BURN-Proof will save you from wasting a lot of CD-R media
Written: Jan 23 '01 (Updated Jan 23 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: BURN-Proof means almost no bad burns, fast performance, straightforward installation & setup
Cons: TDK Digital MixMaster software is a liability, weak software documentation, somewhat pricey
The Bottom Line: BURN-Proof and fast performance far outweigh the high price and some software usability issues. With the price on these drives dropping, it makes sense to choose TDK.
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| esasaki's Full Review: TDK veloCD ReWriter 12/10/32 |
With all of the ads for CD-R and CD-Rewritable drives today, it's hard to know which drives are worth buying. In the field of CD "burners," you definitely get what you pay for. A $100 difference in price often means a difference between a pile of worthless CD-Rs, victims of buffer underruns, and a hassle-free experience.
The TDK veloCD 12/10/32 CD-Rewritable drive is definitely on the expensive end of the spectrum, but it's performance is well worth the price. In addition to a 12x CD-R write, 10x CD-RW rewrite, 32x data read, and up to 32x audio CD rip (with firmware upgrade), the veloCD supports 800 MB media and features BURN-Proof, which is like insurance against those worthless bad CDs.
BURN-Proof is a technology from Sanyo Electronics that all but eliminates "buffer underruns." Basically, CD-R writers rely on memory buffers to make sure there's always data to be written to the CD. Since the writer records data to the CD at a constant rate, if the buffer becomes empty and the computer is too busy to supply the necessary data, blank sections occur on the CD, effectively ruining it. Since CD-Rs can only be written once, the only thing you can do is throw it away if there's a buffer underrun.
What BURN-Proof does is stop the writing process if the buffer empties. The drive will wait until the buffer fills before it starts writing again. The result: no aborted CDs, at least hypothetically. Traditional writers without such technology rely on very large buffers and recommend that you don't run any other applications; the veloCD has only a 2MB buffer and you can do just about anything you want without fear of a buffer underrun.
There are several brands of drives (all expensive) that support BURN-Proof technology, most of which are Plextor OEMed drives (including the TDK veloCD).
I've owned the TDK veloCD 12/10/32 for about three months, and can report that BURN-Proof has drastically improved my success rate in burning CDs, and that it is worth the higher price tag. It's not without some drawbacks, but overall, it's worth serious consideration.
Hardware Installation
To aid you in the drive installation, there's an "Easy Installation Poster," which looks intimidating at first, but it's really put together well. For example, it shows you how to physically mount the drive inside the case, set the jumpers appropriately on the drive, and how to attach the cables. There's also a VHS tape that supposed to show you how to perform the install, but the poster was easy enough for me to understand that I didn't need to watch it.
Just like any internal PC upgrade, it requires willingness to open the case, disconnect cables, change jumper settings, attach the new drive to the various cables, and mount the drive in the case with the provided screws. It's not that difficult, but if you're adverse to doing the upgrade yourself, any number of computer or electronics stores will perform the upgrade for under $50.
Once I had the veloCD installed and the PC put back together, my relatively new (about a year old) PC had no problem detecting this drive as an IDE CD-ROM. In fact, it's not necessary to have another CD-ROM drive installed. Windows will detect the drive and treat it as a generic CD-ROM drive (although the writing functions won't work until you install the necessary drivers).
Software Installation
Software-wise, I had no problem installing the drivers and bundled applications. I experienced no errors or resource conflicts that are commonly associated with system upgrades such as this.
I made it a point to download the latest upgrades to the applications and to the drive's firmware from http://www.tdkvelocd.com. The upgrades improve the drive's performance and ability to read scratched discs and fix some bugs in the application software.
The bundled TDK software includes Nero 5.0, In-CD CD-RW packet writer, Music Match Jukebox, Windows Media Player, Adobe ActiveShare, Search by Media, and TDK Digital MixMaster. I'll talk about the three main applications, Nero, Digital MixMaster, and In-CD.
Nero is the King!
Nero 5.0 is one of the easiest CD recording packages I have ever used, and as I'll talk about below, it's all you need to do everything you'd want to do with this CD-RW drive. Nero includes a wizard that prompts you through many of the major actions (such as copying a CD or compiling an audio CD). For experts, it's easy enough to cancel out of the wizard and then use the menu and drag-and-drop file explorer to set the recording options or select the files to burn to CD.
Nero's option dialogs let you customize all aspects of your CD burn, from the strictness of the filename and path length requirements to the date and timestamps on the CD. And unlike many CD burning applications, Nero will warn you if you select options that will render your CD-R unreadable in some operating systems (and will tell you what settings you should use to ensure universal readability). That's important to me since I don't know all of the ins and outs of ISO Level 1 versus ISO Level 2 or of the difference between using the ISO 9660 character set instead of ASCII.
