Yamaha CRW-2200 Firmware Upgrade

[SteveC]

Hi all,

Just a FYI to anyone with a Yamaha CRW-2200 CDRW Drive, I noticed there was a firmware upgrade released back in April. It adds something called 'Audio Master Quality Recording'. Supposedly improves Audio CD quality by 30% by reducing jitter and also helps written discs to work in older CD players because the discs are easier to read (less reliance on error correction).

http://www.yamaha-it.de/firmware/CRW2200/CRW2200firmware.htm

[az]

AFAIK it just "stretches" the pits on the CD a bit more, making them easier to read, while requiring the player to speed up a bit (it's part of the CD spec, so shouldn't be a problem in theory), while fitting less data onto the disc... I doubt this is much more than a marketing feature... but I didn't want to spoil the fun, sorry

AZ

[SteveC]

I read that about making the pits and troughs longer, but didn't realise it made the capacity less

Yes - you are right though, it'll only let me write 66 minutes or so to a normal 74 min CD. Also, as it's writing now, it's taking longer - 20% done after 3 minutes 30 seconds - not quite 20X!


Edit: Finally finished writing the CD - 20 minutes and 4 seconds!! One annoying thing is that it doesn't work on CD-RW discs - they're the discs that CD Players have most problems with!

[az]

Yes, but that's not because of pit length but because of lower reflection. If you want RW's to be readable in HiFi players, you should look for the brightest ones, IMHO

My quite expensive (for me at least - cost ~400,- EUR) technics 5 CD changer doesn't like CDR at all If I'll ever buy a new CD player, it won't be a changer...

Oh yeah I read somewhere that you can only write at 4x or 8x or so with that new anhanced audio mode... to improve quality, of course

AZ

[Wombat]

Yes, I'm familiar with that drive. The guy who sold me my stereo swears by it. But he also believes that digital cables need "breaking in" ::