TEAC CD-W552E

First things first as we check out the package TEAC Germany send to us. In the retail box of the CD-W552E recorder we can find the following items:

• TEAC CD-W552E drive
• Quick installation guide
• Warranty procedure manual
• Audio/flat cables
• Mounting screws
• Ahead Nero 5.5 disc, containing;
  • Nero Burning Rom
  • Nero Express
  • Nero VisionExpress
  • InCD/Packet-Writing
  • NeroMediaPlayer
  • EasyWrite Reader
• TEAC For Your Information disc, containing;
  • Manuals
  • Drivers
  • Firmwares
  • Applications
• One blank 48x 700MB TEAC CD-R
  (manufactured by *Mitsui Chemicals)

The TEAC CD-W552E drives comes with a two year warranty period and its retail package is complete. We did miss one important item though: TEAC did not include any US-RW (Ulta-Speed ReWriteable) discs. This thus means that you will need to find your own 24x re-writeable media, which is quite difficult to come by at this moment. The CD-Recordable disc that was delivered with the TEAC drive also didn’t want to record at 52x and only at 48x in Nero Burning Rom.

Luckily the rest of the package was good. TEAC has included Ahead’s Nero Burning Rom with their drive and has also included their own ‘For Your Information’ disc on which you can find more information on TEAC products, manuals, drivers and other handy applications (such as VirtualCD, CD-player, Feurio! demo and speed utilities).

The Drive:

On the front of the TEAC CD-W552E drive we can find the TEAC logo and a big ‘52x Writer’ logo. Besides that we of course have our usual headphone jack, volume control, busy/write LEDs and an eject button. One thing that’s strange about the drive is that it has a ‘High-Speed ReWriteable’ logo while this should be an ‘Ultra-Speed Rewriteable’ logo (since the drive supports 24x re-writing). Perhaps TEAC made a little mistake here..?

The back of the TEAC CD-W552E drive is the same as all CD-recorders. There we can find the usual IDE and power connectors, the Master/Slave/CableSelect jumpers and the SPDIF (analog/digital) audio output connectors.

Specifications:

In the Nero InfoTool screenshot above we can see that the TEAC drive supports 52x (7.8MB/s) recording and reading speeds. The drive uses a 2MB buffer and has firmware revision 1.05 installed. What the screenshot doesn’t tell us is that the CD-W552E supports 24x re-writing and has an average access time of 100ms (according to the TEAC website). Let’s take a closer look at some of the features that the drive supports:

Features:

Buffer Underrun Protection:

On the retail box of the TEAC recorder we can read that the drive supports ‘Write Proof’ technology to prevent buffer underruns. In the Nero Burning Rom screenshot we can read that the technology is detected as being BURN-Proof (Buffer UnderRuN-Proof). Buffer underrun techniques basically all work in the same way: when the buffer of the recorder falls beneath a certain level, it will stop recording as of a specific location on the CD. The recorder then continues attempting to receive data from the PC to refill the buffer. As soon as the buffer has been refilled, the recorder will start recording again.

Mount Rainier:

In the Nero Burning Rom screenshot we can also see that the TEAC CD-W552E drive support the Mount Rainier format. Mount Rainier enables native operating system support of data storage on CD-ReWriteable discs. This makes the technology far easier to use and allows the replacement of the floppy. Key features include:

• Defect management by the drive itself
• Logical write-addressing at 2k
• Background formatting
• Command set implementation
• Compatibility and standards-compliance

For more information you can read our Mount Rainier article or you can visit www.mt-rainier.org.

Write Methods:

CD-Recordable Media:

In the screenshots you can see that the TEAC drive uses the CAV write method and has an enormously high write speed of more than 54x! According to the Nero CD Speed test, the TEAC CD-W552E drive has an average write speed of 41.24x and a top write speed of no less than 54.25x!

So far these are the highest speed we’ve ever seen on a CD-recorder (compare these speeds to the Lite-On LTR-52246S drive for instance, with 39.50x average and 51.95x maximum write speeds, in the same Nero CD Speed test). Let’s continue with the graph of the TEAC’s re-write performance:

CD-ReWriteable Media:

The TEAC CD-W552 drive supports ultra-speed re-writing and achieves a top re-write speed of 23.82x. The average re-write speed of the TEAC drive was 23.80x, higher than the Lite-On LTR-52246S drive (18.12x average) but slightly lower than the Plextor PX-W4824TA drive (23.91x average).