Yamaha CRW2200

Rellingen, March 19, 2001 - Yamaha Corporation, an established leader in digital audio, today unveiled the world's fastest series of CD-R/RW drives, the CRW2200, that promises greater recording stability, efficiency and ease of use.

The CRW2200, equipped with SafeBurn™ for enhanced buffer underrun protection, will make its debut at the opening of the high-technology tradeshow CeBIT 2001, being held in Hannover, Germany, from March 22 to March 28.

Yamaha is presenting five models in the CRW2200 series and the first, the CRW2200E (internal ATAPI), will become available worldwide from the second quarter of 2001.

20X writing, 10X rewriting, 40X reading and audio ripping

To develop the CRW2200 series of drives Yamaha built upon the success of the CRW2100 series launched last October, and significantly increased maximum recording speed to 20X while retaining many of the forerunner's excellent features. Among these is the incorporation of Partial CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) recording to ensure high-quality recording even at high speeds.

The result is a series of superbly engineered drives that can shorten the writing time by up to 14% compared with CRW2100 series.

"With our CRW2200 series we have not compromised quality for speed," says Masami Takeuchi, General Manager of Yamaha's IT Sales & Marketing Division. "By adopting Partial CAV we can promise a constant and controlled rotation speed during data writes to the inner tracks on the disc. This reduces vibration that corrupts quality," he explains.

In addition to employing conventional CLV at 2X, 4X, 8X, and 10X in rewriting mode, the CRW2200 also supports the 4X-10X CAV mode. This permits high-speed random writing/reading of data and realizes floppy disk-like ease of operation using packet writing.

CRW2200 series drives also feature a CD-ROM read speed of up to 40X with CAV, expediting the reading of digital audio discs at up to 40X and the extraction of a 74-minute audio CD in about three minutes.