[zigzag]

I've been meaning to upgrade my Mac and add a CD-RW drive (either internal or Firewire). I mostly use iMovie, do a bit of photo retouching w/ Photoshop, and expect to burn alot of music CD's. Now that Apple has introduced the 533, I'm wondering if it would be better to go with that, or get an old-model DP 450 and add a CD-RW to it for close to the same price. I have the following questions (I've never used a CD-RW):

1) In REAL-WORLD terms, is there any performance sacrifice (or benefit) with the internal CD-RW on the 533 for ordinary music and video? How significant REALLY are the various read-write rates in ordinary use? Any other factors involved?

2) One review indicated that with the built-in CD-RW on the 533, it was no longer possible to burn one CD another from another simultaneously - you have to store the tracks on your hard drive first, then burn the new CD. Never having worked with one, I'm wondering how big an inconvenience this really is.

3) Apart from taking up desk space, is there any significant disadvantage to using a Firewire CD-RW, as opposed to an internal one?

Thanks in advance.

[in the flesh?]

1)i have usually heard that internal cd-rw is the best if you have room.
the one the 533 comes with is 8x write, 4 rewrite and 32x read. so it can burn eight minutes of audio in one minute. the read speed is easily high enough.
2)well you can't burn from one cd to another if you have only one cd drive and that is the burner
3)the only disadvantage of an external firewire drive is cost. but it is hot swappable and can go from one comp to another easily. you can buy a faster firewire drive if you want. up to 16x i believe as of now.

i hope this help, and i hope i am not wrong about anything

[naepstn]

If I were making the decision, I'd personally buy the old model and buy an external CD-RW (Firewire). That way you get the added benefits of the external drive (portability, higher than 8X speed, etc.), but you also are able to copy directly from one CD to the other without having to copy to your HD first. You also would still have a DVD-ROM drive as well, which I personally like, but if you never forsee using the DVD drive, then that's less of an issue. The only real drawbacks, as far as I'm concerned, with the older model would be that iTunes burning isn't currently possible with external burners, the worse graphics card (which unless you are a big gamer or into 3D annimation, isn't a big deal), and the minor performance hit your see as compared to the new models.

Just my opinion. Others may well disagree, but you should ask yourself if you really need the performance improvements that the new models offer. Many in these forums seem to think that everyone has need for the best... a dangerous frame of mind, if the pockets aren't very deep (or the significant other isn't very forgiving!). Cheers!

[Misha]

Transferring to the Peripherals forum...

[zigzag]

Thanks for your responses. For anyone interested in this topic, here's what else I've learned:

1) There's no speed advantage or disadvantage to Firewire vs. internal ATA because both are faster than any CD burner;

2) It's possible to burn directly from the Mac DVD-ROM to an external CD burner but it appears to be a touchy procedure - some people have found that their CD-ROM output can't keep up with the CD burner, so they end up with coasters. Burning at a slower rate, and using lots of RAM appears to help. Of course, if you burn at a slower rate it defeats the convenience of direct burning somewhat;

3) All else being equal, a faster write spec on the CD-RW is better, but there are other factors at work - buffer size, disc quality, etc. It seems that a lot of people end up burning music CD's at 2x in order to get reliable results, so all that extra write speed seems wasted.

I think I'm going to get the G4 MP 450. I want analog in, I don't need the extra speed of the new G4s, I'll have dual processors down the road for OS-X, and I'll have the versatility of DVD-ROM plus a portable Firewire CD-RW. As for the CD-RW, I'm considering a Sony Spressa 1600.

[Paul S]

Regardless of what drive you decide to buy, get Toast. If the drive doesn't come with it, buy it. Toast is far superior to any other disc burning software out there. I believe Sony uses Discribe which I've heard bad things about. I know people who's drives wouldn't work on a particular machine with the packaged software, but works perfectly on the same machine using Toast.

[CharlesS]

If I try burning from one CD to another, I end up with a coaster, every time. Buffer underrun errors...

I seem to remember reading on here some time ago that Yamaha had a new burner out in FireWire that had some kind of new technology to eliminate buffer underrun errors, but I do not remember what it was called.

Whatever you do buy a CDRW with "Burn Proof" Technology. This will keep you from making "coasters."

