<<
I was told before that the faster burners could only burn so fast on certain portions of the CD. I checked out the review Rally1 posted (http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Art...ticleHeadline=32x CD-RW Roundup Vol1&Series=0) and found this:
<<The 32x writing speed range is divided into 4 zones: The drive starts writing at 16x from lead-in till the 2mins, shifts up to 20x at 6mins, shifts up to 24x at 16mins and lastly shifts to 32x at 42mins and stays there until the end. The average recording speed is 26.23X.>>
This kinda confirmed what I was told about the true burning speeds. I'm still using an 8x burner and want to upgrade soon, but I may just wait until the 24x burners drop in price. Am I reading the review wrong and being lied to? Anyone else have any knowledge how these faster burners actually burn at? TIA >>
What you read is true. If you watch the burn process while doing a 32X disc, you'll see the speed going up as it writes. By the time you hit about 60 or 70%, it is running at full speed and blazes through the end of the disc. It also seems like the lead in/lead out is about half the speed it was on a 16X TEAC I was using (which isn't the best drive in the world).
I burned 78 min of music from MP3 with smart burn enabled in 3:40. Not true 32X but it's pretty nice.
I really like this drive. It has been performing really well for me. On my TEAC, for example, I was having to burn PS2 games at 4x for the PS2 to be able to use it. Now, I can burn at 24X (using CompUSA gold media which only goes to 24X) and it works like a charm. I also like the smart burn better. It might have been my system, but occasionaly my system would lock up if I opened an explorer window from scratch or something like that while burning. With this new drive, I haven't had a single coaster (except the first disc when I thought DMA was enabled) or system lock up while burning.