X-bit labs

Plextor PX-760A Dual-Layer DVD Burner Review (page 7)

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

[ 12/20/2006 | 12:35 PM ]

Nero CD-DVD Speed: Advanced DAE Quality Test

The Advanced DAE Quality Test helps determine hardware characteristics of an optical drive pertaining to the process of getting accurate copies of CD-DA media. Two CD-R discs prepared in Nero CD-DVD Speed are used in this test. One audio disc is normal; the other has defects of the surface, imitating your trying to make a copy from a long-used, bad-quality audio compact-disc.

The drive is blameless in this test. It has a 100% quality score, can read all types of auxiliary information, and has a moderate offset at reading (this parameter indicates how accurately the drive can position on a given spot of an audio disc).

The second screenshot shows the drive processing the bad-quality disc. It had some problems here and didn’t complete the test. But even before the moment it hung up, the drive’s read speed had declined greatly and there were a lot of errors.

Nero CD-DVD Speed: Advanced DAE Error Correction Test

The ability of an optical drive to process C2 errors and to process them efficiently is most important when it works with low-quality media. I ran the Advanced DAE Error Correction test with the bad Audio CD prepared in Nero CD-DVD Speed to check the drive’s ability to process errors that occur during the audio ripping process. The problem is that even if an optical drive can process C2 errors, it may not do that satisfactorily. So, the program determines how many C2 errors should be found by the drive and how many errors the drive actually finds and then produces C2 Accuracy and Quality Score parameters which reflect the efficiency of the hardware error-correction logic in the given drive. Unlike the previous test, this one not only tells how many errors occur as the drive is reading an audio CD, but also evaluates the drive’s ability to find such errors.

The drive doesn’t look too good in this test. Its error-finding ability isn’t perfect. Judging by the numbers, it only finds one out of each three C2 errors.