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Several months ago QPS sent
us a Que! Firewire CD-RW. We reviewed it here.
It was the 8x4x32 drive. This time they sent us the
latest, fastest drive they have, the Que! Fire 16x10x40
CD-RW. We were very anxious to get this drive and start
our tests, for the experience we had with the 8x drive
was so good (we were burning CDs within five minutes
of opening it, never burning a single coaster), we couldn't
wait to see what this baby could do. But there were
problems. How we solved them is useful information,
and so in this review we talk a great deal about setting
up your system so you can use the drive. As it turns
out, iTunes/Disc Burner, 9.1 and Toast don't like one
another.
Installation was easy as
always. There are no extra drivers to install since
it uses Apple's own Firewire extensions. It is plug
and play if you have Apple's drivers installed. You
just need to install Toast that comes with it, unless
you are using 9.1 and iTunes/Disc Burner and prefer
those. And don't forget — it's Firewire! This
means it is fast and reliable, given few tweaks as
we will show.
In this review (and tutorial)
we will look at several aspects of this drive, including
using it with Disc Burner and iTunes, using it with
Toast, and speed tests to see if in fact a 16x drive
is twice as fast as an 8x drive. There was much trial
and error in setting up things, but hopefully we can
spare you, our dear readers, from both by telling
our story.
The drive (see pic above),
has the same, unique design as the earlier QPS drives.
It is rather hard to describe, and they are bigger
than one might expect (due to their rounded casings,
which add about half an inch to either side of the
drive itself). It sits fine atop a desk or a G4, though
you'll have to set it on something or the tray will
hit the G4's clear handle. The drives come with nice
vinyl carrying cases with separate shoulder straps,
and pockets for everything. Very cool. It comes with
an AC adapter, a 1394 cable (a very solid and reliable
one— never skimp on cables!), one media disk,
the manual, and Toast 4.1.2. We especially like those
carrying cases. They are sturdy and padded, and a
joy to use. Now we don't go around carrying the CD-RW
with us (we are not that mobile), but it's a nice
bonus, as is Toast 4.1.2.
Patch
it Up
It took us some time to get the drive
working though. But QPS is not to blame for this.
Though this is a hardware review, we feel that we
should spend some time talking about how we had to
set it up to get it to work. Otherwise, when you get
one you'll wonder why we didn't mention it! Besides,
hardware is as good as the software you use with it,
and the problems we found were software based.
We said we had no problems with the
8x drive, but we did with this one. But something
had changed on the G4, namely, we have upgraded to
9.1 and installed iTunes
and Disc
Burner. This added some extensions which caused
some problems. Further, the drive is so new that it
is not compatible with Disc Burner. QPS said it will
be compatible in future versions though. The Que!
Fire drive comes with Toast 4.1.2, as I said, so you
don't need to wait for Disc Burner to catch up.
But there is a workaround for the impatient
ones (like me!) who want to use Disc Burner (for data)
and iTunes (for audio) right now ...
The drive comes with a
Plextor mechanism [PX-W160A (MMC)]. Plextor mechanisms
are known as some of the best out there. (However,
one problem is that Plextor is slow to get Firmware
updates out for Mac drives.) If you go to Apple's
compatibility
page for Disc Burner you will see that this mechanism
is not included. Well, not to worry, because someone
posted the required extension at www.xlr8yourmac.com.
It is a ResEdit patched version of Apple's own
drive extension ("PlextorCDR"). We installed
it and it works great. Note: The more cautious out
there might not want to do this, but we have had no
problems whatsoever with the hack. To whomever did
that — thanks. (But when
the new driver comes out be sure to replace it just
in case.)
After you have downloaded the patch
it goes in the "System/Extensions/Authoring Support
Files" folder. You can see I cleaned mine out
to the bare necessities to keep conflicts and memory
bloat down.
With that done
it was time to figure out the compatibility problems
between Toast and Disc Burner. Then we could burn
to our heart's delight and see what this baby could
do.
Working with Toast and Apple's
Disc Burner
We
plugged in the drive. It wasn't recognized by either
Toast or Disc Burner. Weird. But a little research got
things going.
Apple's Disc Burner and
Toast are not compatible, for the extension sets conflict
(oh hurry OS X!!). If I had both the Toast extensions
installed AND the Disc Burner extensions installed
then neither program would recognize and mount the
drive. No burnin' nothin' dudes. Here is how you can
get it working.
