£125.00
approx (inc. VAT) - around $130 (Pricewatch)
PlexTools :
General Information :
This covers everything from
your jumper settings to the firmware version. As you
can see the buffer capacity is a pretty healthy 4MB.
Drive Settings :
From here you get to configure speed settings,
spindown time, VariRec levels, BURN-Proof, DMA, Auto Insert
Notification and output volume. At the bottom of the "Advanced
Settings" pane is the SpeedRead option which is disable
by default. Enabling this boosts read speeds from 40X to just
shy of 48X though Plextor suggest you use this feature with
caution, particularly with badly scratched media which may not
hold together at such high rotational speeds causing irreparable
damage to your drive. If you'd sooner enable SpeedRead manually
you can do this by holding down the eject button for three seconds
(the LED will blink three times) then insert your CD and close
the tray again using the eject button once more.
Drive Information :
Displays everything from read and write speeds
to firmware versions and even has a facility to check for later
firmware revisions online.
CD/DVD Info :
Displays information for the CD or DVD (if supported)
currently in the drive.
Multimedia Player :
Multimedia Player uses the MCI drivers installed
on your system to play Audio tracks and other types of Multimedia
files. Some of the options are :
Media Files: can play the most common audio and video
files available.
Video for Windows: plays AVI Video files.
Sound: plays audio WAV files as recorded by Digital Audio
Extraction tools.
MIDI sequencer: plays MIDI files.
CD Audio: plays Audio CD’s (including audio tracks
on Mixed mode, Enhanced and CD Extra discs).
MP3 Files: plays compressed audio files.
Movie Files: plays Quicktime?? Movie files.
MPEG Files: plays Video files that are compressed using
the MPEG specification (e.g. VideoCD)
Audio CD Player :
Digital Audio Extraction :
This not only allows you to extract digital audio
from your audio CD it also allows the extraction of multiple
tracks at once. Error detection can be enabled/disabled from
this panel. Tracks can be extracted to PCM (Wave), MP3 (Windows
encoder) or MP3 (L.A.M.E) using the free encoder which will
need downloading if you don't have it.
Audio CD Maker :
Allows you to create your own audio CDs by dragging
and dropping 44.1KHz, 16 bit stereo *.wav files. For more flexibility
you can do the same thing using the supplied Nero software including
auto-conversion of MP3 files.
CD Copy :
All the basic settings are here to allow quick
and easy CD copying. Source and destination speeds can be set
directly and on the fly copies (directly from one drive to another)
can also be enabled. Preferences allows you to copy CD+G information
if available and also 'Include UPC/EAN and ISRC'. You can also
enable overburning, leave the copy open (not finalised) and
set features like ejecting the disk on completion.
CD-RW Functions :
This function is only available on the Plextor
Rewriters (PX-Wxxxx) in combination with a CD-RW disk. There
are two ways of erasing a CD-RW.
Quick Erase will only erase the table of
contents (TOC); data will remain on the disc, but becomes inaccessible.
This takes about 2 minutes at 2X writing speed. Full Erase will erase everything on the disk. This can
take up to 40 minutes at 2X writing but actually took 3minutes
and 39 seconds using the supplied 24X CD-RW media.minutes in
testing.
Opting for a quick erase took a mere 29 seconds.
CD Test :
This simply scans the inserted CD for read errors.
