VeloCD 40/12/48 CD-RW PC TDK $199.99 http://www.tdk.com Sean Gibson

CDRW technology keeps reinventing itself every six months. TDK accelerates burning to a new level with the 40/12/48AI veloCD, and just think, a few years ago, it took half an hour to burn a single CD-R. Now TDK has slashed that time down to 3 minutes! Yes ladies and gentleman, burning CDs has become fun once again.

TDK's robust new drive has a wide spectrum of features that any burning aficionado will enjoy. The "big feature" in my humble opinion is the inclusion of SMART-burn buffer underrun protection. What the heck does that mean? It means those annoying error messages that basically say "Your computer has just burned you a nice coaster" are going to be in the past! Being able to burn (safely) at 40x, rewriting at 12x, and reading at 48x is simply breathtaking, and TDK has really outdone themselves once again. The software included is the very popular Nero Burning Rom, which is as easy to use as burning software gets, as well as a TDK Digital Mixmaster program.

Retail Bundle

Retails packages include...

• TDK veloCD 40/12/48 CD-RW Drive
• veloCD ReWriter Installation and Users Manual
• Quick Start Guide
• Easy Installation Poster
• CD Blender Software Suite v4.9
• 2 TDK 80 Minute 32x CD-R Discs
• 1 TDK 74 Minute 4x -10x High Speed CD-RW Disc
• TDK CD Mark Permanent Marker
• IDE Cable
• Mounting Screws And Emergency Eject Tool

Did you say CD Mark Permanent Marker? Yes! I thought this was a brilliant idea to include this very handy pen that marks on CDs like a champ.

click for larger image

As you can see the color scheme on the TDK veloCD 40/12/48 drive is very pleasing, with the white and blue with silver TDK logo. You'll notice only one LED on the drive, which turns yellow for reading and red while the unit is burning a CD.

Some technical specs...

A very impressive set of features indeed. I like the fact that so many write speeds are supported, that way you can still burn on old media you might have laying around. It may not be 40X compliant, but heck it beats throwing the stuff away. Some old CDs that were supposedly only 8X complaint burned just fine on 16X, and some supposed 24X compliant CDs burned great at 32X.

So what the heck is this SMART-burn technology that has me so geeked up on this product? Well, it's not just "buffer underrun protection" but is a whole network of features that allows the best possible quality write available and ensures to the consumer that you won't be wasting blank media away burning coasters like we've all done in the past. What can happen is that the media is listed somewhere in the drive's firmware, which the drive will recognize and immediately take the appropriate burning speed. If the media isn't listed, then the drive will run a calibration test to test out the media, and then initiate the appropriate settings. If the media is just plain bad (it happens) the drive will initiate a variable speed process, and keep changing to lower speeds to ensure that the media still gets written correctly.

So add that all up, and you're going to save yourself some money because your CDRW drive isn't going to be burning bad CDs. Fortunately enough, with the ability to prevent buffer underrun errors, you can fully multitask while burning a CD and not create some sort of writing error. I remember the days that I couldn't move the damn mouse without fear of throwing off my 2X burner...how far this technology has come!

A brief description of the software included in the bundle:

Nero Burning ROM - Nero one of the most widely used and easiest to use mastering software for the PC. It supports VCD creation, advanced CD copy options, overburning, CD-Text, partition backups, realtime audio filters, and best of all, takes full advantage of the SMART-Burn support. The version of Nero included on the CD is 5.5.7.8.

InCD - InCD is Ahead's (company that makes Nero) packet writing software. Like Roxio's DirectCD, it allows a person to use their CD-RW drive as a big floppy disk. The person can then drag and drop files onto a CD-RW disk. The version of InCD included with this drive was 3.24.

TDK Digital Mixmaster - TDK's Digital Mixmaster is based on Ahead Software's NeroMediaPlayer, which allows you to rip audio CD's to Wave format (not MP3), create play lists and play most types of audio files.

If you don't know how to install a CDRW drive in your system, then I frown on you in disappointment. Why? The only thing holding you back is fear! And fear is the path to the dark side... for those of you who've never done it, it's about the easiest thing to install - especially with Windows XP. Pop open the system, plug in the power connector, make sure the drive is set to master or slave (if its going to be the only drive on its respective cable, pick master, plug the cable into the unit and your motherboard, screw in the screws, and your done. Recent BIOSs will pick up the drive no problem, and XP will see the drive without anything needing to be installed.

So, lets test this sucker out...

Test System Specifications:
- AMD 1800+XP Processor
- ABIT KR7A Motherboard
- 512 MB RAM
- Windows XP
- DirectX 8.1

For the Data CD read test we used Nero CD Speed using a low quality CDRW media....

So we ended up with an average of 35.84x, but the high was 46.92x and climbing. This is actually a great score considering the media source!

We burned a few CDs and averaged out the recording times...and keep in mind - no errors ever - we tried multitasking (email, surfing the net, photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc) and it didn't faze our CDRW drive at all!

Average burn time 650MB disk: 3 minutes 19 seconds
Average burn time 700MB disk: 3 minutes 27 seconds

Those numbers are just out of this world. In conclusion, it'd be damn near impossible to find a more reliable CD-RW drive on the market, let alone one that's faster than the TDK velo40/12/48 drive. If you're in the market for a high performance CDRW drive, then this is the model to buy, hands down.

10 / 10 OVERALL SCORE 96% 10 / 10 9 / 10 10 / 10 9 / 10 9.6 / 10