CDR Tests - Page 1

- Procedure

We tested all five drives with latest version of Nero/CloneCD. We used various media for our tests: Mitsubishi Chemicals 74/80min 24x/32x certified, Mitsui 74min 24x certified, Taiyo Yuden 74/80min 24/32x certified, Ricoh 80min 24x certified and Mitsubishi Chemicals/LiteOn HS-RW media. This time we had also 32x certified media from Taiyo Yuden and Mitsubishi Chemicals. Soon other manufacturers (Prodisc, Ritek, and Ricoh) are expected to ship 32x media.

We burned CDs at almost all recording speeds from 16x up to 32x using the SAME amount of data for all drives. The posted recording times are the best we had from our test results. Using other media can increase the final burning time.

- Comparison

Before starting the recording tests, let's see how the drives are compared in the writing/rotation speeds:

As we can see the Philips PCRW3210 starts writing at higher writing speed (20x CLV) than the competitor drives and also shifts up to 32x earlier than the other drives. That gives Philips PCRW3210 theoretical average writing speed up to 26.85X when using an 80min CD. The second faster recorder comes from CyberDrive with 26.41X. Despite the fact that both AOpen and CyberDrive seems to have the same shift points, the AOpen CRW3248 is the slower recorder at this test:

The Philips PCRW3210 starts writing at the highest -up to now- rotation speed (10.050rpm), which is gradually reduced towards 16mins. The drive makes a lot of noise during the writing process but that seems to be necessary. The AOpen/CyberDrive drives start rotating at 8.000rpm and don't exceed the 8500rpm anywhere during the writing process.

- 74min CD-R Tests

We created a "DataCD" job with data slightly more than 74mins (74:03:65). We burned the same job with all five tested drives:

The faster drive at the 16x writing speed comes from AOpen. The drive ends the task at 310 (JustSpeed disabled). The Philips PCRW3210 comes second with 311, CyberDrive third with 312secs, Mitsumi CR-480ATE forth with 314 and LiteOn LTR-32123S last with 315secs.

Mitsumi CR-480ATE doesn't support 20x writing speed option

The faster recorder at the 20x writing speed comes from CyberDrive with 257secs. The LiteOn LTR-32123S comes second with 260secs,Philips PCRW3210 comes third with 261secs and AOpen CRW3248 last with 266secs. The Philips PCRW3210A should be faster than the competitor drives but it isn't. A possible explanation is the high calibration time it needs at start, while other drives start immediately writing at 16x and later shift at 20x.

Philips PCRW3210 doesn't support 20x writing speed option

At the 24x writing speed, we have few surprises. The faster recorder comes from CyberDrive with the incredible time of 224secs. This is even faster than Yamaha's 3200E (225secs)! The LiteOn LTR-32123S comes second with 235secs, Mitsumi CR-480ATE third with 241secs and AOpen CRW3248 last with 249secs.

At the 28x writing speed, the CyberDrive is faster than AOpen's drive. The CW058D needs 209secs while CRW3248 227secs to end the task.

At last we hit the maximum recording speed of 32x. The CyberDrive CW058D is the faster recorder and its time difference from competition cannot be ignored. The best result we had was 203-206secs (3:23-3:26mins). Below are two Nero screenshots that proves it:

That result made us troubled since Philips PCRW3210 was supposed to be faster due to its 20x-32x (Z-CLV). This can be explained since:

a) The Philips PCRW3210 takes longer time during calibration of CD. The CyberDrive starts writing almost immediately, due to its 16x recording speed at the lead-in till 6mins...

b) The CyberDrive passes at the first three zones (16x->20x, 20x->24x, and 24 x -> 28 x) without any drop of speed. The Philips PCRW3210 does drop its recording speed low enough during the various shifts of recording speeds (20x->24x, 24x->32x). Newer firmware could improve the Philips drive recording performance.

c) The Philips PCRW3210 doesn't exactly write constantly at 20x/32x but is a bit slower.

Note that only CyberDrive CW058D was recognized as 32x capable, with Taiyo Yuden' 24x and 32x media.