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 supports:

• DVD-ROM : 16x
• CD-ROM : 40x 

Pressed discs:

For this test we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing the Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD that is close to 75 minutes in length. Below you will see the produced result:

The Pioneer DVR-110 reached 41.76x, and will reach faster speeds on a full disc. Let's compare the result in the table below:

The Pioneer DVR-110 performed around average reading a pressed CD-ROM. The seek times were good.

CD-Recordable Discs:

For this test we made a copy of the original Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD. The disc we used was a Ricoh 52X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Moser Baer India. 

As we can see from the above screenshot, the Pioneer DVR-110 reached 41.29x when reading CD-R. This gives an average read speed of 31.32x.

Now let us compare with the drives below.

The Pioneer DVR-110 performed around average on our CD-R read test.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

 CD-Rewritable discs:

Again, we made a copy of the original Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD; this time we used a Verbatim Ultra Speed (32X) CD-RW disc made by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.

As we can see above, the Pioneer DVR-110 is locked at 32x, reading CD-RW; now let us compare it to other drives below.

The Pioneer DVR-110 performed below average at reading CD-RW's.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

Audio - Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Pioneer DVR-110, again we 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 was nearly 79 minutes in length (78:53:31).

The Pioneer DVR-110 went beyond its maximum rated speed of 40x and actually reached 42.76x; let us compare the result with other drives:

The Pioneer DVR-110 performed around average with the Audio-CD.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

For this test we used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to test the drives Audio extraction performance. As we can see from the screenshot below the drive supports 'caching" which can have an adverse effect on Audio extraction performance. Also worth noting, the drive does not support 'C2 error info" with EAC. 

Below is the results produced by EAC:

 Burst mode

 Secure mode

The drive performed very well in burst mode, but rather slow in secure mode.

Advanced audio - DAE quality test:

Before we move on to testing DVD read speeds, we will take a last audio test, and this time we used the 'Advanced DAE Quality Test" feature in CD-Speed. For this test we used a CD-R media from RICOH (Thanks to RICOH Europe (BV) for sending us this media).

The extracting quality is excellent but the drive performed poorly with the 'copy on the fly" test. Also reading of lead-in and lead-out was not supported.

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 16X.

DVD - DVD-Video:

For our DVD reading performance tests we are going to start with a single and Double 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.

DVD-Video Single Layer

 
DVD-Video Double Layer

The Pioneer DVR-110 is not RIPLOCKED and reads a pressed DVD-Video at up to 16x for a Single Layer disc, and beyond 12x for a Double Layer disc.

Now let us test a pressed DVD-ROM disc. For this test we used the 'Plextor PX-716A" install DVD, which is around 4.37 Gigabyte in size.

As we can see from the above screenshot, the Pioneer DVR-110 reads a DVD-ROM at 16x.

The Pioneer DVR-110 performed very well with our SL DVD-Video test. It was one of the fastest drives at reading a pressed SL DVD-Video disc. With the Double Layer DVD-Video it proved to be the fastest drive.

DVD - DVD+R(W):

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD+R and a Verbatim 8X DVD+RW with about 4.4Gb of data. Below are the results:

DVD+R

 
DVD+RW

The Pioneer DVR-110 performed averagely on DVD+R and DVD+RW, returning respectable results. Now let us see how it will perform on DVD-R/RW.

DVD - DVD-R/RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD-R disc and a Verbatim 6X DVD-RW disc filled with about 4.4Gb of data. Our test results are found below:

DVD-R

 
DVD-RW

There are minor differences compared to reading the DVD+R/RW discs, but they are very marginal differences.

Once again the Pioneer DVR-110 was average at reading DVD-R/RW.

Overall thoughts:

The Pioneer DVR-110 is a respectable reader, it is by no means the fastest reader in the world, but during our read tests it did prove reliable. The digital audio extraction performance could be improved, as this is one area where the drive does not perform well.

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