I've Been Thinking That It's Time To Retire A Couple Of My DVD Burners, To Make Room For Some Newer Models.

I Like All My Current Burners But At Least 2 Must Go.

So I Thought It Would Be Fun To Have My Current Burners Compete For There Survival.

Here Are Some Of The Rules That I'm Thinking Of.

1. The Winning Drives Is The Drives With The Least Amount Of PI Failures.
2. Most Media Will Be Burnt At 16x With The Exception Of Some At 12x.
3. Nero CD-DVD Speed 4.51.1 Will Be Used To Do The Create Disc Test.
4. The Quality Scanning Drive Will Be The Lite-On SHW-1635S Using KProbe 2.5.2.
5. All Media Burnt Will Be From The Same (Batch) Spindle.
6. Each Drive Burns 3 DVD's Of The Same MID And The Best One Is Submit.
7. All Drives Are To Burn The Same MID At The Same Speed Whether At 16x Or 12x.

Media That Will Be Used: (Unless One Of My Drives Doesn't Support 16x Or 12x Writing On That Media)
VERBATIM 16x DVD+R MCC 004
BenQ 16x DVD+R DAXON AZ3
SONY 16x DVD+R SONY D21
SONY 16x DVD-R SONY16D1
TDK 16x DVD-R TTH02
TDK 16x DVD+R CMC MAG M01

The 10 DVD Burners That Are In The Shootout Is Listed In My Signature Below.

(Please Comment Whether You Think I'm Totally Nuts Or My Rules Are Unfair Or You Can Think Of A Better Way Of Scoring ...Etc.)

Some random thoughts on the subject:

You are only scoring by the drives' DVD burn quality.
What about reading ability, DVD scanning ability, CD burn quality, CD scanning ability...?

Burn quality is not only a question of PIE/PIF - much more important is: Can the disc actually be read in other drives? Can it be read without slowdowns?
You could test readability by performing TRT in a number of drives.

The poor performance of my NEC 4551 when it comes to burning DVDs, that are actually readable in other drives without slowdowns, is the reason I hardly ever burn any DVDs in that drive anymore, regardless of PIE/PIF scans.

Thanks DrageMester

Some Very Good Points And Noted.

DVD Burn Quality Is The Number One Importants For Me In Keeping A Drive.
DVD Reading, Ripping & Quality Scanning Is Also Very Importants To Me.
I Already Know That My Lite-On SHW-1635S Is My Best Reader & Scanning Drive.
(It Would Be Sad To See That Drive Go)

I Do Not Use My BenQ EW162I, LG GSA-4163B, NEC 3520AW, NEC 3540A & Pioneer DVR-10XLA For Any Quality Scanning.

Regarding CD-R/CD-RW Burning & Scanning I'm Using 2 Lite-On LTR-52327S.

Regarding Slow Down, Ok Very Good Point, I Will Include Transfer Rate Tests Using 3 Different Drives Being The BenQ DW1650, NEC 3540A & Lite-On SHM-165P6S MV96.

Round One Results

Media Used In First Round: VERBATIM 16x DVD+R MCC 004

It's A Draw Between Lite-On SHM-165P6S & Lite-On SHW-1635S, Both With 51 PIF's.
Transfer Rate Tests All Had Nice Smooth Reading Curves On All Media Burnt.

If I Had To Pick A Winner From Round One I Would Pick The Lite-On SHM-165P6S.
It Have Less PI Error Total Than That Of The Lite-On SHW-1635S.

Here's The Ladder After Round One

Dragemester:

"Burn quality is not only a question of PIE/PIF - much more important is: Can the disc actually be read in other drives? Can it be read without slowdowns?"

So which drive would you recomend for this Dregemester?

A drive already in your possession - preferrably one that isn't too good a reader.

Your testing philosophy should match the drive used for the transfer tests (TRT):

If you use a drive that rarely gives perfect TRT, then your testing philosophy shouldn't be to fail any disc that doesn't give a flawless TRT, but perhaps only fail discs that cannot complete the TRT.

If you use a drive that usually gives perfect TRT, then your testing philosophy could be to fail discs that have major slowdowns as well as discs that cannot complete the TRT.

It's a question of finding a proper balance so that your test will result in a "failed" for discs that are actually problematic and results in "passed" for discs that are probably readable in most drives. Depending on the drive(s) available to you, you may not be able to achieve this balance.

Round Two Results

Media Used In 2nd Round: BenQ 16x DAXON AZ3

Lite-On SHM-165P6S Came Out On Top Again With Only 124 PIF Total.

