X-bit labs

Sony DRX-800UL External DVD Burner Review (page 8)

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

[ 09/15/2005 | 01:20 PM ]

Advanced DAE Quality Test

Using the Advanced DAE Quality Test we will determine hardware characteristics of the drive affecting the accuracy and quality of audio copies from CD-DA media. Two special CD-R discs prepared by Nero CD-DVD Speed are used in this test. One audio disc is used as is, i.e. we emulate the situation when the user has a normally working disc. The other disc has physical surface defects, imitating the situation when you are trying to make a copy from a long-used, worn-out audio compact-disc, which cannot be regarded as a high-quality medium any more.

The first screenshot shows what we will get if our disc doesn’t have any severe physical damage of its working surface. As we can see, the results are more than satisfactory. High average speed of audio tracks extraction and 100% quality, these are the obtained results. The offset value is negligible, which should ensure high-precision positioning of the drive over the media surface. And finally, the drive could read all four types of auxiliary service data, which also indicates that we will get high quality audio copies burned by this drive.

The second screenshot show the results obtained for a scratched disc. The numbers indicate that the drive can cope very well even with a low-quality disc. The average audio extraction speed slowed down just a little bit, the number of identified data errors is minimal, and moreover, the total quality score remained 100%. The only weak spot in this case was the “on the fly” copying, which is quite natural in the given testing conditions.