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

For the purposes of this test im going to use Poikosoft's Easy CD-DA Audio Extractor to determine the maximum audio extraction speed of the TEAC drive, for comparitive purposes ill also include my findings with the Liteon drive. I used my Jean Michel Jarre Audiophile gold CD to ensure that no defects on the disc would alter these readings.

I have always used this program for extracting my audio CDs to my hard drive for backup purposes and although alot of people recommend Exact Audio Copy in this case I could not get it to recognise the USB2 drive for extraction.

Both drives were set with identical parameters // Maximum speed settings. The first tests are not for audio quality, just ripping speed.

The interface of Easy CD Extractor

 

 

AUDIO EXTRACTION - 128 BIT/ LAME 3.93.1

TEAC (left) and LITEON (right) - We can see from the test results above that the TEAC drive is faster by 4 seconds

 

I then retested raising settings to the maximum quality of 320kbits/s

output settings for audio extraction

TEAC (left) and LITEON (right) - again we can see from the test results above that the TEAC drive is faster, this time by a more substantial 8 seconds

 

These results show that for audio ripping the TEAC USB2 is a very fast drive indeed, I always thought the Liteon drive I had was pretty quick for ripping my CDS for backups but it really is quite a bit slower especially if I was backing up quite a few CDs to a high resolution bitrate.

Quality

Well unfortunately for legal reasons I cant post links to any of the Mp3s I have ripped, but I can confirm that this is really where the TEAC drive comes into its own, the quality of the audio files I extracted where substantially higher than anything I have ever ripped from the Liteon. This would probably not be that noticeable if the only material you ripped was low quality pop music played through a low end PC speaker setup and certainly not worth the additional outlay, but it is quite obvious when listening to high quality orchestral work or well recorded popular music on high end seperates. Through my Marantz setup the quality is truly exceptional.

Conclusion

Is it worth buying this drive?

If you need a portable drive to move between machines, I would recommend it wholeheartedly, not only is this drive a real looker and very well built, its a great performer for everyday use, with some of the best audio quality ive had the pleasure to listen to.

Performance: 9
Build Quality: 10
Audio Extraction: 9
Value for Money: 8