- CD Format

For our CD transfer rate tests, we used the Nero CD-Speed utility and a set of Pressed CDs. Let's take a look at how the drive performed, comparing it to the other two drives.

Only the BenQ drive supports 48X CD reading speed, while the Pioneer and Sony are only 40X CD readers.

With USRW media, the maximum supported speed is 32X for the Pioneer and Sony drives. But once again, the BenQ drive supports a higher reading speed.

- AudioCD

In AudioCD extraction, the Pioneer and Sony only support 40X DAE speed while BenQ supports 48X. All drives produced a perfect DAE quality score.

- 90mins Audio disc

- 99mins Audio disc

The Pioneer DVR-111, cannot read 90 or 99 min audio discs.

- DVD Format

Now let's have a look at how the drive performs with DVD media. This time, a set of DVD media was used, both SL and DL.

16X reading speed on DVD Single Layer media was achieved by all the tested drives. Any speed differences between them is negligible.

The two layers of a PTP DVD-ROM disc are read sequentially with the drive starting reading from the inner part of the disc, which is the beginning of each layer, progressing towards its outer range.
This time, the Pioneer DVR-111 produced the highest reading speed.

The above graph shows the reading performance of the drive with OTP dual layer media. The first layer of an OTP dual layer DVD-ROM is read exactly the same way as the first layer of the PTP disc we tested previously. The difference here is the reading strategy of the second layer of the disc. The beginning of the second layer is located in the outer part of the disc, so the drive starts reading from the outer tracks towards the inner part of the disc.
Once again, the DVR-111 drive was faster.

The supported reading speeds for DVD±R/RW media are very important since these are the most common formats. The Pioneer and Sony drives only support 12X reading for DVD±R while the Pioneer is a low speed reader with DVD±RW media, at only 8X. The Sony and BenQ drives, support higher speeds for DVD±RW media.

Fast ripping speed was reported by the DVR-111 drive, while the BenQ also seems to be quite fast. The Sony however, had average speed performance in this test.

- DVD-RAM

The drive can read DVD-RAM at 5X CLV. For our test, we used a 5X DVD-RAM disc from Maxell, burned with the LG GSA-4120B. The disc was read without any problems.

-Appendix

Nero CD-DVD Speed Graphs

CD Pressed / US-RW / AudioCD

DVD Pressed SL / DVD Pressed PTP DL / DVD Pressed OTP DL / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD+R / DVD+RW / DVD-RAM