Apple says that if a drive
is not being recognized by either a third party burner,
like Toast, or by Disc Burner itself, then you should
remove any extensions for the third party package
you do not want to use. So go to the Extensions
Manager and set to view as Packages. Deselect the
Disc Burner package if you wish to use Toast, OR deselect
the Toast Package if you wish to use Disc Burner.
Simple enough. The following pictures tell the story:
Disc
Burner/iTunes
Extensions must be turned off to use Toast
Make sure
this Package is disabled to use Toast.
When you disable
it, make sure to keep the red-lined extensions
on (see below).
Toast
Extensions
Must be turned off to use Disc
Burner/iTunes
Make
sure to disable this Package to use Disc Burner.
The package may also include Toast USB drivers
which we do not have installed.
You see, you can EITHER use Toast OR
Disc Burner — not both, in order for the drive
to be recognized and mounted. So you have set up the
right extension sets and boot from a "Toast"
set or an "iTunes/Disc Burner" set, or whatever
you want to call them. Here is a guide to help (I
hope!). The last two extensions are needed in either
case for Firewire support, and the CarbonLib
extension (not shown), is also needed to use the drive:
Now either Toast or Disc Burner will
recognize the drive and burn away, depending on which
extension set you use. (Note: Toast will run without
the "Toast Extension," but you'll have to
mount the CD-RW manually.) At least this all worked
for us. The same goes for the 8x drive we have here:
With both installed the drive wasn't recognized.
Let me say something about Apple's Disc
Burner — it's cool, but slow. For example, if
we took a 680 MB folder and dropped it on to the Desktop
disk image of the CD, it took five minutes JUST to
copy and prepare the disk image, and THEN you burn
it. This adds a good deal of time (sometimes five
minutes), to the process. This is the only downside
to using Disc Burner (so far).
But I have to say that adding Disc Burner
to the Mac, which makes a CD-RW work like any other
drive on the Desktop, from within the Finder,
is a wonderful thing — Steve did it again! Yes,
it is slow, and the copying takes a long time, but
a Disc Burner, which doesn't lock up the computer
while you wait for the burn, is handy indeed. And
burning audio CDs from within iTunes is a sheer joy.
(You know, the more I use iTunes the more I like it.)
This drive works perfectly with
iTunes and Disc Burner once you have the patched
driver and the extension sets right.
It does get a bit noisy due to its rotational speed,
but certainly nothing one cannot endure.
After you get this down you are ready
to Rip,
Mix and Burn until the cows come home (whatever
that means).
Some Benchmarks
So the question is, "How
does the Que! Fire 16x drive perform? Is it fast or
not?" That is, is it twice as fast as the Que!
8x model?
In order to determine this
we did some speed tests. Let me say something about
them though.
We wanted to do three tests:
burn data tests (just copying files), burn MP3 files
tests, and burn an audio disk tests. With the last
we wanted to test Toast against iTunes/Disc Burner
in terms of speed. However, there was a problem. We
made the play list and burned it in iTunes without
fault. The same play list in Toast (same MP3
files), resulted in an error, "OS Error 9380."
This was strange since the same MP3 files burned perfectly
in iTunes. I have seen people talking about this in
forums. Some say that one should run the "Test
Speed" command in Toast and this will find any
errors. Not so, for me anyway. Even running the Speed
Test, which gave good results without errors, Toast
still gave this error. Our Firmware is up to date,
too, and this didn't seem to be a problem. It seems
to be strictly a Toast problem. So we did some other
tests, though we were not able to test exactly against
iTunes and Toast. (We are currently building a play
list that will test burn in both so we can do the
more extensive tests.) But in doing separate burns
without actual timing iTunes did seem slower than
Toast.
The moral of this story
is that burning audio CDs from iTunes using Apple's
Disc Burner is much more stable and reliable than
burning them in Toast, but a bit slower (just initial
impressions).
The tests were performed
on a G4 ("Sawtooth") AGP with the Que! Fire
drive plugged into the native 1394 port of the G4.
We are running OS 9.1 with 384 MB of memory. We have
the latest versions of all software, including Apple's
Firewire Drivers 4.7 (though the drive worked with
4.5 as well).
The first test we did was
simply to take a folder and fill it up with files,
all kinds of files, and burn it. The folder's size
was 685MB. At 8x the burn should take approximately
10:00 minutes, and at 16x it should take approximately
5:00 minutes. We used Toast in the tests. We started
the timing when we clicked "Burn CD ..."
and stopped the timing when Toast said it was done.