My NEC 3540A 1.9W Did Not Like The BenQ 16x DAXON AZ3 Media At All.
(All 3 Burns Where Nasty At The End Of The Burns)

Please Note That The First 2 Rounds Were Media That My Lite-On's Love.
I Will Be Testing Lower Quality Media Soon, I'll Be Interested In How My Lite-On's Will Fair Then.

Here's The Round Two Score & The Total Progress Score So Far.

Good one Pulsee. This is fun to watch.

Thanks C0deKing

Round Three Results

Media Used In 3rd Round: SONY 16x DVD-R SONY16D1

Media Was Going To Be TDK 16x DVD+R CMC MAG M01.
But My Pioneer DVR-10XLA FW-1.41 Would Only Support Burn Speed 8x.

(Wow I've Burn 90 Discs So Far ) Lol...

I Spent My Evening Burning 30 SONY16D1's, 3 In Each Burner And Wow What A Mixed Bag.
My Lite-On SHM-165P6S & Lite-On SHW-1635S In The Pass Has Got Good Results From This Media.
But Not Tonight 3 Not So Great Burns In A Row.

I Was Quiet Impressed With My NEC Drives Tonight.

But The Winner Of Round 3 Goes To The Lite-On SHW-160P6S With Only 122 PIF's .

Here Is The Results Of Round 3 & The Progress Ladder So Far.

90 discs of meaningful data or just random Nero Create Disc data?

Depending on your answer to that question, you might need to put on a very long-sleeved shirt (one of those that ties behind your back), and go sit in a corner for a while.

So many variations possible, of course... if you judge by a single reader, you will have no choice but to favour burns which that reader is happy with.

The new tool for TA tests may be a bit more objective, as a crisp and well centred TA plot tells you how "clean" the burn is. Ideally, you want the testing drive to be "fussy" but accurate - and a burn that looks ok in PI/PIF can sometimes show a pretty miserable TRT (must always be compared with what would be expected for a good burn).

With multiple medias to test, I wouldn't bother doing more than 1 of each per drive, other than to crosscheck for unexpectedly bad results (or possibly in disbelief at unexpectedly good ones).

@DrageMester
Me Bad, Me Very Bad Yes 90 Disc's Of Random Nero Data Poop.

@Matth
I Will Now Burn Only 1 Disc Per Burner Unless I See Something Strange.

I've Got To Get Myself Out Of This Corner And Out Of This Straight Jacket. Lol.
Or Maybe I Should Be Sent To A Padded Room Because I've Just Order Online A Plextor PX-760A.

Round Four Results

Media Used In 4th Round: SONY 16x DVD+R SONY D21

It Was Going To Be HP 16x DVD-R CMC MAG. AM3.
But My LG GSA-4163B FW-A1.06 Would Only Support Burn Speed 4x.

This Time My Burners Only Did 1 Burn Each (Not The Best Of Three).

The Winning Drive In Round Four Is My Lite-On SHW-160P6S With Only 473 PIF's And Is The Winning Drive Out Right.

The Reason Why The Shootout Finished At Round Four Is Because I Have A Buyer For My Pioneer DVR-10XLA.
I Think The Person Who Brought It Liked The Drive's Pretty Front Bezel.

BenQ EW162I Will Be Given To A Studnet Who Has A Older Notebook That Only Has A CD-R/RW Burner Inside It.

NEC 3540A Will Be Given To A Co-worker For This Old Pentium 3 850E.

BenQ DW1640 Will Be Flashed Back To BSLB RPC1 SpeedPatched For Ripping And Scanning Only.

Will All Of The 100 DVD's Burnt I Would Have To Say Most If Not All Were All Very Good Burns.
With The Exception Of 2 Nasty BenQ 16x DVD+R DAXON AZ3 Burns From The NEC 3540A.

I Was Very Impressed With My Old NEC 3520AW.

It Would Of Been Interesting How The Results Would Of Turned Out If I'll Used A Non Lite-On Drive To Do The Quality Scanning.

Here Is The Results Of Round 4 & The Final Ladder.

Thanks Pulsee, that was fun. I'm just very surprised how poorly the 1640 performed in most tests since I like this drive very much. Just wish you would have used some TY media since I use TY and Verb pretty much exclusively these days.

