Advanced DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) test

In this test, we will use the "Advanced DAE Quality Test" feature of Nero CD-DVD Speed.

The CD-R media is a 40x certified Memorex Music CD-R made by CMC:

Memorex 40x Music CD-R
(Thanks to Memorex USA for providing this media)

BenQ DW1800 shows only 32x as the maximum speed available with this media, and we create a 74-minute test disc at 32x:

DAE test disc creation

DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) test

The test shows that audio extraction quality is perfect, with a quality score of 100, and that the drive supports reading CD text, subchannel data and the lead-in. On-the-fly copying works at all speeds up to 16x.

The "Sheep Test"

In this test we will rate the drive with a certain number of sheep by using the sheep test program made by Alexander Noé.

Why sheep? That's because the official logo of the first 1-to-1 copy program called CloneCD is a sheep:

CloneCD logo

We are interested in the drive's ability to make exact copies of CDs by writing weak sectors. This feature is also known as "Correct EFM encoding of regular bit-patterns."

• 0 sheep: Can't backup any Safedisc 2 versions without software help.
• 1 Sheep: Can backup Safedisc 2 up to version 2.4x without software help.
• 2 Sheep: Can backup Safedisc 2, including version 2.5x.
• 3 Sheep: Can write all possible weak sectors, few if any writers can do this.

One of our forum moderators, Womble, has written a guide concerning the "Sheep Test" that can be found here.

CloneCD reports that BenQ DW1800 supports all features CloneCD tests for:

CloneCD report

Our sheep test indicates that BenQ DW1800 is a two-sheep burner capable of writing Safedisc CDs up to version 2.90:

Of the four files involved in the test, only sheep3.dat failed:

Safedisc version 3 is not supported

DVD reading and writing in an external enclosure

For the following test burns, we have placed BenQ DW1800 in an external FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a) enclosure built around the Prolific PL3507 chipset:

IEEE 1394 device information

First, we have performed a transfer rate test to see if the connection is fast enough for full-speed DVD reading. It was:

DVD-R reading

Next, we tried a 16x DVD-R burn. It completed in 5 minutes and 57 seconds, the same time that it would have taken in an internal setup. The drive's buffer level was stable all the way to the end of the burn, demonstrating the drive's ability to communicate at 22 MB/s necessary to achieve the full 16x speed:

16x DVD-R writing

Disc quality was good, and the transfer rate test proceeded at full speed:

Quality test

Transfer rate test

Last, we tried a 18x DVD-R burn. It completed in 5 minutes and 27 seconds, only one second longer than it would have taken in an internal setup. The drive's buffer level fell to levels that necessitated several burn interruptions after speeds exceeded 17.3x:

18x DVD-R writing

Disc quality was not nearly as good as at 16x, but no readability problems were apparent in the transfer rate test:

Quality test

Transfer rate test

Overburning

Overburning is the practice of recording data beyond the stated capacity of optical media.

Optical discs typically contain some additional groove length at the end which some drives take advantage of, thus providing the ability to store slightly more data than the normal, stated capacity of the disc would allow. The additional groove length with address information encoded by either frequency or phase modulation is available on CD-R and DVD+R media, but not on DVD-R media which uses stamped land pre-pits for addressing.

To test the overburning capabilities of BenQ DW1800, we used the overburning test in Nero CD-DVD Speed.

In the first test, we used an 80-minute Memorex CD-R. The test was successful, demonstrating that BenQ DW1800 can burn beyond the stated capacity of a CD-R, albeit in this case only by slightly less than two minutes:

CD-R overburning

In the second test, we used a Memorex DVD+R. The test was unsuccessful, with BenQ DW1800 stopping the burn at the stated capacity of the DVD+R:

DVD+R overburning

Overspeeding

Overspeeding is the practice of recording optical media at higher than certified speeds.

Today, when virtually all DVD media is 16x certified, this feature is still useful for those who have old media. In practice, it allows 2.4x certified media to be written at 6x or 8x, 4x certified media - at 8x or 12x, and 8x certified media at 12x or 16x. This saves time and makes old discs useful again because, let's face it, 15 or 25 minutes to complete a burn sounds unbearably slow these days.

As we saw in the Features chapter of this review, BenQ DW1800's overspeeding is enabled by the QSuite application. We have conducted a few overspeeding experiments and the results are described below.

Memorex 8x DVD-R at 16x

In the first experiment, we tried to write an 8x certified Memorex DVD-R at 16x, and discovered that it not only worked, but worked pretty well.

Once overspeeding was enabled, the drive offered the entire range of speeds, from the slowest 2x to the fastest 18x:

Disc information

We picked 16x, and the drive obeyed:

Disc creation test

Disc quality turned out to be good:

Quality test

ESA 8x DVD+R at 16x

In the second experiment, we tried to write an 8x certified ESA DVD+R at 16x, and it failed to complete the burn:

Disc creation test

Verbatim 4x DVD+R at 8x and 12x

For the third experiment, we selected 4x certified Verbatim DVD+R media and tried to find the maximum speed it can tolerate. Having learned from the failure of the second experiment, we decided to thread cautiously and begin with a modest 8x, which is only double this media's certified speed.

Again, the drive offered us every possible writing speed, from 2.4x to 18x:

Disc information

We picked 8x first:

Disc creation test

Disc quality was very respectable, with low PIE levels:

Quality test

Encouraged, we asked for 12x, and received it:

Disc creation test

This time, PIE levels increased but PIF levels went down, with excellent overall quality achieved again:

Quality test

It was then time for 16x. We tried, but BenQ DW1800 wasn't going for it.

In order for overspeeding to be enabled, QSuite requires SolidBurn to be enabled as well, and this time SolidBurn detected, after its initial tests, that there would be a quality problem with our selected speed, and lowered it a notch to 12x:

Disc creation test

With the speed matching the speed of our previous disc, quality was similar as well:

Quality test

Sony 8x DVD-R at 16x

In the fourth experiment, we tried to write an 8x certified Sony DVD-R at 16x:

Disc creation test

It worked very well:

Quality test

Sony 8x DVD+R at 16x and 18x

In the fifth, and final, experiment, we tried to write an 8x certified Sony DVD+R at 18x:

Disc creation test

It was not exactly a disaster, as the burn completed properly, but quality-wise it was not something we would be comfortable with.

WOPC did its thing, as we can see in shifts of PIE and even PIF levels corresponding to power adjustment points. However, in the end it did not quite succeed:

Quality test

We didn't want to end the chapter with a borderline coaster burn, so we took another identical disc and wrote it 16x:

Disc creation test

Unfortunately, we got another mediocre burn:

Quality test

Conclusion

BenQ DW1800 seems to do a decent job of overspeeding, considering that other drives that attempted to overspeed all media brands had similarly mixed degrees of success.

Some of our results were quite good. For example, 4x certified Verbatim DVD+R burned very well at 12x two times in a row. This means cutting its burn time from 15 minutes to just over 7 minutes, not a small achievement.

Not all discs that succeeded in overburning were top-tier media. CMC MAG. AE1 has shown a good ability to overspeed, while YUDEN000 T02 was not nearly as successful, despite having a much better reputation.

Several of our experiments were misses. If you engage in overburning, we recommend keeping track of the results, so that you don't end up repeating the same mistakes. And consider sharing your findings, successful or not, with the rest of CD Freaks in our BenQ discussion forum, and in particular, the Post your BenQ DW1800 scans and questions here thread.

DVD-RAM writing performance

Conclusion