Technology

    First of all we have to remind you the correspondence of a 1x burning: it is equal to 150kbps. That way a 20x burner can, in theory, burn CDs at 3000kbps: with such a high speed burner you can expect to burn a full 650MB CD in less than 4 minutes, and a 700MB CD in not more than 5 minutes. Like its predecessor the CRW2200E-VK uses both CLV & P-CAV modes. When you write a CD-R the recording initially starts at 12x, thanks to the use of the P-CAV (partial constant angular velocity) mode the burning speed will reach the high speed of 20x during the burning process. That is to say that when you record a new CD the process starts at 12x with a 5,500 rev/min rotational speed and after the first 32 minutes of the CD the burner will reach the 20x burning speed before finally switching into CLV mode to ensure a constant flow with a slightly reduced rotational speed set to 4,400 rev/min. In CAV mode the rotation speed is constant while with P-CAV the speed is variable since the burner adjusts the rotational speed throughout the entire burning process.

   P-CAV’s use is interesting especially when you copy CD to CDs as few CD-Rom drives can support data extraction with a sustain rate able to feed a constant flow of data required by the 20x burning speed. The other advantage of this method is that the burner can regulates its burning speed depending of the media quality through the OPC feature. The OPC (Optimum Power Control) feature is another exclusive Yamaha technology that adapts the burning speed to the maximum speed supported by the blank CD you’ve inserted in the drive: that way you’re sure to not waste CDs because they weren’t high speed certified (however daredevils will be glad to know that the latest version of Nero let you disable this option so they can burn CDs faster than the speed they are certified for, but it’s risky).

Partial CAV vs. Zone CLV

   Competing burners like Sanyo models use the Z-CLV burning process: it surely makes them faster than the Yamaha CRW2200E since they burn by levels: 16, 20, 24x. However to do so the Sanyo method implies that the burned CD will at least contain two gaps (requiring the use of BurnProof): the result is that the CD quality is dramatically affected. Yamaha didn’t develop a similar technology than Sanyo to make sure their burners produce the most accurate CDs without any quality loss. Considering the long established Yamaha quality reputation, we can’t expect the Japanese manufacturer to favour marketing performances over quality. But that’s not all! Qualitative high quality writing at high speeds is guaranteed with the integration of the Pure Phase Laser system. This exclusive Yamaha function stabilises the laser power and eliminates unwanted reflections and glares, which are usually produced when recording a CD. The result is a near perfection, state of the art recording.

SafeBurn

With previous burners, Yamaha always claimed that BurnProof was somewhat useless. Not really in fact… The proof is that their previous 16x model, which came nevertheless with a wide 8MB buffer, was a source of real headaches for several users that were unable to burn CDs at the maximum speed because some components of their computer were too slow for such a high speed recorder. Obviously BurnProof would have been more interesting with Pentium 133MHz PCs. Anyway to get back on track, the Yamaha CRW2200E now comes with the Yamaha proprietary technology called SafeBurn.  

   SafeBurn is in fact an anti buffer under-run technology: based on an OAK OTI9796 chip and still assisted with a big 8MB buffer, the burner will literally suspend the writing if the data flow doesn’t arrive fast enough into the buffer to ensure a continuous writing. Sure once system resources are back to a normal state, SafeBurn will automatically resume the burning session. SafeBurn slightly differs from the competing BurnProof technology. Indeed with BurnProof the produced CDs always contain gaps at the place where the record was ‘paused’: gaps can affect the compatibility of a CD when using them on various platforms. According to Yamaha their latest burner doesn’t give rise to that kind of problems since SafeBurn’s eventual gaps are supposed to not overtake 1 micron (for your information the orange book specifies that a gap shouldn’t exceed 100 microns). Yamaha technology makes sure the length of the links is under 1µ (almost not measurable) while with other systems a gap of 2µ or more is standard.

   SafeBurn will definitely change the way you burn CDs! It allows you to use your computer to perform other tasks while CDs are burned without any risks of errors. Best of all, SafeBurn doesn’t compromise the quality of the burned CD for an unprecedented, unmatched level of quality. During our intensive tests under Windows 2000 we were able to burn CDs in 20x/12x while in the mean time using some high demanding applications like Adobe PhotoShop 6 or Microsoft Office XP: the result? Absolutely no errors when burning CDs!

Yamaha CRW2200E-VK (click to enlarge)

Performance

   The average recording speed we obtained with the Yamaha attained 18,33x which is very near to the announced 20x theoretical speed exceeding by 17% the CRW21000E-VK average burning speed. During our tests using Nero CD-Speed, the reading speed of the burner reached the highest speed of 36,74x while the reading started at 16,46x, which is normal for such a model (the average speed was 27.85x). The average access time demonstrated during the tests reached 134msec (a bit more than with the CRW21000E-VK) while the CPU occupation level didn’t exceed 10%: a strong advantage for an IDE model that lets every other competitors like Plextor in the dust. The Yamaha 2200E-VK burner uses few CPU resources when burning or reading CDs (only 10% in 8x reading mode). Yamaha has done a good job here since the CPU usage rate is now far better than with the CRW-2100E.

Yamaha CRW2200E-VK Burning Speed Graph

Yamaha CDW2200E-VK Reading Speed Graph