Summary - Writing Quality With CD-R And CD-RW Media

As far as media compatibility is concerned, there can be no complaints about the GCE-8480B. The writing results we achieved with all CD-R and CD-RW media used in our tests were excellent. Speed freaks will perhaps pick up on the fact that the "Fail Free Burning" feature prevents burning at speeds outside the specification of the media being used.

Practically Impossible - Backup Copies Of Protected Audio CDs

To counteract piracy, the music industry is now insisting on the introduction of copy protection mechanisms. This means that you will not only be unable to play your brand new audio CDs on your computer; you will not be able to make backup copies of them either. If you own copy-protected audio CDs, it is useful to own a CD burner that can bypass protection mechanisms such as Key2Audio or Cactus Datashield.

We use the following copy-protected titles for our tests:

For ripping (reading off), we use Exact Audio Copy

Typical structure of a copy protected CD-DA - a data track follows the audio tracks.

The GCE-8480B achieved only limited success making backup copies of protected audio CDs. It managed to read and copy the last two CD titles in the table almost 8 times as fast. The drive failed miserably with the other two titles. It couldn't even play the original CDs.