As you can see from the achieved results the PlexWriter had no problems reaching maximum speed and going faster than that. With a top read speed of 41x and even 42x in PlexTools this is an excellent result. Let’s compare them to some of the other drives we’ve reviewed:

The table shows us that the SCSI PlexWriter performs very similar to other Plextor recorders we’ve reviewed. Its read speeds with EAC’s Secure Mode have been improved however, making it the fastest drive we’ve reviewed.

Digital Audio Extraction – Nero CD Speed:

Now let’s check our results we got with Exact Audio Copy using Nero CD Speed. You can see a screenshot of the tests below:

The tests done with Nero CD Speed show that the PlexWriter again has no problem going faster than 40x, reaching a top speed of 42.05x. The SCSI drive has an accurate stream and gets a quality score of 10 which is the highest score. Finally, as expected, the CPU usage was low and the burst rate of the drive was 10MB/s:

Advanced DAE Quality Test:

To conclude our DAE test we did the ‘Advanced DAE Quality Test’ with Nero CD Speed . This test is a very hard and intense test for any reader.

We created a new test disc using a Plextor PX-W4012TU recorder. We used some high quality ‘Hi-Space’ media which are also available from our online shop (for our Dutch and Belgian visitors only). These Hi-Space discs have a 24 carats gold reflective cover and can be written up to 24x. Here are the results from the Advanced DAE Quality Test:

The average DAE speed of the Plextor PX-W4012S drive is over 30X and this is again an excellent result. The SCSI drive had no problems reading the CD-Text and SubChannel Data from the disc. Reading information from the lead-in and lead-out area of the disc was also no problem.

As a final test we of course also tested if the PlexWriter could indeed read and write CD-Text. We recorded an audio disc with CD-Text and then used the Plextor drive to play the created disc using PlexTools. The had no problems reading and writing the CD-Text:

Now that we’ve concluded our normal data and audio reading part, let’s see how well the Plextor drive can read (heavily) scratched discs and low quality discs on the next page…