I rencently bought the great looking blueberry QUE! 4x4x8 cd-rw AND shelled out the $80 for toast delux but this setup sux!! I can only burn data at 2x and audio at 1x. I checkout the Adaptec site for a fix and for the last month they've only said that they will come out with a fixin the next few weeks. Does anyone know how to fix this to get the full speeds of what other software is out there that can burn at 4x?? Any input at all would be very much appeciated!! ~~Nigel

obviously they don't support that burner yet. i use toast 4.0.1.1 with my smart and friendly 12X burner. it burns fine at 12x BUT toast deluxe does not support it yet, so i can do disc images, etc... really sucks...

Check out www.macintouch.com for info re: Que drives. Also check Que's website to see if there's a firmware update for your drive.

Also, I think you can only burn audio Cd's at 1x speed but I could be wrong. Maybe if you use Adaptec JAM or Toast CD-DA (don't know which) which would allow you to burn individual tracks.

Your problem is not software, but limitations of the USB bus. The THEORETICAL maximum speed of USB is 8x, but a reality check shows that 6x is the actual limit, and 4x is the practical useful limit. Manufacturers who claim 8x or more for USB are untruthful.

USB = 1500 KBps (1.2 MBps = 12 Mbps)

In CD parlance:
1x = 150 KBps
2x = 300 KBps
4x = 600 KBps
6x = 900 KBps
8x = 1200 KBps

The reality is that control signaling and overhead on the USB bus limits it to around 800-1000 KBps (6x) in real life, and keeping in mind that USB is a SHARED bus (keyboard, mouse, printer, etc., etc.), peripherals suck up a lot of the remaining bandwidth, oftentimes to the point where less than 4x is available to your burner.

I use Toast all the time at 8x with SCSI drives, with no problems at all. If you want performance, dump USB.

[Gregory]

Vendors are trying to provide products for a market where there is a need. Unfortunately the iMac without using the lower slot as rev A & B models, without FireWire, without DVD-RAM, SCSI or 2nd IDE is a "network" computer and Ethernet 10/100 drives (that hang off a hub and run $499 for 10GB) make more sense than USB Zip or other nonsense.

As well as all the problems compatibility OS 9 issues the iMac suffers trying to use floppy and zip drives.

USB 2.0 offers some help. Or improvements and a more mature FireWire.

There was some hope when product(s) came out to use the lower slot on original iMacs for video and scsi - but that got killed.

Or vendors making false or misleading claims about what can be achieved with USB.

And unfortunately, new laws may make it harder to find redress for flaws in software and hardware bugs and marketing.

- Greg

A friend of mine has the same burner, using it with an iMac. He also can not get more than 2x speed on burn. He was quite annoyed as well.

On the flip side, my brother uses one of the new Firewire burners, and can burn at 8x, both regular and audio, with no problems. Looks like Firewire is the way to go - if you've got it!!