Reading performance

For these tests we will use Nero CD-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-215BK reached 41.01x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK was among the slower drives when reading our test CD-ROM media.

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.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK reached 40.44x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK was again among the slower drives in terms of speed with our CD-R test disc.

CD Re-writable 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.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK reached 32.40x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK was the slowest drive when reading CD-RW media.

100 minute CD-R:

The Pioneer DVR-215BK was unable to fully read our 100 minute test CD.

Audio – Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Pioneer DVR-215BK, again we used Nero CD-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 nearly 79 minutes in length (78:53:31).

The Pioneer DVR-215BK reached 39.41x when reading our test audio disc. Let’s compare it with some drives below.

The Pioneer DVR-215BK was the slowest drive when reading our test Audio CD.

Audio Extraction:

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 accurate stream, C2 error info and caching.

Below is the results produced by EAC:

Burst mode

Secure mode

The Pioneer DVR-215BK performed well in burst mode, but was very 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 extraction quality was excellent, however the Pioneer DVR-215BK was to slow for copy on the fly above 4x.

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.

Pressed 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 OTP)

DVD Video (double layer PTP)

The Pioneer DVR-215BK is not riplocked and read our single layer disc at 16x and our double layer test discs at 12x

The Pioneer DVR-215BK was the slowest drive when reading pressed  single layer DVD-Video media. It was however, one of the fastest drives at reading our DVD-Video double layer test disc.

DVD – DVD+R/RW:

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

Reviewers note:
The Pioneer DVR-215BK can only read DVD+R media at full speed (16x) when the media is supported at a writing speed of 16x or faster. Otherwise, the reading speed is restricted to 12x.

DVD+R

DVD+RW

The Pioneer DVR-215BK was well above average when reading our test DVD+R media and one of the fastest when reading our test DVD+RW media.

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:

Reviewers note:
The Pioneer DVR-215BK can only read DVD+R media at full speed (16x) when the media is supported at a writing speed of 16x or faster. Otherwise, the reading speed is restricted to 12x.

DVD-R

DVD-RW

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

Once again the Pioneer DVR-215BK was well above average when reading DVD-R media and equal fastest when reading our test DVD-RW media.

DVD±R DL discs:

DVD+R DL:

The Pioneer DVR-215BK read our DVD+R DL test disc at 12x reading speed.

DVD-R DL:

The Pioneer DVR-215BK read our DVD-R DL test disc at 12x reading speed.

DVD-RAM:

The Pioneer DVR-215BK read our DVD-RAM disc at 12x using a P-CAV reading method.

Summary:

The Pioneer DVR-215BK has generally very good DVD reading performance. However, CD reading performance was rather slow by today’s standards. The Pioneer DVR-215BK proved to be a reliable reader throughout our tests.

Now let’s head over to the next page where we will test CD-R/RW writing performance…

Features

CD-R/RW Writing performance