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发表于 2002-9-2 19:32:02
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Fireburner的作者的评价，以前一位网友贴过
IgD's Recorder Rankings
"Which recorder should I buy?"
If you have been following FireBurner from its earliest beginnings, you know that I have spent a lot of hours working with lots of different drives. I have also spent a lot of time communicating (or trying to communicate) with the companies that make these drives. On top of all this, I have received thousands of e-mails from people all over the world complaining about their recorders.
Below, I'm going to give you the advice I give to my friends and family when helping them purchase a recorder. I'm also going to tell you my own biased opinion as to which drives I like and which drives I do not:)
Feel free to e-mail me and let me know what your take is on my rankings:)
When shopping for a CD-R/W drive here are the things that you should look for:
Brand? Historically the best writers have been Plextor and Yamaha. As a general rule, stick with those companies and you can not go wrong. These companies are known for high quality products and good customer support. The brands to avoid are JVC and Sony recorders. These have been notoriously bad drives.
Speed? Get at least a 4X writer. Most new writers support this so you shouldn't have to worry about it. It takes approximately 20 minutes to burn a CD at this speed.
Interface? SCSI drives are better obviously because they require less CPU overhead and are thus more stable during the burning process. They are also slightly more expensive:) If you plan to do a lot of burning (>30 CD's per month) or wish to do heavy multi-tasking while you are burning you should a buy SCSI drive. If you do not have a SCSI card, I highly recommend Adaptec cards. Contrary to popular belief, a SCSI burner is no faster than an IDE one. The speed bottleneck has to do with how fast the laser can burn your media. It has nothing to do with the speed of the data interface. Avoid parallel port and USB recorders.
DAO, SAO or TAO? Ideally you want a drive that supports both Session at once (SAO) aka "SEND CUE SHEET" and Disk at once (DAO) aka "RAW". Most new drives support SAO only. One important difference is that DAO allows duplication of some copy protection schemes while SAO does not. Another key difference is that SAO burning requires far less CPU overhead. With DAO, the software is responsible for performing a lot of heavy calculations that the hardware of a SAO drive does. The main point here is to avoid Track at once (TAO) drives. In TAO the drive's laser powers down in between tracks. This results in a mandoatory 2 second pause in between tracks and can be annoying when playing burned audio CD's. FOR EXPANDED INFORMATION ON THIS SUBJECT, PLEASE CHECK OUT THE EDITORIALS SECTION.
Overburning? 80 minute CD support? Overburning refers to the capability of a drive to burn a few more minutes of data onto a CD over the media's certification. For example, sometimes you might want to put 75 minutes of data onto a 74 minute CD. You can purchase 80 minute blank media. It is nice to have a recorder that supports these CD's:) One form of copy protection is to make a CD that is larger than 64 or 80 minutes. If you are trying to duplicate a CD like this and your recorder does not support Overburning or 80 minute CD's, you are out of luck.
RW? The rewrite function really is not that great. You have to format CD's to erase them. This takes 20 minutes for a 4x re-writer. Blank RW media is more expensive than normal media. In my opinion, RW media is not worth the hassle since normal media costs < $1 per CD.
New or used? Warranty? Obviously it is desirable to purchase a new drive. Be smart when you are cruising the internet auction sites. The average life expectancy of a recorder is approximately 1-2 years. If you are a heavy burner (>30 CD's per month) the life expectancy would be closer to 1 year. Avoid used drives that are older than 1-2 years. When buying new look for a 1-2 year warranty. Do not plan on paying for your drive to be repaired when it dies. It generally costs more to repair a drive than it does to buy a new one.
My classification system consists of 5 stars.
The best drives get *****
Currently no drive gets the top ranking because none deserve it! To get a 5 star ranking, a recorder needs to be able to put any data desired onto a blank CD. There is no drive on the market that can do this that I am aware of. This feature would allow duplication of any copy protected CD. A lot of copy protection schemes rely on "bad sectors" on CD's that most recorders can not write. Sometimes I wonder if this is some kind of industry conspiracy. Most recorders seem to auto-correct errors thus preventing burning of "bad sectors".