[scaught]

im not sure about your setup charlesS, but i just purchased a USB cd-rw drive and was getting those buffer underrun errors even if i wasnt burning straight from a CD, its caused by the burner going faster than the information coming into it. once the burner starts burning at a certain speed, it cant slow down or speed up depending on the amount of data coming down the pipe. my USB burner is supposed to burn at 4x, but if i try to burn at 4x, it causes the buffer underrun errors cause USB cant get enough data to the burner to keep up at that speed. so i have to burn at only 2x, which kinda sucks, but i dont have a firewire port on my iBook so im pretty much stuck. if you have toast, do a "check speed" before you burn the disk, it will tell you if youre trying to burn too fast. sorry if all this doesnt make sense...

scott

[zigzag]

Is "burn-proof" technology really better than getting a CD-RW with 4 or 8 MB of buffer? From what I've read around the boards, even people with "burn-proof" have problems and end up burning music at slow speeds.

I like the Sony 1600 design - FWIW it got a rave review on MacHome - but it doesn't have "burn-proof". It does have a 4 MB buffer.

Maybe I'll just make it easy and get the 533, but I want the analog-in on the 450 DP so I can digitize my old LPs.

[snodman]

Many people don't understand that ripping the audio from a CD audio track is the slowest part of burning a new CD in most instances. You need a REALLY fast (True-X kind of fast) CD reader to write at 10 X on the burner drive if you are copying a CD from drive to drive on the fly. The regular Matsushita DVD/CD reader that shipped with the G4s before they all went to CDRW drives will extract audio at about 6x. The new Sony CRX 140 E drives will extract a bit faster, closer to 8x. But even a 48x "normal" IDE CD reader can not extract at 10x on-the-fly. You need a True-X 52x or 72x reader to do that.

Here's a link to find out about CDRs - http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/

Once upon a time, when I got mine, yamaha was the only one to buy - that may no longer be the case. The interface it's on matters a lot - don't use USB! (Manufacturers should be sued for offering it because it's demonstrably flakey).

BURN-Proof technology can be useful in _some_ circumstances.

I use an external Yamaha 6416, connected via scsi to a 300MHz G3 and I copy music CDs (DAO) from the internal CD drive to the CDR at 4X all of the time with no problem. Sometimes the CDR media can fail if you're recording at 8X. . .

I think having an external is useful for the ability to directly copy from one CD to another. Extracting data from a CD is always a slow process, and I don't have enough GBs spare to store so much on the disk. . . You'll probably find more uses for a CDR than you originally imagined.

I think one advantage to an external burner might be the fact that lots of dirt won't get sucked through it, unless of course it has a fan. It is very hard to clean all the dirt out of a CD drive.

[elzinat]

some reference benchmarks on cd ripping:
I have a G4 AGP, and an external QPS Qué FW 8x4x32 (it's a Plextor mechanism). I did a couple Check Speed tests in Toast, for burning directly from a 72 minute audio CD.

Reading from the known-speed 32x external FW drive:
first track average read: 1.7 MB/sec
last track average read: 2.4 MB/sec
Reading from internal DVD drive:
first track average read: 600 kB/sec
last track average read: 1.3 MB/sec

The built-in Apple DVD drive apparently rips audio CDs at speeds about equivalent to a 10x reader.
To burn at 8x, Toast tells me it needs 1.3 MB/sec data throughput to the burner (which has a 2 MB buffer). On this 72 minute CD, Toast only checked the last track as "OK" to write at 8x when going directly from the DVD drive. for the first track, it could not pass the test above 2x write. So if you want to burn directly from the audio cd, you won't be able to do it above 2x with one of these built-in Apple DVD drives.

One aditional thing worth considering, though, is that the higher the speed at which a CD was burned, the "harder" it is to read. Especially for consumer cd players, most cannot read anything burned above 8x, many (especially older ones) cannot read anything burned above 2x. Many people who have fast burners burn audio CDs at low speed anyway because the players just can't read them otherwise. Mileage may vary, and high-Q (expensive) CD-R media tends to do better.

My recommendation is for an external burner. (though by the time this is posted the person who originally started this recently dug-up thread will probably have purchased the new burner, this information may be helpful to others)

------------------
be happy!
-mac freak

[PeteWK]

If you have or want to get a Powerbook/iBook, you need the external. The day will come when you need the CD-R/W and it will sitting home in your PowerMac. Go firewire and life will be good.

PeteWK

[Cipher13]

External for sure - you can do CD copies, have more than one CD mounted at once, listen to music while the other CD drive is in use for a program or something, and move the drive around to other computers etc.
When you get a new comp, just unplug and replug. Easy.

Cipher13

[Timo]

[I don't think anyone else mentioned that] as with most peripherals, an external drive is easier to deal with if it breaks and you've got to send it in for repairs.

[zigzag]

Thanks for the replies - I haven't upgraded yet so they were not in vain. Sounds like an external is a good idea - I can buy the old model Cube and with the $ saved buy a much faster Firewire CD-RW than the built-in and have the best of both worlds.