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 48x

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 Samsung SE-S184M reached 48.08x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The Samsung SE-S184M proved to be fast at reading our test CD-ROM. Access and seek times were also 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.

The Samsung SE-S184M reached 40.73x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The Samsung SE-S184M performed averagely 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 Samsung SE-S184M reached 41.15x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The Samsung SE-S184M proved to be the fastest drive when reading CD-RW media.

100 minute CD-R:

The Samsung SE-S184M reached 44.97x when reading our test 100 minute CD-R

Audio – Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Samsung SE-S184M, 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 nearly 79 minutes in length (78:53:31).

The Samsung SE-S184M reached 41.77x when reading our test audio disc. Let’s compare it with some drives below.

The Samsung SE-S184M performed about average when reading our audio test CD.

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 and C2 error info and doesn’t support caching.

Below is the results produced by EAC:

Burst mode.

Secure mode.

The Samsung SE-S184M performed well in burst mode but was slower 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 Samsung SE-S184M performed very well in our DAE test. The extraction quality was excellent.

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 OPT)

DVD Video (double layer PTP)

The Samsung SE-S184M is not riplocked and read our single layer disc at 16x and our double layer test discs at 8x

The Samsung SE-S184M performed well in our single layer test, but rather slowly in our double layer read tests.

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:

DVD+R

DVD+RW

The Samsung SE-S184M performed below average when reading our test DVD+R/RW test discs. Now let’s see how it will perform with 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 hardly any differences in the speed, compared to reading the DVD+R/RW discs.

Once again the Samsung SE-S184M performed below average when reading our DVD-R/RW test discs.

DVD±R DL discs:

DVD+R DL:

The Samsung SE-S184M read our DVD+R DL test disc at 8x reading speed.

DVD-R DL:

The Samsung SE-S184M read our DVD-R DL test disc at 8x reading speed.

DVD-RAM:

The Samsung SE-S184M read our DVD-RAM disc at 12x using a P-CAV reading method.

Summary:

The Samsung SE-S184M proved to be a reliable reader and had no problems reading all our test discs. The Samsung SE-S184M however was not the fastest reader we have reviewed.

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

Features

CD-R/RW Writing performance