We did NOT measure the verifying time. We did several
of these burns and the numbers came out approximately
the same each time. The numbers we give below are
from a typical burn. We let the numbers speak for
themselves:
As you can see, the 16x
drive we have is approximately twice as fast as the
8x drive. This, folks, is one very fast drive compared
to its former incarnation. And in fact it does burn
at roughly 16x when doing simple data burns.
But when it comes to burning
an audio disk the story is different. We consistently
got results in which the 16x was NOT twice as fast
as the 8x, and neither did it burn at 16x. We took
a 44 minute play list and burned an audio CD in Toast.
Theoretically this should burn at 3:15 on a 16x drive
and 6:30 on an 8x drive. Here are the numbers:
There is more encoding
going on when one burns an audio CD and this explains
the slow down. Toast decompresses the MP3's as it
burns them. If you want it to burn at top speed, convert
the MP3's to AIFF format, then burn those. But it
is a fact of life that burning audio CDs is slower
due to software. Be that as it may, the 16x drive
performed slower in this test than we expected. Some
16x drives slow to 12x in this test and the QPS Que!
Fire was slower than this.
The moral to this story?
If you are backing up and archiving then the 16x drive
is a joy to use; if you want to use it just for burning
audio CDs the speed gains are less. Is it worth it?
Well, a two minute increase can add up if you do a
lot of it. Any speed increase is a good speed increase
in our opinion. But it depends on your priorities
and goals in using such a drive (and your savings
account!).
If you want some further
benchmarks, see the ones done at www.barefeats.com.
Rob-Art Morgan does a fine job over there.
Closing Remarks
This drive is stable and
reliable once you figure out how to set up your system.
It took us a few days to get everything working right
mostly because we wanted to use iTunes/Disc Burner.
But once you do have things set up right the only
problems we have encountered (burning roughly 20-30
CDs in our testing), is with corrupt MP3 files and
Toast's oddities. I have decided to use only iTunes
for audio CDs, and since then we have not had one
"coaster." I use Toast for data burns however
because it is quicker.
Files are getting larger
and tasks more demanding because we have hardware
that can handle them. Apple is helping with iTunes,
iDVD and iMovie. Desktop CD-RWs are going to be more
needful over the next year. If you want one that can
do the job quickly, this drive is for you. Its looks,
performance, the little extras you get like the shoulder
bag, and Toast (which despite its oddities is still
fine), this drive is a fine investment. At $399 (with
a $30 rebate) it is not cheap. But it is a matter
of priorities and budgets. If you need and can afford
it, then get it.
A Note on Media
I will never use a floppy
again, and that was decided long ago. And with CD-RW
media dirt cheap the Zip drive is forming cobwebs
(well, that was an exaggeration, but not much). As
for media, I swear by Imation
CDs 700MB/80MIN. They have a fifty-count 16x compatible
CD-RW spindle and packages of ten in jewel cases.
Fifty disks on a spindle go for about $25 bucks, and
the ten-count 16x with jewel cases go for around $7.
All in all, it costs about fifty cents a piece (extra
with a case) for a CD. In the same way that you should
never, ever skimp on memory and Firewire cables (you
DO get what you pay for), never, ever skimp on CD
media. If you do, then invite the town over, for you'll
have coasters for all! With media this cheap and drives
this fast, there is no longer any reason to wait —
start burning now.
Appendix: How to Burn
a Data CD in the Finder Using Apple's Disc Burner
Quick
Tutorial: Burning Data CDs with Apple's Disc Burner
The steps to take burning
a data CD-RW in 9.1 with Disc Burner are very
easy.
Insert a CD-R.
A dialog will appear
asking if you want to prepare (initialize)
the disk for burn.
It gives three choices:Standard,
iTunes and MP3.
Choose the right
format from the drop down menu. In this
case, "Standard."
Drag the files you
want to burn to the disk that shows up after
preparation/initialization.
The data (files and
folders) will be copied to the prepared
disk. [Note: it takes a while with a lot
of data — 5 minutes for 689MB for example.
This is the biggest downside of using Disc
Burner.]
When you have all
the files on the disk, select the disk on
the desktop.
Go to the "Special"
Menu within the Finder, and select "Burn
CD ..."
You will get a dialogue
box confirming your choice.
The disk will be
burned by Disc Burner. After that it will
show up on your Desktop, with a Firewire
label and all.
Now be at peace knowing
that your data has been backed up and will live
longer than you ever will.
We
plugged in the drive. It wasn't recognized by either
Toast or Disc Burner. Weird. But a little research got
things going. 
