detail information

The specifications of the Mad Dog 16X-DVD9 state that the drive is able to write CD-R discs at 48x. Let us find out how the drive really performs in speed and quality.

Writing Data CD-R discs:

First, let us examine the CD-R writing technology used by the MD-16XDVD9 by burning a data disc in CD-DVD Speed:

We can see that the MD-16XDVD9 uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write at its' rated CD-R speed of 48x. This gives an average speed of 36.38x. Let us compare this to two other technologies used by other DVD writers:

The NEC ND-2500A uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 32X. The drive wrote the last zone at 32X and this gives an average speed of 27.16x.

The Plextor PX-708A uses P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity) to reach it rated speed of 40X. This gives an average speed of 33.38x.

We also wrote a disc with 700Mb of data using Nero Burning ROM software. Writing method used is DAO (Disc At Once), and the disc is set up as a non-multisession disc with 'finalize disc" enabled.

The Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9 used 2 minutes and 58 seconds to write the disc at 48X. For comparison we have made the following table: 

The drive performed excellent in this test and is one of the fastest drives we have seen for CD-R writing!

CD-R Write Quality:

We will test a total of 8 different CD-R discs for speed and write quality. To really measure the write speed, we used the 'create data CD" function in Nero CD-DVD Speed. The discs were written at the maximum speed that the drive supports. For the quality test we used K-Probe 2, which is a tool developed by a Lite-On Employee. It runs under Windows and works with drives made by Lite-On. Also note that different drives and different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the discs. We used a Lite-On LTR-32123S drive with firmware XS0Z and scanned the discs at 40X speed (Actual speed is approximately 43X CAV on 80 minute CD-Rs).

A written CD-R disc will always have some C1 errors; C1 errors are easily corrected by the drives' error correction capabilities. The next level of errors is C2, while C2 errors could also be corrected by most drives' error correction capabilities; they are not wanted on a good quality disc. A good disc should not contain any C2 errors, and preferably have an average C1 error amount of below 2.0 for the best discs, or at least below 10.0 average for good quality discs. After C2 errors there are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

Why wait any longer? Below are the obtained results:

Perfect results! This is what we like to see from a C1/C2 scan on a CD-R. These Verbatim CD-Rs are highly recommended.

Another good result with the Moser Baer CD-R media.

This is acceptable and the C1 average is quite good. There is some small spiking here, but there are no C2 errors to worry about.

Good results here also. The single spike can be ignored and there should be no trouble using these discs.