When the first CD writers made the jump from 1x to 2x, consumers rejoiced with the increased speed. The same goes with the jump to 4x, then 8x and so on. To be honest, it began to get boring at 24x and faster. Sure, discs were burning faster, but the problem of errors seemed to get worse with the faster speed CD writers.

Things were revolutionized as the CDR format matured with the introduction of CDs that can be rewritten. CDRWs were painfully slow compared to the CDRs, but that was the price to pay for a rewritable format. As with the write once format getting faster, so did the CD rewrite.

Various forms of buffer under run protection schemes started to take shape as burning speeds increased. In a nutshell, a buffer under run is when the data flow stops going to the laser burning the disc. A series of zeros are written, and the next thing you know, you got a coaster for your favorite beverage. This can happen in a variety of ways, but the most common cause of under runs is a busy hard drive that the data is being read from. The protection schemes have the ability to stop a laser, and continuing again when data flow returns.

So you take fast CD write-once speeds, fast CD rewrite speeds, and mix in buffer-underrun protection, and you have a formula for a well-rounded CD burner. The boredom comes in when you shop, and find every burner on the market have all these features. Furthermore, if you already have a fast burner with all these features, does it make a whole lot of sense to step up another level? What else does a potential burner you're shopping for have to differentiate itself from the rest?

Today we'll be reviewing the MSI CR52-A2, which is a 52x burner, with 24x rewritable speed, and 52x CD reading speed. It also offers buffer under run protection, and a few other features that may make it worth noting when shopping for a new drive.

Specifications

Maximum Data Transfer Rate: Read (7800KB), Write (7800KB), Rewrite (3600KB)
o Microsoft WHQL Certified
o BURN-Proof Prevents Buffer Under Run
o EXACT-Rec Monitors Accuracy of Writing
o 2MB Buffer
o Compatible with MS-DOS, Windows 95/98/ME/XP/NT/2000
o BURN-Proof™ prevents Buffer Under Run
o EXACT-Rec (Enhanced eXtracting & Adapting Control Technology for Recording ) monitors accuracy of writing
o AWSS (Advanced Weighting Suspension System) Technology reduce vibration & noise
o ROPC technology boosts recording reliability
o Support discs capacity: 790MB(90min) / 700MB(80min) / 650MB(74min)
o Disc formats: CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-ROM/XA, CD-DA, CD-I, Bootable CS, Photo CD, Video CD, CD-Extra, Mixed Mode CD, CD-Text
o Writing Model: Disc At Once, Track At Once, Session At Once, Multisession, Packet Writing.
o Build-in headphone jack, CD-Audio volume control knob and play/skip button
o 2 MB internal buffer
o ISO 9660 compliant

The MSI CR52-A2 burner ships in a rather large box, containing the drive, screws, software and the manuals. Everything is neatly packed, and the cardboard packaging keeps the drive from bouncing around. One item curiously missing is an IDE cable. I'm not sure if this is a cost saving measure, but surely it doesn't add much to the price of the package.

The drive itself is a standard 5.25" CD ROM drive, with nothing major to separate itself from other drives. If you plan on listening to standard music CDs, there is a headphone jack and volume control… standard fare stuff.

On the right side of the drive, you'll find your track forward button (for skipping tracks on a music CD), and the eject button. You also have a pin hole to manually eject a disc if the eject button doesn't work, or if you forget to remove the disc before powering down the PC.

One cosmetic difference is the fact that the drive face is a soft white, rather than the generic beige we typically see. Other than the company logo, and the drive speed label, that is about all there is to note.

On the back, you have your IDE connection, your audio cable connection (cable is included), jumper settings and the power connection. Given the 52x rating of the drive, I would have liked to have seen a small fan on the rear as is typical with Plextor's top end drives.

As we already mentioned, the drive is a 52x24x52x. This translates into a write speed of 7800KB, a rewrite speed of 3600KB, and a read speed of 7800KB. In terms of speed, this is as fast as it gets for CD burners, though MSI is not the only manufacturer with a drive this fast (on paper).

Media support is typical of most drives, but one thing that did catch my attention was support for 90 minute CDs (790MB). Though I don't have any of these discs handy (they're hard to find around here up north), this feature is a nice thing to have if you're planning to warez… backup any DVDs to VCD since most movies these days don't seem to run more than an hour and a half.

There is a 2MB buffer, which is a bit small for performance drives, but the CR52-A2 does offer Burn-Proof buffer under run protection. Though it is still possible to create coasters, you're more likely to cause errors due to user error, rather than the drive itself.

Another feature to prevent making coasters is the EXACT-Rec technology, which stands for Enhanced eXtracting & Adapting Control Technology for Recording. What this does is monitor the accuracy of the writing. Basically, it'll keep an eye out for the data being written, and make sure that the 1s are 1s and the 0s are 0s.

AWSS, which stands for Advanced Weighting Suspension System, is supposed to keep vibrations and noise at a low level. When CD burners increased in speed, CAV kicked in to prevent drives from actually spinning at XX speeds throughout the disc. If they were allowed to spin at such high speeds, you'll most likely end up with discs that don't work (or they blew up), and the noise generated would be insane. Modern CD drives still do make a fair amount of noise, but the AWSS is supposed to suppress some of it.

You get some CD media. The CDR disc is obvious, but the CDRW is completely blank. Guess they ran out of ink to mark "CDRW". One excellent part of this package is that MSI chose to go with Nero Burning Software (v5.5.10.3), which in my opinion is the best there is.

