Yamaha Electronics Corp. claims its LightSpeed2 CD-RW burners provide more reliable burning to end users, thanks to the company’s decision to use Partial Constant Angular Velocity (P-CAV) technology, paired with Yamaha’s own SafeBurn buffer management system.
Yamaha explained that the P-CAV writing method utilizes a smooth and gradual linear acceleration, unlike other manufacturer’s Zone-Constant Linear Velocity (CLV) method. Zone-CLV “jumps” in recording speed 4x at a time, according to Yamaha, which it said could compromise the integrity of the disc and increase the likelihood of making an error.
Since P-CAV does not depend on such “speed zones” and differing conditions of laser power and writing strategy, it doesn’t make any intentional error links, according to Yamaha. This results in improved quality of recording on the inner portion of the disc and more successful “on the fly” copies produced from a CD-ROM.
SafeBurn provides an 8MB buffer that guards against underrun errors. The technology automatically suspends recording in the event that the contents of the memory buffer drop to a critical level, then restarts writing from the point at which the data was suspended. This makes data gaps virtual undetectable, according to Yamaha.
The LightSpeed2 CRW2200 drive was introduced in May, and sports 20x burn speed, 10x rewrite speed, and sustained read speed of up to 40x. Internal and external models are available, including SCSI, ATAPI, USB 2.0 and FireWire models. Yamaha said that the external SCSI, FireWire and USB 2.0 models are Mac-compatible (although USB 2.0 is not yet available as a factory-installed feature on Mac systems).
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