Ricoh MP9200A IDE DVD/CDR-W - Page 5

CDR Tests - Page 1

The Ricoh MP9200A is the second *retail* CDR-W drive that supports 20x Zone-CLV writing speed, after Ricoh's MP7200A. We used Nero CD Speed 0.83 build-in writing test in order to test the drive's writing performance:

As CD Speed 99 showed, the drive starts writing at 16x (CLV) and after 2-4minutes it jumps off to 20x (CLV) and continues to write at this speed until the end of the burn. The average writing speed is around 19.70x (very close to 20x), since the jump from 16x-->20x writing speed is done during a very short time interval (below the first 10minutes)... If you can remember, the MP7200A works in a different way and achieves a lower recording time. Actually the above speed is with "JustSpeed" off, since Nero CD Speed doesn't support that feature yet.

In the case of the MP9200, JustSpeed works totally different. when "Just Speed" is activated for the MP7200 model, the drive automatically adjusts the writing speed for having the best quality results and doesn't allow writing at maximum speed with non 20x/24x certified media. This did not happen with the MP9200 series. Even when you use low quality media, Nero always gives you the option to write at maximum speed (20x), but after a while it lowers the writing speed automatically:

What if we de-activate "Just-Speed"? The software will ignore the drive's suggestions and will give you full writing speed control (and the desired 20x writing speed), even with un-certified 20x/24x media. However, when the recording begins Nero will give you a warning message that "recording quality may be affected not using JustSpeed option" and it doesn't lower the recording speed. :

Last of all, let's see a picture of Nero with "JustSpeed" and "JustLink" turned "on". The task completes without any warning messages but notice that the time is around 13secs higher than the one with "JustSpeed" off:

- Procedure:

We tested the Ricoh MP7200A with Nero v5.5.2.4, CloneCD v3.0.2.3 and Padus DJ v3.00.780 software.

We used many different media from: Verbatim 16x, Mitsui 16x & 24x, Prodisc 16x, Ricoh 8x & 24x, TDK D-View 12x, Princo 16x, Maxell 16x, Taiyo Yuden 24x and Verbatim/TDK 74min HS-RW media.

- CD-R Tests:
We created "DataCD" job with data slight higher than 74mins (74:03:65). We burned the same job with all 4 CDR-W drives:

As you can see, the Ricoh MP9200A took the lowest recording time among the 4 tested drives. The time difference with MP7200 is 4 secs, which can be explained due to the different functioning of the "JustSpeed" technology. The Sanyo BP1500P needs 318secs and the Yamaha 2200E is the slowest of the 4 since it uses 16x CAV writing technology.

Let's see how the drives behave during 20x writing speed. The MP9200 is again faster than MP7200, with 3 secs time difference. The CPU Usage seems to be the same (15%). The Yamaha 2200E falls behind since it uses 20x CAV writing technology. Note that the posted numbers are the lower we got from our media tests. Complete tests can be found here...

- 80min CDs:
As with the previous test, we created a DataCD (80:01:47) and used the same media for all burns:

In this test, Ricoh MP9200A gave the exact same burning time with Sanyo BP1500P. The Ricoh MP7200A is one sec faster and Yamaha 2200E falls behind with 11secs time difference.

At 20x writing speed we have the same results like the ones in our last test. The MP9200 seems slightly faster than the MP7200 (2secs) and Yamaha 2200E needs 24 more seconds to complete the test.