Benchmarks

We used CD Speed (packaged with Nero) to test the read speeds of the MSI CR52-A2. Seeing how MSI claims a 52x read speed, we'll see if they can backup their claims. The test media will be a commercially pressed Quake 3: Arena CD, a CDRW filled with about 630MB of mixed data, and an audio CD.

Quake 3: Arena

Q3A does not fill up the whole CD, so we can see that the MSI CR52-A2 never really gets to its maximum performance. It tops out at about 45x, and averages 34x throughout the disc. You'll have to understand that given the nature of CAV technology, the maximum rated speed is only reached at the outer portion of the disc.

I grabbed a CDRW filled with mixed media. Everything from application files, to images, to zip files occupied 630MB worth of space. This would also be a small test on the drive's ability to read a data CD burned from another burner. This may not seem like much of a big deal, but I've had some compatibility issues with my AOpen DVD drive.

630MB CDRW

Since the CDRW occupied most of the disc, we can see the CR52-A2 inching closer to its maximum thoroughput. The drive tops out at about 50x, and averages about 39x through the disc. CPU usage was low as well, so the drive shouldn't drag your system to a halt when reading data CDs.

Next up, it was time to read an Eminem CD...

Much like the Q3A CD, since the audio CD isn't full, the drive speed is not optimized. In anycase, I'm sure nobody really cares about how fast a drive can read CDs, so let's get some burning tests out of the way.

Burning at 52x will present a couple of hurdles. For one thing, I know that quality 52x media isn't something that's easy to find. Another problem is although 52x may be ok for data backups, audio mastering should be done at lower speeds to maintain compatibility with standard CD drives. I wrote two CDs, both at 52x for this test. One CD was a 695MB mix of data files, ranging from Word docs, to executables. The second CD was 698MB of WAV files to be converted to an audio CD format. The media used was from a spindle of TDK media, rated at 48x, but works fine at 52x.

CD-R Tests

Both discs were burned at under 2:35, making data CDs very quick to backup. We then tested both CDs for compatibility, and as expected, I had some problems getting the audio CD to work in my car. The CD player recognized the CD as an audio CD, but there was no sound. The CD also didn't work on an AIWA CD player I have in the bedroom, but it did work on a Plextor on my other PC. That being said, there was noticable popping in the tracks, which were not present in the WAV files. I reburned the audio CD at 10x, and the CD worked perfectly, including on the CD players that rejected the disc.

The data CD worked on every CD drive on each PC I tested on (two Plextors, an AOpen, and two MSI drives), but one. The exception was the AOpen 16x DVD drive, which has always been a bit troublesome with CDR media. I reburned the same data at 48x, which is the rated speed of the CD-R, but was met with the same problem with the AOpen.

For the CDRW tests, I backed up the same data, minus about 50MB worth of files, as well as a 590MB MPG file to convert to VCD. Media was written to a Verbatum CDRW, rated for 24x.

CDRW Tests

The VCD took less time to burn since there was less data. Compared to the six minutes plus, this increase in CDRW speed is nice when making VCDs. In terms of compatibility, we had no issues with a Panasonic and Pioneer set top DVD player.

Compatibility

The drive was able to burn the TDK disc we tested with at 52x without any problems. I also had a spindle of Kodaks that went problem free, but I had major data loss with some generics I had lying around. The drive allowed 52x burning, but none of the CDs worked at all.

Burn-Proof Testing

Since Burn-Proof is a major component of the MSI CR52-A2, I thought it'd be a good idea to make sure it works as advertised. Using the same TDK media, we burned the same data used in our 700MB CD-R test at 52x. During the burn process, I proceeded to defrag the drive the data was being retrieved from.

As expected, burn times increased from 2:25 to a whopping 6:13. Since the drive was constantly stopping, given the hard drive activity, it is natural that the burn times are a bit longer. We tested the CD for readability, and as with the earlier compatibility test, just the AOpen DVD had issues.

Final Words

Given the lack of 52x competition here in the labs, it's hard to give a grade to the CR52-A2 based on its performance against the others here. In that case, let's look at the drive on its own merits.

Burning speeds are the fastest I've ever seen, and discs came out problem free, though I did have a few problems when I tried to burn at 52x on a disc that had no speed rating. Half the data worked, and the other half didn't. Media burned at their rated speeds worked just fine.

The buffer under run protection seemed to work perfectly, and out of 6 discs burned, none exhibited any problems. I wasn't exactly sure how to test the EXACT-Rec, but seeing how the discs came out fine, I guess it worked.

The AWSS is a bit of a marketing ploy in my opinion since it was in fact louder than a Plextor 40x I had kicking around. I know that there's a speed difference, but considering the marketing behind the AWSS, I expected a little better.

In a nutshell, it did everything the Plextor I usually use could do, except a little faster. What advantages does it have then? Well, there are two. For one thing, Plextor packages the craptacular Roxio EZCD Creator 5.0, which has got to be one of the worst CD burning packages in existence. Secondly, it's the price of the MSI CR52-A2. Selling at about 44$, this drive is cheap… a good 80$ less than what I paid for the Plextor when it came out. Those two advantages alone make this drive worth checking out.

Pros: Fast, ships with Nero, Burn-Proof and EXACT-Rec.

Cons: AWSS doesn't work so well, no IDE cable.

Bottom Line: Unless you already have a 40x burner, it's probably time to consider upgrading to a faster drive if you tend to do a lot of CD burning. Considering the overall package is quite impressive, at 44$ this drive is a steal. If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.

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