In the following tests we check the drive's behavior when it comes to reading scratched / defective discs. The test discs we use are the ABEX series from ALMEDIO.

Notice that the drive doesn't support C2 error information.

- ABEX TCD-721R

The DW1600A DL drive displayed quite good performance with this test disc. The total error count (1102682) is about average, but the maximum error loudness is very low at -32.6dB(A), as are the error loudness and muting sample counts, while there were no skipped samples. The final score of 76.3 is good.

- ABEX TCD-726

We observe great performance from the BenQ DW1600A DL with the Abex TCD-726 test disc. The total test result score of 92.9 points is very good.

The CD-Check Test Disc is a very useful tool for evaluating the Sound Reproduction / Error correction capabilities of a CD player. The disc offers a signal combination with disc error patterns to rate the drive's abilities to read music and reproduce it completely. Five tracks on the disc contain a sequence of progressively difficult tests. These tracks are referred as Check Level-1 through Check Level-5.

The files are reproduced (played) through a software multimedia player (i.e. Windows Media Player). Each level is considered as passed, if the tone coming out from the speakers is smooth, continuous without interruptions, skipping or looping. The higher the Check Level passed, the more reliable the sound reproduction of the tested device.

The DW1600A passed 5 out of 5 plays for the first four Check Levels of the test, while in the fifth level, it managed 2 out of 5. This is indicative of very good error correction capabilities. Very few drives ever manage to play up to the fifth level.

- Conclusion

Combining the test scores from the ABEX discs, we get and average score of 84.6.

Rather good performance from BenQ's drive with our test discs.