Synchronous Duplication
In synchronous duplication, Publisher, the system’s controller, uses all of the optical drives to burn the same disc image. In this mode, burning starts after all optical drives are loaded with blank media. Media is unloaded from the optical drives after the last drive finishes its burn. All the drives are in “synch,” causing for lots of “wasted time” waiting for the others to finish. If speed is one of the main goals, the asynchronous mode of duplication is a much better option.
Asynchronous Duplication
In asynchronous duplication, Publisher uses each optical drive to burn independently, so each optical drive can be burning a different disc image. As an optical drive is loaded with blank media, it starts burning immediately without waiting for other drives to have media loaded. You can just imagine the amount of time saved by eliminating the wait for the robotics to load the media. A job request can start while previous jobs are in progress. There are two user-selectable ways that media can be unloaded to the output stack:
Interleaved output: In this mode, an optical drive does not wait for other drives to finish burning before unloading its media. An optical drive unloads its media as soon as burning is complete which may mix discs from different jobs in the output stack. This is the fastest and most efficient option; however, you pay for it with a bunch of mixed or unorganized discs in the output stack, which in itself takes some time to organize.
Non-interleaved output: In this mode, the system does not mix discs from different jobs in the output stack. To achieve a non-interleaved output a drive may have to wait for other drives to unload media first, causing the operation to be a little slower but in the end you will have a very well organized output stack, every job separated from the others.
A printer is required for Asynchronous Duplication. If Publisher does not have a printer available, it defaults to non-interleaved output. If a job does not have a print image specified, Publisher automatically uses non-interleaved output for the specific job. In both cases mixing of discs from different jobs in the output stack is prevented.
About Printing
For printing on a disc the print image needs to spool/transfer the print image to the printer’s memory. Once the print image is stored in the printer's memory, no spooling is necessary until a new print image is requested for printing.
High quality printers require a long time to spool/transfer the print image for the first time to the printer's memory like the TEAC P-55. This is because the high quality print image is extremely complex in relation to more simple print images from other printers. For this reason, it is recommended that you use "non-interleaved mode" when using printers that require a long time for spooling images. This way you do not have to wait a long time whenever Publisher switches to a different high quality print image.
NOTE: Interleaved and non-interleaved output modes are selectable options under the Publisher “Setup” menu.