Plextor ****
Plextor has a reputation for making the best and fastest drives on the market. Plextor drives are high quality. Technical support and developer support is outstanding. Plextor is a company that is aggressive about improving their products. Plextor has released firmware updates even for their old models that adds DAO RAW-96 support.
Hewlett-Packard "HP" ****
HP drives seem to be manufactured by Sony or Philips. It is unclear what role HP plays if any in CD recorder development however HP has excellent developer support and good technical support. In the past the 7xxx and 8xxx series of HP drives have received neutral or even negative reviews from me. I still don't like those drives. HP moves up a notch thanks to their new line of CD-R's, the 9xxx series. These drives are outstanding. They support DAO-96, SAO and TAO.
Teac ****
The Teac drives are of high quality like the Plextor and HP 9xxx drives. The main drawback is that the Teac drives do not support DAO. They support SAO and TAO. Special note, FireBurner only supports the 56 and 58 series of drives and above. The Teac 55 is a legacy CD-R and is not supported.
Yamaha "Yammy" ***
Yamaha used to be the king of recorders but is trailing Plextor and HP in terms of features and quality. Although apparently Yamaha's drive specs on their web site say their products support DAO they do not. Yamaha drives support only SAO and TAO. Yamaha CD-R's do not support DAO either in the RAW-16 or RAW-96 flavors. I have received a lot of e-mail from people about this and I can tell you there is some widespread frustration about this. I would still classify Yamaha drives as good.
Mitsumi ***
Mitsumi drives get 3 stars from me. The drives seem pretty stable. This company had a negative repuation during '99 because they were still selling TAO drives while everyone else was making DAO/SAO drives. This frustrated a lot of people. Lately, Mitsumi seems to be doing a lot to improve their repuation. The new Mitsumi drives support DAO aka "RAW" and from user comments they seem pretty reliable. I haven't heard anything about product support so I can not comment. In the past I have not been pleased with their developer support.
Panasonic ***
If I have my facts straight, Panasonic manufacturers these drives but does not market or support them directly. Most of their recorders seem to supported and marketed by a company called ACS Compro. Their drives are decent and inexpensive. Some of their drives do not support RW. I have had a few negative personal experiences with ACS Compro. My brother had a 7502 drive that failed soon after purchase and we found ourselves in a situation where no one would reply to our e-mails or phone messages to the the support answering machine. Finally we got an RMA and it took about a month to get the drive repaired:)
Ricoh ***
I don't have a lot of experience with Ricoh drives. I hear good comments and bad comments about these recorders. These drives get a neutral rating from me. The older ones do not support the MMC. Purchase at your own risk:)
Philips **
Philips gets 2 stars. If I have my facts straight, Philips actually has made drives for HP like the old HP 71xx and 72xx series. Philips drives seem to be more popular in Europe than in the USA. From what I have seen this company does not have a good repuation among CD-R/W enthusiasts. Apparently Philips has also been the target of a class action lawsuit filed by some angry customers. I have to give Philips the benefit of the doubt and say that I have not had tons of experience with their drives and company. I will tell you one thing, you won't want to pull into your garage with your girlfriend and try to impress her with one of these:)
Acer **
This is another line of drives that I do not have a lot of experience with. I hear mostly negative comments about these recorders. I would not want to own one of these. Purchase at your own risk:)
Sony *
In the CD-R/W community, Sony has a negative image. I personally dislike their drives. I have received numerous complaints via e-mail about Sony products. Recently a lot of these complaints have been about their new USB CD-R. Others have been about older drives and lack of firmare support. I have received a lot of e-mails complaining that Sony does not put firmware updates on their web page. Maybe I'm biased and misinformed but I would avoid these drives. To top it all of, many of Sony's older recorders do not conform to the Multimedia Command Set (MMC).
JVC *
JVC is another recorder maker that gets only 1 star. They have a reputation for low quality recorders. I would avoid these drives too. JVC drives are also notorius for not conforming to the MMC command set.
Smart and Friendly
I'm putting SAF down here not because of poor quality but because (if my understanding is correct) this company does not manufacture their own recorders. Apparently SAF merely rebadges drives made by other companies. These drives get a custom firmware with SAF manufacturer and product ID strings. |
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