Plextor PX-W4012S (SCSI)

As mentioned before the SCSI PlexWriter can write discs at a maximum speed of 40X using the Z-CLV write method. In this part of our review we’ll see what this speed means in real life. Let’s start with a screenshot of the reported write speeds using the PlexTools software:

We set-up a basic 700MB write process using the latest Nero Burning Rom version 5.5.10.0. We used the DAO (Disc At Once) method for writing the disc. The disc was finalized and set-up as a non-multisession disc. In the screenshot below you can see the burn process completed successfully:

The disc was written without problems in 3 minutes and 22 seconds, almost the exact same time as the Plextor PX-W4012TU drive needed to write the same amount of data. Let’s check if audio can be written at maximum speed:

As you can see from the screenshot above the SCSI Plextor drive had no problems recording audio at maximum speed. The complete disc was written in 3 minutes and 24 seconds. The only thing we now have to check is the drive’s special audio recording mode, VariRec:

VariRec Recording:

As already mentioned on page 3 (features) of our review, this SCSI Plextor drive supports the ‘VariRec’ recording technique. VariRec allows you to change the laser power when writing audio at 4x (in TAO or DAO mode) and with it you should be able to improve the quality of the recorded disc and make it more compatible with picky CD-players like a car stereo.

To test the PlexWriter’s VariRec feature we simply re-wrote our previous audio compilation, only this time with VariRec enabled. When writing audio you can see an option to enable the VariRec settings in Nero Burning Rom. When pressing the VariRec button we can see the following screen:

As you can see from the screenshot, the recording speed is limited to 4x when writing in the VariRec mode and it’s recommended to use the default offset setting of 0 (which we also used for our test). Below you can see a screenshot of the Plextor PX-W4012S writing a 76 minute audio compilation in the VariRec mode:

As we’ve said many times before when we tested Plextor’s VariRec recording mode, we cannot tell the difference in quality when listening to both created discs. Is this a bad thing or a good thing? Well it’s a good thing as far as we’re concerned since audio discs created with the SCSI PlexWriter sound just as good as the originals, regardless if VariRec was used or not. That’s really all that’s important.

DAO-RAW Recording:

As a final write tests we tested if the PlexWriter could record at maximum speed using the DAO-RAW recording mode (which basically means that data is written uncorrected). We used CloneCD version 4.2.0.2 to write a previously created image using a 48x certified CD-R disc. From the screenshot below you can see that the Plextor drive could write the image at a maximum speed without a problem: