Error Correction Tests

Many are the times in our daily computerized life we face scratched and defected CDs. There are drives with stronger error correction able to correct read errors coming even from big scratches and other trammels on the CD surface. One way to test a drive's reading effectiveness is the Almedio's ABEX testing system.

- ABEX TCD-721R

Unfortunately the drive's performance in this test was disappointing. The amount of errors during the reading process was high and the error loudness maximum level was -5.4dB, which is very high. The drive also skipped 52 samples after being unable to read some heavily defected areas.

- ABEX TCD-726

The Abex TCD-726 test disc is generally easier to be read. So don't let the above flawless graph to fool you. But to be realistic the drive's behavior with the light scratches of the ABEX TCD-726 test CD was perfect. The problem occurs with scratches exceeding 1.500mm, as the ABEX TCD-721R test shows.

- CD-Check Audio Test Disc

Knowing how irritating it is to experience lapses when listening to music, the CDRinfo research team has decided to use a test to check the Audio quality and correspondence. CD-Check Test Disc is the 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 more difficult tests. These tracks are referred to as Check Level-1 through Check Level-5.

The tracks 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 drive is.

The drive successfully passed all the first 4 check levels, but it didn't manage to play the 5th track without lapses. The 5th track is very difficult to be read because it has a scratch of 1.500 mm size. Most drives fail to play the last track flawlessly, so we can say that the drive's correcting capability is normal.

- Summary

Summarizing we can say that the drive could be better at correcting badly scratched discs, while other defects can be corrected adequately.The average outcome for the drive is 74.5 points.