@Ricoman

Yes I Would Have To Agree With You Regarding The BenQ DW1640.
Mined You The BenQ DW1640 Did Not Produce 1 Single Bad Burn In The Test.
Maybe The Way I Was Scoring Was Unfair By Only Taking In PIF's Reported By 1 Drive Only (Lite-On SHW-1635S).

I Didn't Take Into Account Jitter As Well.

The TRT Tests On The 2 Bad (PIF's) Burns The NEC 3540A Did On The BenQ 16x DVD+R DAXON AZ3.
Looked Fine On The BenQ DW1650, NEC 3540A & Lite-On SHM-165P6S MV96.

A Lot Of People Are Reporting That The Latest Series Of Firmwares From BenQ Are Not Agreeing With Some Of There BenQ Drives.
Hence The Reason For Me Flashing Back To BSLB And Fixing The Read Bug.
(The Drive Speeds Up And Down While Reading).

I'll Burn A 8x DVD-R TYG02 With The BenQ DW1640.
And Do A Quality Scan With The BenQ DW1640 & Lite-On SHW-1635S.

@Moderator(s)

Can A Moderator Kindly Fix Some Of My Annoying Typo's.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showpost.ph...4&postcount=12


http://club.cdfreaks.com/showpost.ph...3&postcount=13



Thankyou.

Fixed

Thanks Pulsee. Excellent job. Just goes to show how far LiteOn have come in the last few months.

I'll make this thread sticky after a few days or if it starts to slip down the main index page...

@Jan70 Thankyou.

@C0deKing Wow Thankyou
(I Was Thinking While I Was Doing This Thread I Asking To Me Flamed, The Way The Results Were Heading.)

@Ricoman

Ok I Went A Couple Of Steps Further And Burn An ISO Image.
Using The BenQ DW1640 FW-BSLB On A OEM TY 8x DVD-R TYG02.

And Performed A Quality Scan Using The Following Drives:

BenQ DW1640 FW-BSLB
BenQ DW1650 FW-BCHC
Lite-On SHM-165P6S FW-MV96
Lite-On SHW-160P6S FW-PV96
Lite-On SHW-1635S FW-YV6N

My Lite-On SHW-1635S Came Out On Top As The Lowest PIF Reporting Drive.

(Not The Best Burn, Most Of All PIF's Were Reported Just At The End Of The Burn.)

All discs in these tests were burnt @16X, right?

So the 1640's PIF results with +R discs are not surprising, as all 1640 hard-core users know very well, 16X +R burns produce these toothbrush-shaped PIF peaks near the end of the burn. These disappear @12X burning.
You don't mention the 1640 settings (SolidBurn/WOPC)....

NEC 3540: all recent NEC drives (3540, 3550, 4550/51, 4570..) produce high single PIF spikes at AOPC and speed change points (speed changes are probably irrelevant here as the burns were probably CAV). These spikes add to the total of PIFs though testing shows that these spikes have no impact on real-world performance of the discs burnt (but here maybe DrageMester will prove me wrong, I think he's done MUCH testing about this )

Last point: apart from the "winning" scans, we can only see PIF totals here, not maximum levels per ECC, nor the repartition of these errors. Retreiving significant information from PIE/PIF scans can't be achieved from mere raw numbers!

Add the 'natural' variation from disc consistency, no info on possible dusting before the burn (which can impact hugely PIF numbers)...

So while I think these tests clearly DO show that LiteOn burners have improved much (because these scans we can see ), no other significant conclusions can be drawn. I, for one, would have liked to see ALL the scans, have more info on how the discs were burnt, and draw my own conclusions...

Kudos for the effort anyway

[Off-topic]
Not that much testing because I got tired of wasting media.

I found that my NEC ND-4551A drive makes PIF spikes at calibration points, and some drives react negatively at these calibration points, but not necessarily because of the PIF spikes. I detected this first on my LiteOn 1635S drive (see this thread) but when I got my BenQ DW1655 drive it reacted even more negatively to many NEC 4551 burns, seeing unreadable sectors as well as producing really ugly TRT scans. One example can be found here.

My NEC ND-3500AG also makes PIF spikes at calibration points, but I have found no drive that reacts negatively to burns from the NEC 3500.

Perhaps my NEC 4551 is particularly bad, or perhaps it's a more general problem that most people don't detect because they don't run TRT tests in a BenQ 1650/1655 drive. Perhaps my BenQ 1655 and NEC 4551 drives just hate each others guts.

@SantaKlaus: If you want to discuss this further, perhaps you should create your own thread so that we don't hijack Pulsee's thread - it's dangerous to get caught in the middle of a shootout!