Review: Best burners for reading/burning audio CDs, Bonus: CD-R media test Options

[CiTay]

In their previous issue, the noted german c't magazine had an interesting article about different drives and their usefulness for ripping and burning of audio CDs. So good in fact that i want to post some of the results here. I encourage any german reader to buy c't magazine, it's by far the best around. I don't want to spoil anything with these excerpts. Please order the mag and read the full article. Germans can also order the article for 0.80 Euro here.

So anyway, they had several DVD and CD burners for the roundup. The read tests were done with EAC (in secure mode). For the write tests, they sent the media to Audiodev in Sweden for detailed CATS analysis.

Keep in mind that these results are for (audio) CDs only, not for DVD ripping/burning.

Scores, worst to best: -- / - / o / + / ++

BenQ DW-1640
- Burn quality: +
- Read speed: +
- Read quality: +
- Reading copy-protected CDs: o (no CDS100/CDS200B/DocData2/Key2AudioB)

LG GSA-H20L
- Burn quality: o
- Read speed: -
- Read quality: o
- Reading copy-protected CDs: + (no CDS100)

LiteOn SHM-165P6S
- Burn quality: -
- Read speed: --
- Read quality: ++
- Reading copy-protected CDs: + (no CDS100)

NEC ND-4551A
- Burn quality: +
- Read speed: ++
- Read quality: --
- Reading copy-protected CDs: o (no CDS100/DocData1/DocData2)

Pioneer DVR-111
- Burn quality: ++
- Read speed: o
- Read quality: o
- Reading copy-protected CDs: o (no CDS100/DocData2/Key2AudioB)

Plextor PX-760A
- Burn quality: +
- Read speed: + (note: with Plextools, was slow with EAC)
- Read quality: +
- Reading copy-protected CDs: ++

Samsung SH-W163C
- Burn quality: o
- Read speed: +
- Read quality: o
- Reading copy-protected CDs: o (no CDS100/DocData1/DocData2/Key2AudioB)

ASUS CRW-5232A3
- Burn quality: +
- Read speed: o
- Read quality: -
- Reading copy-protected CDs: o (no CDS100/DocData2/Key2AudioA/Key2AudioB)

Plextor Plexwriter Premium 2
- Burn quality: +
- Read speed: +
- Read quality: -
- Reading copy-protected CDs: ++

Plextor PX-230A
- Burn quality: +
- Read speed: +
- Read quality: ++
- Reading copy-protected CDs: ++

They also tested different CD-R media as to which can offer the best burn quality. They were burned with the NEC ND-4551A and the Plextor PX-760A, sent to Audiodev, and the results were averaged. They were also subjected to 100 hours of 80°C and 85% humidity to simulate aging, for 20 discs of each brand ("durability").

Plextor CD-R 48x (Taiyo Yuden / cyanine dye / silver)
Quality: +
Durability: ++
Compatibility: ++

Primeon Gold CD-R 48x (C.S.I. MAM-E / phthalocyanine dye / gold)
Quality: --
Durability: o
Compatibility: +

Sony CD-R 48x (Sony / phthalocyanine dye / silver)
Quality: +
Durability: +
Compatibility: +

TDK CD-R 52x (CMC / phthalocyanine dye / silver)
Quality: -
Durability: +
Compatibility: -

Verbatim CD-R DLP 52x (Mitsubishi / azo dye / silver)
Quality: +
Durability: --
Compatibility: ++

Verbatim CD-R Audio 16x (Mitsubishi / azo dye / silver)
Quality: --
Durability: --
Compatibility: --

And to top it off, excerpts of a test on how burn speed affects burn quality:

Plextor CD-R 48x (TY) burned with Plexwriter Premium 2:

4x speed - burn quality: +
4x speed AMQR - burn quality: ++
16x speed - burn quality: +
48x speed - burn quality: o

Some more results are here (older drives).

[spoon]

Plextor Plexwriter Premium 2
- Read quality: -

That is not a result Plextor will want to see, although the Plextor PX-230A comes top for reading alone.

Does it go into detail about the copy protections? (I suspect 95% are false 2nd sessions, where the other 5% might be intentional uncorrectable noise).

[CiTay]

Does it go into detail about the copy protections? (I suspect 95% are false 2nd sessions, where the other 5% might be intentional uncorrectable noise).

There was a previous article that elaborated on the most popular copy protections. Let me give you an example, the CP called Key2Audio.

CDs protected with this CP are multisession CDs, which in itself is already a violation of the Red Book standard.

- First session: Contains the audio tracks. Several violations of Red Book audio CD standard: The Pre-gap is 10 seconds long (standard: 2-3 seconds). In the main-channel of the first pause, there's ROM-data in Mode-1-format (specified in Yellow Book), in all frames from 00:00:00 (MM:SS:FF) till 00:02:00, but the Control-Nibble has the value 00, which would be 2-channel audio. The frames all contain the same ROM-data 0x00. EFM-coded and interpreted as audio data, the frames 00, 86 and 97 of each subcode frame contain non-null audio samples, and the frames from 01 to 85 contain null-samples (digital silence).

These audio samples can contain a 24-bit sequence which is inserted in illegal places, to prevent the detection of the beginning of each frame by a PC drive. They can also contain certain bit patterns which prevent a clock retrieval from the data stream. This doesn't affect a stand-alone CD player, since it normally skips the pre-gap.

- In the gap before the first track, the subcode-Q data 'Amin', 'Asec' and 'Aframe' (also called 'Atime') is faulty. Atime is sometimes a constant 00:00:00, while it should increase continuously. This can mean that the drive can't find the first track.

- The copy bit of the Serial Copy Management System (SCMS) alternates every 6 frames, signaling that no digital copies are allowed.

- Second session: Mode 2 data session, all data bytes '0x00'. The subcode-Q-data is in the invalid mode 6, and doesn't repeat three times, as stated in the spec. This can lead to an abortion of the read process.

- Third session: Mode 2 data session, all data bytes '0x00'. The Program Area (PMA) is truncated, and the lead-out is missing. The TOC has entries of tracks which are already referenced in the TOC of the 1st and 2nd session. These tracks are now assigned different start times on the CD. Those start times are completely wrong and all point to the single data track of the third session. According to the multisession-CD standard, each start time must be different, there can't be several tracks with the same start time. If a CD drive tries to read an audio track, it receives the wrong start time and jumps to the data track of this third session. The TOC contains a recursive pointer which can lead to an infinite loop.



The other CPs work with similar tricks. They are all multisession-CDs. Some of their tricks are:

- invalid Lead-Ins
- invalid subcode data
- missing frames during pre-gap
- wrong start times of the tracks
- symbol errors in the audio data of the lead-out
- wrong P-Bits
- wrong TOC (Table of Contents)
- uncorrectable C2-errors
- shifted Sync-positions
- faulty ZERO-field
- missing post-gap
- Lead-out containing a mix of data and audio
- Lead-out containing only audio
- Index switching from 00 to 01
- symbol errors in the main channel of the lead-out

This post has been edited by CiTay: Jun 12 2006, 12:49