by dodecahedron on Tue Nov 19, 2002 3:03 pm
the zone change in a Z-CLV drive is there. in old drives it was around 5 micrometers or more. in newer ones, less than 1 micrometer, hence called "zero gap". but it's not zero, it is there.
in my opinion, this is not very important. there are many Z-CLV drives out there, and i haven't heard of anyone complaining about problems from these gaps. there are plenty of "burning experts" here on these forum that burned A LOT on Z-CLV (data, audio, CD images, VCDs, game copies, whatevery you can imagine) and no complaint.
as to Z-CLV vs. CAV/P-CAV, well there was some discussion about this a few months ago, before P-CAV/CAV took over and everybody was buying these drives. this was still when the only drives using P-CAV were the yamahas, up to 24x (3200 model).
my opinion is that CAV is NOT better than Z-CLV. for various reasons. CAV/P-CAV have other issues.
the main theme at the time was that the P-CAV drives of yamaha created better quality burns, and P-CAV was better for burning quality. the main argument at the time was that it made it possible to keep the spin rotation speed down. well, what a lot of crap that argument turned out to be. the yamaha 3200 spun just as fast as any other Z-CLV drive at the time (if not faster), and the CAV drives of today spin FASTER than any of the Z-CLV drives of the time.
so the rotation speed argument went down the drain way back then - it was true for the yamaha 2200 but not for the 3200.
and since then, beginning with the LG 40x burner (if i'm not mistaken), CAV drives have taken over, and everybody's getting them because they're faster. the spin speed argument is void, and forgotten by CAV advocates who've used it back then. and nobody's concerned with burn quality anyway.
people still mention the gap with the Z-CLV. or for that matter any gap caused by buffer underrun protection. however that is nonesense IMO. ALL BURNED DISCS HAVE MANY ERRORS. but the error correction mechanism catches them and fixes them. we're not even thinking of them at all! same for zone-change/buffer-underrun gap errors.
i couldn't be bothered to restart that old argument from 6 months ago, but since the topic came up, i counld'nt but say my mind. but CAV has it's probelms too, like having to "continuously" change the writing strategy, since that depends on the LINEAR velocity which changes continously.
but like i said, i can't be bothered to get into that discussion again.
and besides, who cares? both Z-CLV and CAV/P-CAV drives burn good discs all the time for everyone, and any merits/shortcomings of either technology are quite insignificant in everyday practice.
that is why this whole discussion is just academic.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie
-- JRRT
M.C. Escher - Reptilien
