CenDyne 48x12x48x won't record over 15x

[geekoid]

I just got a cendyne 48x12x48x drive and this thing won't record over 15x. I have it sitting on a system with the specs of:

ABit Motherboard
AMD Athlon 1.3Ghz
256MB DDR Ram
60Gig 7200RPM Western Digitial Drive
Windows 2000 (Service Pack 3)

This is a fairly new system (about 5 months old). For some reason, I just can't get it to record over 15x. I have two types of CD-R's. Both are 48x compatible. One brand name is "Memorex" and the other is "TDK". Both have the same problems. I'm turning the buffer underrun protection off when I'm recording, but that doesn't help... Even with it off it still records at 15x. I'm very sure I have the recording speed set to 48x in Nero. Hell, even when I'm using Linux and using cdrecord, and set "speed=48", it still only records at 15x in Linux too. It seems like this drive can't break that speed.

Are there any known issues with this drive? I've even tried upgrading the firmware from vs06 to vs08 but this didn't help any. Any suggestions? I've been scouring the net and the manual page to find answers and CenDynes tech support doesn't ever seem to be in the office, or they never get back to me.

Help?

Thanks,
Dean

[Ian]

how are you determining that its recording at only 15x?

[geekoid]

how are you determining that its recording at only 15x?

well, I've used 3 different software programs for recording.

Nero (which came with the drive)
Roxio Easy CD Creator 5
Cdrecord (Linux software)

With Roxio and Cdrecord, they both tell you what the current speed is. Roxio tends to display around 8x - 10x. Cdrecord displays 15x. Plus, both of these display the time it took to record the cd-r. Comparing this time with the time it took Nero tells me that Nero is even recording at the same speed. So, overall, I'm getting only 15x MAX speed.

[geekoid]

Ok, I've been dabbling with this for a while now... It seems that when I record an ISO image, the drive gradually gets up to the required speed. Somewhere I read that it's faster on the outer tracks when recording... Anyway, out of a 500MB ISO image, after about 300Megs, it had hit the speed I specified.

However, when recording audio tracks (.wav files) to disk, it sticks at around 14x. Is this because of the decoding from .wav to .cdda when burning, possibly?

Thanks,
Dean

[vspyr]

Is DMA enabled at all Drives?