Reviewed by Allan "Zardon" Campbell

TEAC CD-W55WPUK is priced at £100.50 ex VAT (at time of press) from www.microwarehouse.co.uk Tel: 0208 906 9111

CD writers are taken for granted nowadays with almost every machine having one as standard. But is there really that much of a difference from drive to drive, and really what is the point of having a USB2 external drive? Well, Personally I have always fancied the idea of having an external drive to move from machine to machine without the need of opening them up, removing drives and configuring IDE slave and master settings.

I guess a little background on USB2 is called for, USB Hi-Speed is another name for USB 2.0. The official USB Promoter Group didn’t want the new USB 2.0 specification to be seen as a completely new standard, which may confuse consumers. Therefore, USB 2.0 becomes USB Hi-Speed, and USB 1.1 gets a new title as USB Basic Speed. USB 2.0 has a raw data rate at 480Mbps, and it is rated 40 times faster than its predecessor interface, USB 1.1, which tops at 12Mbps. Originally, USB 2.0 was intended to go only as fast as 240Mbps, but then, USB 2.0 Promoter Group increased the speed to 480Mbps in October 1999. With speed 40 times more than that of USB 1.1, USB 2.0 broaden the range of external peripherals that can be used on a computer. Even with multiple high-speed peripherals connected to a USB 2.0 bus, the system will less likely to hit the bandwidth bottleneck. The new specification also inherits the current USB’s Plug and Play and hot-swapping capability as well as providing backward compatibility for USB 1.1 hardware, allowing existing user base to upgrade seamlessly. Basically, USB 2.0 includes everything that USB 1.1 offers and adds a high-speed mode, which runs at 480Mbps. USB 1.1 supports two speed modes: 1.5 and 12Mbps whereas USB 2.0 has three of them: 1.5, 12 and 480Mbps. USB 2.0 also uses the same USB 1.1 compliant cables to connect high-speed devices. However, classic USB hubs will slow down USB 2.0 devices. In addition, a USB 2.0 host controller is required to enable the high-speed connection with a USB 2.0 device.

USB 2.0 hubs are now given a lot more work to do than USB 1.1 as they need to handle all the traffic from three different speed mode devices. Plugging a USB 1.1 device to a USB 2.0 hub is okay, but connecting a USB 2.0 device to a USB 1.1 hub is prohibited.

Getting back to the manufacturer of this drive, im sure alot of you have heard of TEAC, ill be honest and say ive never really used any TEAC data storage or optical products. My main experience of TEAC has been in the hi-fi end of the market. One of my family members owned a very nice Teac seperates system and I was always particularly impressed with the CD player in that system, it had great error tracking capabilities as well as a very nice build quality, also most importantly it had great signal to noise responses, with a very clean and well balanced overall sound quality, much superior to the tinny or overly harsh digital cd players I had listened to at that stage.

Product Overview and feature list

Teac have just released this external USB2 CD-RW drive, offering very fast 52x24x52 speeds, together with a very impressive innovation list.

The new CD-W552PUK offers support for Mount Rainer industry standards as well as TEAC's own innovations such as Fine Focus Control and Intelligent Speed Control. It also supports Multiread standards for all CD formats.

TEAC's CD writer delivers burn performance of 52x in write mode and 24x in rewrite mode, as well as a 52x read speed, its also competively priced at just over £100. With the USB2 interface (backwards compatible with USB 1.1), the external version achieves high data transfer rates and retains its fast access time of 100ms. The risk of buffer underrun is completely eliminated by the companies Write Proof Technology together with an onboard buffer memory of 2mb.

Recording modes include Disk-at-once, Track-at-once, Session-at-once and Packet writing and the drive supports Running OPC and Zone CLV recording. Reliability is high with an MTBF time of 100,000 hours and the CD-W552PUK is covered by a 2 year Warranty.

Inside the box: its very well kitted out indeed

The Package

The new TEAC CD-W552PUK - compatible with Windows 95, 98, 98SE, 2000, NT, ME and XP - is delivered in a kit complete with a CD-R blank, Nero Burning ROM software, USB driver disk for earlier versions of Windows, USB cable, power supply instruction leaflet and a multi-language CD manual. It is available in the UK through existing TEAC distribution channels and retailers.

Apart from the 1970's look of the box, first impressions of the package are positive. The drive itself already looks very special indeed with the evidence of the wonderful TEAC build quality already apparent, the drive is surrounded in a clear coating of plastic which has bevelled/embossed ridges along the top and the letters "TEAC" cut into the plastic along the top. This design idea while having aesthetic merits is also very practical as it gives the beautiful silver finish of the drive some added protection from everyday knocks and marking.

I have been dealing with hardware for many years and im not easily impressed at all anymore, but I really must stress the overall appearance and quality of this drive, I found it matched my Lian Li PC60 case very comfortably indeed. The only negative thing I will say, is getting a good picture of this drive is not easy, as the coating is highly reflective !

Looking down at the TEAC cd writer from above, notice the wonderful attention to detail on the drive casing!
click for larger view

About the Mount Rainier Industry Standard
TEAC supports the Mount Rainer industry standard with all its new CD-RW family. Mount Rainer is a collection of specifications that is designed to enable problem-free use of CD-RW media. Instead of supplementary programs, the support is anchored in the hardware and in the operating system. The core of the specification is the division of the media into two-kilobyte blocks, a management for faults in the drive and a background formatting of the media. Using traditional CD-RW media in a Mount Rainer environment is as easy as pre-formatting floppy disks.

About Multiread: A new standard for CD and DVD
Representatives of the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) have agreed on a common standard known as Multiread. Optical drives meeting this specification will read audio CDs, CD-ROMs, CD-recordables and CD-rewritables on both CD and DVD drives. The Multiread specification will ensure that users will no longer risk losing access to their data when switching over from CD-ROM to DVD drives.

Innovation from TEAC: Fine Focus Control
Different laser power is required at various stages of the writing and reading processes. The movement of the write head in conventional CD-R(W) drives can cause faults when writing and reading. TEAC made a breakthrough in its earlier 40x drives with its new "Fine Focus Control" technology, in that the laser always remains constant and never enters a "jitter mode". The laser remains precisely in the same position on the track, regardless of the speed. This key CD writing technology from TEAC enables high recording quality to be maintained at very high speeds.

A side view of the drive: you can see the relative thickness of the drive

Intelligent Speed Control
A further qualitative improvement is the "Intelligent Speed Control" technology, which tests the status of the CD before the writing process using various parameters in order to determine the highest writing speed with the best possible quality. For example, the number of tracks, the disk balance, the strength of the laser, the type of disk, and any possible vibrations with higher rotation speeds are all tested.

Write Proof
The CD W552PUK incorporates Write Proof technology. Write proof includes both protection, which prevents "Buffer under run", and "Running OPC" (Optimum Power Control). Following an analysis of the surface of the blank CD, this function automatically regulates the writing speed, and consequently avoids faulty burning processes with writing speeds that are too high - a double protection against the interruption of the data stream when burning.

An underbelly view of the drive: the quality throughout is very apparent

 

Zone-CLV
In order to achieve the high writing speed, the new TEAC drive works with Zone Constant Linear Velocity as recording technology. With Zone-CLV the CD is divided into three zones, internally and externally, in which the write speed varies. In more simple terms, the drive is able to automatically synchronise these three zones when burning and consequently can always achieve a linear speed.

Next ill get onto the juicy details, the results from my testing !