Hello all. I have tried to find the best 16x disk for burning, and have made some tests but i cannot read which is better for these scans.

So please help me out, should i be more concerned about PI Errors or PI Failures? I know i can get better results with different discs and lower speeds (RICOHJNPR01 is great for Nec 3500a), but i really wanted to find "good enough" quality for 16x burning. So please check the pictures and give me some comments which you think i should buy in large quantities?

I see a pattern here, but i don't know which is better...

all discs burned with 16x with Nec 3500a, and read with the same sosw-852s lite -on laptop drive

Edit: I Didn't quite know how to post the images with comments, it seems, so i'll just try to explain by words: The images where's more yellow in the PIF (lower) windows, are the MCC04 (Verbatim DVD+R) scans)... (first 4 I think)

The images with less yellow in PIF but higher values in turqoise (or bluish color) in the upper window (PIE), are the scans from the TTH02 (TDK DVD-R) discs. (seems to be last 4 images)

In the images you can also see the ID for TTH02, the ones which are missing the ID, are MCC04 scans.

Hope this helps you to make your decision, and thank you!. I would appreciate answers explaining me how to interpret these, or just some poll answers.

MCC04










TTH02

Scan @ 4x with the laptop drive.
If you only can choose between these two, I would vote for MCC 004 independently of the scans because TTH02 is not nearly as good as MCC 004 (at least that's what I experienced, and some others have too).
Alternative choices would be Taiyo Yuden or Maxell Made in Japan.

Thank you for you answer. Unfortunately the laptop drive has very limited capabilities to adjust the reading speed, and i think this scan is actually set to 4x, but there is no constant 4x speed available, as in desktop drives... I think 2x was constant speed but it gave me "too low" results, ie, almost no errors at all.

Same as kg mentions, regardless of the scans I'd still suggest MCC004. With updated firmware on your 3500, it should burn MCC004 with great results, although you might want to burn at 12x as it will improve the burns and is not much slower in burn times. I'd suggest using one of 'Liggy and Dee's latest modified firmwares for your drive, you can get more specifics on different versions in the NEC forum if you're interested, although any of the recent versions should do fine with MCC004 I would think.

^^ See above. Scoobie read my mind.

Thank for you answers, scoobiedoobie and Arachne. I indeed have been following the cdfreaks forums a long time, and was very pleased when L&D started their work among the firmwares. I have them to thank for the fast ripping SL firmware and also the bitsetting in some firmwares that had none.

These all burns are made with 2.1bbt L&D modified version, which has the most recent burn-data versions, as far as I know.

The thing is, that i'm just a bit concerned that the verbatim has the name to influence in this matter, do we really know that Mitsubishi is still manufacturing the discs really... Also, i wouldn't have guessed that TDK brand discs would be so unreliabe...

By this i mean that I have seen so many times that a Company makes a great product, it gets a good name, and then in some point they decide to multiply their profits by manufacturing crap with the good name... Well, i'm just an old fart who trusted brands like maxell or tdk, which are now complete crap, I would never buy a maxell dvd+/-r...

Any comments anout reading the images, am I completely wrong that PIE is not so critical as PIF is? that's the reason I was guessing that looking at the images, the TDK would have better burn..? Of course that says nothing about the longetivity of the disc itself, but they both look to have quite good manufacturing in the layers and coatings.

Maybe the "hype" about Verbatim is not hype at all, but real good experiences, but i'm just like that, want to have evidence of my own.. And of course the dificult thing is that the situation is completely different with different drive...