detail information

The specifications of the Memorex DVD+/-RWN16 D2 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.

CD-R Writing perfomance:

First, let us examine the CD-R writing technology used by the Memorex DVD+/-RWN16 D2 by burning a data disc in CD-DVD Speed:

Here we can see that the Memorex DVD+/-RWN16 D2 has no trouble reaching its rated CD-R write speed of 48X. The drive uses a CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) technique to write CD-R at 48x, which produces an average speed of 36.26x. Let us compare this to a few other drives.

We can see that the ASUS DRW-1604P uses Z-CLV (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) to write CD-R at 32x. This gives an average write speed of 24.92x.

The Toshiba SD-R5372 uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write CD-R at 48X, this gives an average speed of 35.33x.

We also used the Memorex DVD+/-RWN16 D2 to write a Memorex 52x CD-R disc with 703Mb 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 Memorex DVD+/-RWN16 D2 took 2 minutes and 56 seconds to write the CD-R disc in Nero Burning ROM. Let us compare the Memorex's CD-R writing speeds with some other drives in the table below.

We can see here that the Memorex DVD+/-RWN16 D2 drive is able to hit 48x CD-R writing just like the competition.

CD-R Write Quality:

Here we will test with a variety of different CD-R discs to measure 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. Kprobe runs on Windows and functions with drives made by Lite-On. Please note that different drives as well as different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the discs. Here 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 drive's error correction capabilities. The next level of errors is C2. C2 errors can also be corrected by most drive's error correction capabilities, but 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 a 10.0 C1 average for good quality discs. After C2 errors there are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

We now present you with our results:

A good C1 average and pretty good results overall. We can definitely recommend Verbatim CD-R discs.

What do you know? Memorex CD-R works fine on a Memorex burner. No trouble here at all.  

It is disappointing to see that these high quality Taiyo Yuden discs are only supported at 32x. At least the burn quality is very good.  We hope that Memorex can get this fixed and properly supported at 48x.

Unfortunately these Digital Storage Technology discs could not be written at all. We tried multiple pieces and received the same error each time.

These 52x LEAD DATA discs can only be written at 16x maximum. These discs are lower quality CD-R, and we can accept the slower writing speed since the resulting quality is very good. We have seen other drives do much worse with these discs in quality and supported write speed.

Prodisc CD-Rs burn just fine on this drive as well.  No trouble here.

Superb results with Ritek CD-R media. Good speed and quality.

Writing data CD-RW discs:

The specifications of the Memorex DVD+/-RWN16 D2 state that the drive is able to write CD-RW discs at 24x maximum. Let us find out how the drive really performs in speed and quality. First, let us examine the CD-RW writing technology used;

The Memorex DVD+/-RWN16 D2 writes at 24x to Ultra Speed CD-RW discs using Z-CLV (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity). The drive uses 2 zones to achieve 24x CD-RW writing.

We also wrote a disc with 650Mb 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 Memorex drive took 3 minutes and 54 seconds to write 650 MB to the CD-RW disc. Again we present a comparison table.

*74 min CD-RW

We can see that the Memorex DVD+/-RWN16 D2 is an average CD-RW burner, but it can't compete with 32x CD-RW burners such as the Samsung TS-H552B.

CD-RW Write Quality:

These results are really not too bad at all for a 24x CD-RW burn. We have seen other drives produce MUCH worse results on this media. The quality here is ok!

Again the Memorex can produce better results than other drives using this CD-RW media. There are no C2 errors and the quality is ok.

The results on Memorex's own High Speed CD-RW media are also acceptable. No C2 errors are showing up, which is good.

CD-R/RW performance Summary:

The Memorex DVD+/-RWN16 D2 showed a good overall performance in regards to CD-R writing. All discs were written with good quality. The CD-R media compatibility area did contain a few negative items however. Our high quality 48x Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs could only be written at 32x maximum and the Digital Technology CD-R could not be written at all. CD-RW writing performed as expected and produced better quality discs than some other drives that we have seen.

But after all, it's a DVD-Writer, so head on to next page and read about DVD-Writing performance and DVD media compatibility…