As far as selecting the files, it's simple...a window on the right of the main screen displays your computer's filesystem, and a window on the left shows the CD layout. You just drag-and-drop files or directories from the right window to the left one. A handy bargraph on the bottom of the screen shows you visually how much of the CD you've used.
Once you're ready to burn, you simply hit the burn icon and you're given the options of testing (simulating the burn), testing and then burning, or burning without a test. In short, it's an extremely simple process--you can compile and burn a CD in under 15 minutes, even with no experience.
TDK Digital MixMaster -- A poor substitute for WinAmp
On the other hand, TDK's CD-player and track-ripping application, TDK Digital MixMaster, is frustrating. With it, you can listen to CDs, create custom playlists, play MP3s and convert them to WAVs, record CD tracks to WAVs, and also burn WAV and MP3s to CDs. That's the idea anyway, since actually doing those things is a frustrating process due to the "futuristic" user interface. Gone are the familiar Windows buttons and interface, replaced by a bubble shaped window covered with indecypherable pictograms. I found myself having to hover over the buttons for a second so that the tooltip would tell me what the button would do. Even though you can download other "skins" to give the interface a friendlier look, the controls are not very intuitive.
Besides, this application pretty much does the same thing as much more popular and freely available jukebox applications such as Winamp or Real Jukebox. They too support skins, have graphic equalizers, show the cool "dynamic visualizations" synchronized to the music, have automatic album and track labeling via the Internet, and use playlists. Digital MixMaster offers the ability to record back to CD using BURN-Proof, but it's not worth struggling with the poor interface.
Back to Nero -- It's good for audio too
For actually burning the music back on CD-Rs (or CD-RWs, but that's not recommended since most CD players don't recognize CD-RW media), we return to Nero 5.0. If you just want to copy an audio CD, you don't even have to rip it to WAV files; just use the copy wizard and Nero will do all of the work. If you want to create a compilation, you can rip tracks from CDs in Nero and save them as WAVs. And, yes, Nero also supports album and track titling via the Internet.
When you're ready to burn to CD, in Nero you don't have to mess with playlists or even making sure all of the tracks are in WAV format. You just drag and drop the audio files, including MP3s (it will decode them on the fly), from the filesystem window to the CD window. Drop up to 80 minutes of music (the handy bargraph on the bottom shows you the time used) and then hit burn. No fuss, no muss.
In-CD - Tradeoff between compatablity and convenience
In-CD is the bundled UDF packet-writing application that will allow you to treat CD-RW discs like they are floppies. In other words, if you use In-CD, you don't have to compile and burn a CD-RW but rather treat it like any other Windows drive (copy, rename, delete, etc. files).
The drawback of using a packet-writing application is that in order to read (and obviously write) the CD-RW, you need to have In-CD (or if you install the In-CD upgrade, Adaptec's DirectCD as well) application installed. That's great if you are simply using the CD-RW as personal storage or archiving. But if you want to share the CD with almost anyone else, it's a good bet that they won't be able to read it. If that's the case, you'd want to use Nero to write the CD-RW. It's a tradeoff between convenience and compatability.
Also, as of January 2001, In-CD will not work with Windows NT or Windows 2000.
So, what's the verdict?
I've burned about 50 discs to date, and have had only about 5 failures even with BURN-Proof. It wasn't that the burns failed, it's just that the resulting discs had corrupted files. I can't say that the failures are a result of the software or the TDK drive, since the failures were on really cheap CD-R media. But compared to other burners I've used (where the failure rate was often 50%), I consider the veloCD drive to have an excellent success rate, even if I have spot check the burns to make sure they are OK.
Aside from the software usability problems I mentioned, the other drawbacks I can think of are:
Weak application documentation - although the bundled software is not super difficult to learn, the included printed documentation is really superficial. The manuals are available in electronic format, but they are not very helpful, and for the price of the drive, I would expect printed manuals.
High price, but... Speaking of the price, until recently (when TDK announced a new 16/10/40 drive) the price has been in the $249-299 retail range. As of this review (late January 2001), I've seen some great deals on this drive as low as $149 after manufacturer's rebate. And as far as I'm concerned, the drive's performance justifies even the $249.99 that I paid for it.
The CD-marker pen bled all over the place! Okay, if the free marker pen makes the major gripe list, then you know that the product must be pretty good. My advice is to put the TDK marker directly into the trash and buy another brand (or better yet, get a CD labeling system).
Hopefully, this review has been helpful if you're looking to get a CD-RW drive but don't know which one, or if you've been wondering whether it's worth paying the bucks for the TDK. I think the veloCD would be a good fit for whatever you will be using it for and for whatever your skill level as a user is.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
esasaki
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Member: Eric
Location: Long Beach, California, USA
Reviews written: 36
Trusted by: 29 members
About Me:
35-years old, married with no kids, computer network manager, movie enthusiast, gadget lover.
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