TDK’s VeloCD adds a hefty 24x CD burner to your system, and even better, it’s BURN-Proof (see APC April, page 98, for an explanation of BURN-Proof technology). That’s a potent combination — pretty close to CD-burning nirvana at present.
Setup of the VeloCD is stan-dard for an internal CD drive, but an excellent installation sheet is also included for inexperienced users.
It won’t make you feel less queasy about opening up your system, but it guides you through the process in a reassuringly logical manner.
Three software packages are included with the VeloCD. For the burning component, TDK has gone with Ahead Software’s NERO, an excellent package that’s finally getting a foothold in the bundling market. The package is supported by TDK Mixmaster, an all-in-one audio playing and ripping tool that is copyrighted to Ahead software, but has more than a touch of Winamp about it. Mixmaster’s interface is initially a little confusing, but different skins can be used for it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support Winamp skins.
Nothing is more likely to raise the ire of an APC journalist than empty marketing hype. So, when we saw the claim “Burn entire CDs in less than four minutes”, we were suspicious. To test the drive’s capacity to deliver on its claim in less than ideal circumstances, an aging Pentium II, 333MHz machine with 128M of RAM was used for the last round of CD-RW testing (again, see APC April, page 98). The results were impressive, although the four minutes and nine seconds our test burn took were slightly over the advertised figure.
Audio burning is also quite speedy — an average of six minutes and 29 seconds per disc. Because the VeloCD is BURN-Proof, we were really able to tax its capabilities, so we performed a direct CD-to-CD copy whilst running other applications. The VeloCD passed with flying colours; it took 40 minutes to copy our disk with about 30 buffer losses. This would usually translate into 30 dud CDs, but instead we ended up with one perfect copy.
The package includes three blank CDs which match the capabilities of the drive: two 80-minute 24x CD-Rs and one lOx CD-RW disc. These discs are the only ones we’ve come across that are rated for 24x burning, but our tests with other discs produced acceptable results.
The VeloCD is an attractively priced unit that just about lives up to its advertising hype — a refreshing change.

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CD/DVD-ROMs