Information
This page contains specific information about some drives.
I created this page because occasionally I receive mails from people who purchased a CD-ROM drive based on the results on this site and were not happy about the performance of their new drive.
The information here is based on mails from visitors of this website.
Afreey CD-2050E : The high DAE speed can only be achieved with firmware 11 or above. With older firmware versions DAE is limited to 8x. The firmware on Afreey drives is NOT upgradable.
Update (21/2/2000)
Once again Afreey has changed the DAE speed with a newer firmware revision, this time the speed has decreased to 32x P-CAV.
| firmware | DAE Speed |
| <11 | 8x CLV |
| 11 | 16-36x CAV |
| 33 | 22-40x P-CAV |
| 41 | 16-32x P-CAV |
Kenwood TrueX 40x, 52x and 72x: bad performance when reading CD-R media or scratched CD's.
I also received mails from people who were unable to achieve high DAE speeds with the Kenwood 72x.
Kenwood drives are unavailable in Europe so I cannot verify this.
Update (9/2/2000)
DAE is not good when extracting from CD-R(W) discs.
The 72x also seems to have trouble reading 80min discs
The Kenwood 72x will soon be available in Europe (source: http://www.cdrinfo.com) so then I will have the opportunity to do some extensive tests.
Teac CD532: DAE performance is different with each drive. Some people can get perfect DAE at up to 20x but most people can't even get decent DAE at 4x.
Update: With the latest firmware V3.0A you can change the DAE speed to 4x (default), 16x and 32x.
But if you can't get decent DAE at 4x, increasing the speed will give you even worse results.
If you own a Teac 532, please let me know if you can get good DAE with this drive and at which speeds.
You can download the latest firmware and a utility to change the reading speed at the Teac website: http://www.teac.de or http://www.teac.co.jp
AOpen 32x,36x,40x,48x: DAE: pops and clicks in WAV files. I have tested each one of these drives but didn't find any problems. The WAV files were always good and the speed was about 8x. If you have one of these drives and have problems with it or if you know what causes this, please let me know.
Update: I tested the AOpen 48x with a scratched CD and this time I got a few very loud clicks.
My UltraPlex extracted all tracks from this CD perfectly (verified with FC/B).
Programs I used are WinDAC 1.41 and Easy CD-DA Creator 3.0.
Asus CD-S400, CD-S500: The default DAE speed is set to 8x average but it can be set to 20x.
The 40x uses P-CAV mode at this speed while the 50x uses CAV mode.
The 50x is slightly faster because it reaches almost 24x near the end of a disc while the 40x never exceeds 20x.
Update (6/5/2000): With firmware 1.10 the default DAE speed of the Asus CD-S500 is 20x, the maximum DAE speed is 16-36x!!!
The firmware of this drive is NOT upgradable!
You can use CD Speed 99 to change the speed or a utility from the Asus website called Asus CD-ROM Speed Setting Utility. This program does not only work with Asus drives but with all MMC compliant drives (most Atapi drives and recorders).
You can download this utility on http://www.asus.com.tw. It has the very original name cdspeed.exe ;)
Notes:
1) I had a problem using this program together with my SCSI Plextor drives. At startup it gave a bus reset with each SCSI drive so it's not totally bugfree.
2) After the speed is set, you will get a message box telling you the actual reading speed. So if you select 50x when an audio CD is inserted, the program will tell you the drive is set to 20x.
Copyright 1999 by Erik Deppe
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