detail information

Reading performance:

For these tests we will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD and DVD's, including audio discs and DVD-media. As already mentioned in the introduction this drive sports a specified read speed of 12X for DVD's and 40X for CD's.

Pressed discs:

For this test we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing PlexTools v1.08 that is exactly 74 minutes long. Below you will see the produced result:

The drive reached its rated speed of 40X with a good margin, below is a comparison table with other drives:

The drive was able to outperform all the other drives, random seek time is a bit high, but 1/3 and full seek times is outstanding!

CD-Recordable Discs:

For this test we made a copy of the original PlexTools v1.08 CD. The disc we used was a Verbatim 48X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemicals corporation.

Nothing changes here and the result is about identical to reading the pressed disc. The usual comparison table is found below.

Again superior reading speed along with excellent seek times, very well.

CD-ReWritable discs:

Again we made a copy of the original PlexTools v1.08 disc, this time we used a Verbatim High Speed (10X) CD-RW disc made by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.

The drive reads CD-RW discs at 40x as well (this is another improvement in the B364 firmware as it reads at 26x max with earlier firmwares).

It nearly laughs at the other drives as most drives is locked at 32x or lower reading speed for CD-RW discs. Only the Plextor PX-708A is able to get somewhere near this drive at reading CD-RW discs. And the seek times is still very good.

Audio - Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the digital audio extraction performance of the NU DDW-082, we again used Nero CD/DVD-Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used is slightly larger than the disc used for the other tests, to be exact it's about 78 minutes long (77:56:57).

The drive had no problems with reading the audio disc at full speed and everything seems good, so let us compare the result with other drives:

Again it has excellent reading speed and seek times and outperforms all the other drives.

Below is the results produced by EAC:

Burst mode

Secure mode

The drive performed very well in the burst mode test, but only around average in the secure test.

Advanced audio - DAE quality test:

Before we move on to testing DVD read speeds we will take a last audio test, this time we used the 'Advanced DAE Quality Test" feature in CD-Speed.

The extracting quality should be very good, but we could see that it does not support reading data from lead-out.

DVD reading performance:

Again we will use Nero CD-Speed to measure the reading performance, this time for various types of DVD discs. The drive should read pressed single layer DVD-discs at 12X.

DVD - DVD-Video:

For our DVD reading performance tests we are going to start with single and dual layered DVD video discs. While only 1X speed is required to watch DVD movies, it's useful to be able to read the discs at higher speeds if you're going to extract (rip) the content of the disc to your hard drive.

As we can see, the reading speed for DVD-video discs is locked to 6x CAV for DVD-Video discs. Just for comparison here is some test results from single layer DVD-ROM discs:

The drive had a few problems reading the disc (Baldur's gate DVD-ROM), but the disc should be in good condition and most other drives have no problems reading it. But it did reach almost 12x at the end; with a full disc it would for sure reach more than 12x.

*Notice that the disc contains a bit less data than the disc used with the other drives, this is because the other larger discs we had is made with DVD-ROM booktype and this may affect the reading performance and thus we have switched over to this disc with DVD-Video booktype.

It lags behind many of the other drives due to the lower reading speed of only 6x CAV for DVD-Video discs.

DVD - DVD+R(W):

For this test we used a Taiyo Yuden 4X DVD+R and a Ricoh 4X DVD+RW with about 4,4Gb of data. Below are the results:

The reading speed was locked to 8x for both DVD+R and DVD+RW, look below for comparison results.

The drive did very good again and is only slightly slower than the Pioneer DVR-107D.

DVD - DVD-R/RW:

For this test we used a Taiyo Yuden 4X DVD-R disc and a Verbatim 2X DVD-RW disc filled with about 4,4Gb of data. Our test results are found below:

There are hardly any differences compared to reading the DVD+R/RW discs.

The drive is again right up there with the fastest drives.

Overall thoughts:

The drive has some outstanding CD-Reading performance for all types of discs. It does also have excellent seek times in most tests.

It's a good reader for all types of DVD discs as well, but some of you may find the read speed lock of 6x for DVD-Video a bit annoying.

But overall it gets a nice plus in our book for good reading performance and low seek times.

But now it's time to head on to a more interesting part: Writing CD-R discs…