NEC ND-2500A DVD±RW recorder - Page 7

DAE Tests

- Pressed and CDR AudioCD results

The NEC ND-2500A uses 40x CAV reading strategy for CD-DA. Below is the resultant output from the CDSpeed transfer rate test with a pressed audio CD:

According to Nero CDSpeed, the average reading speed was only 25.72x, while the final reading speed reached was 33.97x. This indicates that the drive supports 32x read with AudioCDs. The seek times however were good.

We ripped the contents of the same audio disc to our hard disk, using the CD-DAE software.

The average ripping speed (burst mode) of 24.2x, was slow. The Pioneer drive was only slightly faster than the NEC, but these speeds are slower than what we would expect.

The same pressed audio disc was copied onto CD-R media and was read again with CDspeed.

- Advanced DAE Quality

In the Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE test, the NEC drive returned an average speed of 24.29x, which is an acceptable performance, and a quality score of 98.1. CDSpeed reports that the drive can read CD Text and Subchannel Data. Leadin and Leadout are not supported.

- Support of 90/99mins AudioCDs

The NEC drive recognized the 99min disc but failed to playback or rip the contents of the disc. On the other hand the 90min disc was not a problem for the drive where it managed to rip the contents.

- Reading/Ripping Protected AudioCDs

For the test procedure we used two audio discs with different audio protection schemes. We tested for both recognition and ripping to the hard disk. The software used was Exact Audio Copy.

* Pressed Audio disc protected by Nec Key2Audio (Celine Dion - New Day Has Come)

* Pressed Audio disc protected by Cactus Data Shield 200 (Natalie Imbruglia - White Lilies sIsland)

Both AudioCD protection schemes tried were not a problem for the drive. The NEC drive managed to recognize, playback and rip the contents of both discs.