Writing Quality with CD-R discs:

Write Quality:

We will test CD-R discs from different CD-R manufacturers. 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. It runs under Windows and works with drives made by Lite-On. Also note that different drives and different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the discs. We used a Lite-On LTR-40125S drive with firmware ZS0R and scanned the discs at 48X speed.

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, while C2 errors could also be corrected by most drive’s error correction capabilities; 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 quality discs, or at least below 10.0 C1 average for good quality discs. After C2 errors, there are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

In short, our analysis will be based on these guideline to determine the quality of the burned disc:

CD-R/RW quality scan guideline

And below are the obtained results:

Taiyo Yuden CD-R burned with average C1 errors of 0.28 and no C2 errors; this media goes into the “Best” quality discs category.

The Sony DRX-S50U burned this media with C1 error average of 1.51 with no C2 errors; this media goes into the “Best” Category.

With C1 errors of 3.29 and no C2 errors, this media goes into the “Good” category.

The Sony DRX-S50U burned this media with C1 average error of 5.92 and no C2 errors; this media will go into the “Good” category.

With only 1.40 C1 errors on average and no C2 errors this media goes into the “Best” category.

Writing Quality with Re-Writable discs:

Even with zero C2 errors the high rate of C1 errors; 299.70 average places this media in the Poor category.

Summary:

CD-R writing quality is excellent for the most part; however the Sony DRX-S50U experienced a high rate of C1 errors on our CD-RW test media.

Reading performance

DVD+R/RW writing performance