Passing to the ABEX TCD-721R test discs, here things would be much harder to accomplish. Scanning the ABEX TCD-721R with the build-in CD-Check function of the Pioneer BD Drive Utility, gives us a first look of what condition the disc is.

The software lists the disc's quality as D (Bad condition - The disc might not be played back in some CD players), while lists :

• Quality B: Tracks 01, 02
• Quality D: 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Using the ABEX TCD-721R with Nero CD-DVD Speed gives us some first results.

Making a summary of the above tests, it shows that the non PureRead 4+ function seems to produce higher C2 Accuracy and "Quality" Score compared with the PureRead 4+ mode enabled.

After this test, we decided to perform real life tests, comparing the rips of the Abex TCD-714 vs Abex TCD-721R vs EAC Burst/Secure mode. All wav rips compared with the DeltaWare software that give us if the tracks are identical or not and how much chance there is to hear audible noise/hiss/skips, especially above -160dbFS score. So keep in mind the higher the RMS score is the better (less chance to hear problems).

When a test disc like the TCD-726 we saw that PureRead 4+ can work its magic and help you out, this doesn't seem to be the case with a heavily scrached disc like the TCD-721R.

The EAC software at burst mode seems to product good "results" with a single pass, what was rather strange for us, at least for now (No PureRead4+ enabled).

The EAC Secure (No PureRead4+ enabled) function takes ages to rip each track and it tries and re-tries until it read some data from the scratched disc and it seems to produce higher results with the cost of very slow ripping speed.

The EAC BURST + PERFECT mode, is a no go, since when it finds the first uncorrectable sector will skip it or return a reading error (C2), which makes the software skips this sector.

Enabling MASTER mode + Real Time Mode, sometimes we got better results from the BURST mode, other times we didn't. Again you have to remember that the MASTER mode also re-reads broken sectors and tries to "guess" what the data would be in order not to product an audible click/hiss/pause at the extracted file. Since some tracks have intentionally so many errors, you cannot get 100% "correct" data from the Abex TCD-721, compared with the "clean ", Abex TCD-714R CD-DA disc.

Note that the above results only apply for the R sound channel, while comparing also the L channel would introduce different results (limitation of the compare software). Note that the higher the RMS value is (towards 0) the higher the possibility you will hear an audible error/hiss/pause/etc.

Lastly, enabling the MASTER mode will eventually make the Pioneer BDR-S13U-X slow down its reading speed, as happens also with the EAC Secure mode.