EXCLUSIVES

By Bill Troop

If you're really impatient and tired of waiting for your CDs to burn, LaCie's $249 48x CD-R/RW is the machine for you. It will burn a 700 MB CD in under three minutes. One of the keys to this speed is the use of CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) technology.

CAV has been used for years in fast CD readers, but LaCie's drive is the first CD writer to use it. CAV means the drive speed is fixed as the laser pickup moves from the inner to outer tracks, assuring less vibration and better accuracy.

Appearance

An external CD recorder can only be so stylish but LaCie's industrial designer has obviously worked hard at the problem. The result is one of the most attractive yet functional external units I have ever seen. It's a platinum finish, all-aluminum case for strength and heat dissipation, and does not need a fan, so is beautifully quiet except when revving up at high speed. The case is also versatile. It can used horizontally, vertically, in a stack or in a d2 rackmount.

Interface

Seamless integration of USB 2 and FireWire is a specialty LaCie pioneered and perfected. I tested FireWire capability on the Mac and both FireWire and USB 2.0 capability on Windows XP. In each case I had instant, on-the-fly connectivity.

Test Platform

For the Mac I used an iBook 2000 with OS 9.2, and a heavily upgraded UMAX clone from 1997, with OS 8.6, a G4 card from Sonnet and a FireWire card from Keyspan. (USB 2.0 is supported under OS X but not under Classic by several third-party support manufacturers; we did not test it.) For the PC I used a Dell 8100 laptop with Windows XP and built-in FireWire. To test USB 2.0, I added a PCMCIA card. Again, I chose Keyspan's. Both Keyspan cards worked transparently. I have been consistently impressed with this company's expansion peripherals.

Software Bundle

LaCie bundles Toast 5 Lite and Easy CD Creator with the drive, providing complete burning capability for audio and data CDs on Macs and PCs, respectively. Either can be upgraded to Toast Platinum or Easy CD Creator Platinum to get additional editing and mastering capability. Toast 5 now requires at least OS 9.1 or OS X 10.1 to install. While Roxio doesn't recommend or support this, you can use Toast 5 with OS 8.6 if you install on an OS 9.1 system and copy the application and extensions over.

For Macs, Toast is, and always has been, the gold standard in CD burning. Nothing on either platform comes close to its foolproof operation and ease of use. Though it's true that Toast 4 had some rough edges, Toast 5, once again under the firm hand of its original programming team, is even more robust, and even easier to use, than prior versions.

We also tested the full version: Toast Titanium and Toast with Jam. Toast 5 Titanium automatically converts iMovie productions and QuickTime files into Video CDs playable on any computer platform (including Windows) as well as most DVD video players. Toast Titanium also burns authored DVD Video content to DVD, and allows you to add data to the same DVD disc. The Toast suite includes iView Media, an asset-management program that helps you organize images, movies, sounds, and fonts, create photo slide shows, and publish web galleries. Toast also includes Audion, an mp3 player and editor, and CD Spin Doctor, for turning old cassettes and LPs into high quality CDs, with noise and click filters and a variety of other useful features. To personalize your discs, Toast also includes Discus, which helps you to design jewel cases and labels. Toast 5 now supports both OS 9 and OS X, and provides robust background burning. All of these features have been added without compromising the elegant simplicity for which Toast has always been noted. I also liked working with Jam 5. Jam 5's new features and graphical capabilities make this an indispensable upgrade. Finally, the package includes Peak LE, the well-known VST-capable sound editor.

Burn Proof and other advanced capabilities

Burn-Proof capability is a must-have feature. It really does mean the end of coasters. ("Burn" is a wonky acronym for BUffer UnderRuN.) It adjusts recording speed on the fly to prevent buffer-underrun errors that result in coasters, and lets you safely run other applications while you are burning. LaCie's drive combines buffer underrun protection with media condition checks, variable speed writing, and Optical Power Calibration tests. The end result is that even if you use bad media, the drive should be able to compensate automatically by changing its write speed and laser power. This drive also features a system for improving audio extraction which continuously monitors a source CD so that audio is extracted at the optimum speed, automatically slowing down to get the best possible audio extraction when the source CD has defects such as dirt marks or scratches. We found audio extraction to be of exceptionally high quality, but we did find that we could not get the writer to recognize one of our most damaged audio CDs that could, however, be extracted by the built-in Sony CD-R/RW on our iBook 2000. Which only goes to prove yet again what years of experience have shown us: if you are serious about copying audio CDs, you need to have a few CD-readers on hand, because no matter how good any of them is, sooner or later you will come across a stubborn CD track that can be read on only one of them. We have never found a single CD-ROM or CD-R/RW that could read all of our media.

Burn-Proof technology is not included with the inexpensive built-in CD burners you get with most laptops and desktops, particularly Macs. That alone is a great reason to use an external CD-writer like LaCie's. Apple claims that Macs are immune to buffer underrun errors, a specious argument we don't buy.

Media

I tested the drive primarily with Verbatim's cutting-edge CD-R media certified for use at 48x. Interestingly, the LaCie drive can automatically determine the maximum burn rate with less capable media--and that rate is often higher than what the media is certified for. The drive determined it could write Sony 16x media at 24 x, and did so without flaws. But only the Verbatim media performed reliably at 48x. Although the big news here is the 48x CD-R capability, this drive also does rewrites at 12x. We successfully achieved this speed using Verbatim media.

How long does it really take?

No CD-R drive performs consistently at its rated speed. The average write speed of this recorder comes in at around 37x. Impressively, even Digital Audio Extraction takes place at around that speed. In addition, there is overhead in the burning process, such as writing the lead-in and lead-out tracks, which adds about a minute to the recording time. Add it up, and it will usually take you about three minutes to write an 80 minute CD, but that is still faster than any other CD recorder out there. We were very, very happy to be able to write CDs so rapidly. We believe that for most users, this capable drive will quickly pay for itself in saved time. Price: $199.00, www.lacie.com