So let's see if indeed writing speed plays a role in the quality of a disc.

Immediately discernable from the above tables, is that all but one of the best burns for each disc (bright yellow background) occurred at either 4X or 8X burning speeds, and 4 out of the 8 best burns occurred at the 8X speed. There was one case, with YUDEN000 T03 000 (00h) DVD media recorded with the HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GSA-H55L 1.00 drive, where the 16X and 18X writing speeds produced the lowest digital error counts. The speed at which the least number of POF counts occurred was at 8X, followed by 4X, 16X, 18X and finally 20X. So from this, we can say that 8X is probably the best burning speed.

The case of the 16X and 18X burns producing fewer errors than at the slower speeds, is quite interesting. This isn't surprising though, since the media we have chosen for this test is generally considered as high quality, and the majority of DVD burner manufacturers have optimized their drives for 16x ~18X writing strategies using these discs. And we have often seen in our drive reviews, some media brands producing very good burning quality at high speeds, so this cannot be considered as an isolated case.

All of the above conclusions are based on the DaTARIUS Analyser measurements. But what about the drives themselves, how well did each see the other's burns. The two tables below, show how the two drives used in this test, rated the discs burned by the other drive. The rating used is not based on any quantitative measurement, but on how good the CD DVD Speed graphs were in each case. Good indicates that the graph was clean and reached the maximum reading speed without any problems. Fair indicates a few speed drops but still without problems. Poor indicates that the disc was read, but it did not reach maximum speed or suffered severe speed drops. Failed is when the disc was not read, failing somewhere during the process.

The first and most striking thing is that all discs burnt by the Lite-On drive and read with the LG, were good. There wasn't a single disc that produced the slightest hint of a speed drop. In this case, it is impossible to come to some conclusion as to whether burning speed affects the writing quality.

In contrast, discs burned with the LG drive and read with the Lite-On resulted in a mixed bag with regard to quality. Unlike our conclusions from the DaTARIUS scans, 8X is not the best speed, that honour goes to 16X. In fact, the only conclusion we can come to here is that 20X is not a good choice.

With the limited number of media used and only two drives (apart from the DaTARIUS Analyser), it is difficult to come to an absolute conclusion on whether writing speed affects quality. What complicates things even more is that we cannot tell with any certainty whether the all "Good" burns with the Lite-On, as indicated by the table above, are due to the Lite-On being a good burner, or the LG being a good reader. This can only be resolved by doing more tests which will include more media and a larger number of drives.