EXCLUSIVES

Plextor
Words by Bill Troop
January 2004

For those never satisfied unless they have the best, Plextor has been known for years for consistently making the best CD-R recorders in the industry. Plextors are the Rolls-Royces of CD-R/RW burners. There are three reasons for this:

• Plextor drives consistently produce the most error-free burns
• Plextor drives consistently deliver the most error-free audio extraction
• Plextor drives consistently have the best long-term reliability

Plextor has a large range of drives to suit every interface, with SCSI, ATAPI and USB2 in the current lineup. FireWire is at present only available on Plextor's DVD/CD recorder, Model PX-504UF. The [$319] PX-W4012TSi drive we look at here is unique in that it is a new model offering the SCSI interface, which will be particularly interesting both to high-end Mac users and to the huge base of Mac users with older systems that still support SCSI. Although Plextor was known throughout the 1990s for its impeccable SCSI CD-R/RW drives, this is its first new SCSI model in three years. Demand for SCSI CD-RW drives has remained consistent from high-end Mac and Sun users.

The drive worked perfectly with our Macs straight out of the box, as you would expect, but software support is skimpy, and anyone who buys this drive will probably already have the indispensable Roxio Toast.

Features

The PX-W4012TSi is an internal drive (although an external model is also available). It uses a standard 50-pin SCSI cable, and is intended for an UltraSCSI interface, but can be connected to any SCSI card. The throughput of an older generation SCSI-Fast card is 10 megabytes per second, and the Plextor needs only 6 megabytes per second when working at its maximum speed (150KB X 40). Speeds are 40x for writing CD-R, 40x for reading and digital audio extraction (DAE) and 12x for writing RW media. Mt. Rainier supportis included.

WHY SCSI?

SCSI has always been the preferred interface for fault-free CD burning. The reason is that SCSI controllers have the manpower to take on all of the rigorous input/output tasks in CD burning. By contrast, in a cheaper IDE system, all those tasks have to be done by the computer's CPU. Although buffer-underrun protection usually prevents coasters with IDE systems, it is ideal not to have to utilize it. With a SCSI interface, you have a much better chance of being able to present a continuous, uninterrupted stream of data to the CD-writer.

WHY ONLY 40x?

Although the top theoretical speed of CD-R recorders today is now 52x, this recorder was designed to operate at 40x. Plextor based the physical design on its robust 40x CD-RW drive, developing a new SCSI interface chip, rather than slapping on an ATAPI-SCSI bridge chip as other manufacturers have done. Plextor chose to design a native SCSI drive that would more appropriately reflect the life span expected by power-users, rather than competing in the speed race affecting ATAPI recorders. Moreover, actual recording times between a 40x burn and a 52x burn are separated by mere seconds, since a 52x drive only writes at 52x for a very short part of the burn (at the outer edge of the disc).

Unique Plextor features

Plextor's VariRec technology both reduces jitter and increases the quality of audio disks, partly by reducing C1 errors to near zero. VariRec also lets you manually adjust laser power to optimize audio quality. However, although VariRec works automatically, manual adjustment requires software support that is for now only available from Windows CD-burning applications, such as Nero. This drive also supports overburning up to 99 minutes, a feature which at this time is only supported by Windows apps.

PoweRec (for Plextor Optimized Writing Error Reduction Control) is one of the proprietary features that Plextor uses to ensure better burn quality. When you insert a blank into the drive, it identifies the media from a large database, in order to select the best laser power and speed. If the media is not in the database, PowerRec analyzes it and runs tests to ensure the best - though not necessarily the fastest - writing performance. PowerRec also continuously monitors write performance. It can thus continuously adjust burn speed and laser power on the fly.

Pushing the envelope further, Plextor uses a black tray to absorb laser light, reducing reflections that cause jitter and C1 errors, along with employing an unusually high quality circuit board to cut down both on jitter and noise. On-board cache is 4MB.

Special reading abilities

Plextor has always been known not just for the high quality of its CD writing, but also for the high quality of its audio extraction, which is always performed at full speed. Moreover, Plextor drives have always been reputed to be able to read successfully from scratched, dirty, or otherwise defective CDs where other drives would fail. In this respect, the PX-W4012TSi did not disappoint. It was able to read damaged CDs that were either outright rejected by other drives or where we simply got noise when playing them. Of course, there is a limit. A CD can be so damaged that nothing can read the missing data: it simply isn't there. But Plextor drives will successfully deal with the vast majority of cases better than any other drive on the market.

SUMMARY

The Plextor PX-W4012TSi produced flawless burns and click-free digital audio extractions that were audibly of higher quality than those produced by most other drives. For a price at least twice what non-SCSI drives cost, you get a drive that writes just a little more slowly than the cheap IDE drives on the market, but does so better. This drive is not for penny pinchers. It is intended for users who want quality and reliability and are willing to pay for it.

Plextor includes a highly optimized variant of Burn-Proof technology to eliminate buffer underruns. Buffer underruns usually occur when you are not dedicating your computer to CD burning. The system runs out of speed, and the drive stops. Without buffer underrun protection, you have a coaster. But with buffer underrun technology, the drive can start again where it stopped. The only problem is that there's a tiny gap at that point. Plextor has worked hard to get that gap to almost immeasurable levels. When Burn-Proof drives first came out, the gap was as large as 50 micrometers, a figure allowed correctly. Plextor deserves kudos for taking the time to get the gap so small.
www.plextor.com