Available speed and recording tests
VSO Inspector from VSO Software was used for gathering our information about the available recording speeds this Miflop 16x DVD-R media could be recorded at on our review recording devices. This media information utility allows us to easily see the rated speeds available for the Miflop 16x DVD-R media according to the hardware used during this review as well as tell us the full Media ID code for the media.
All the review drives saw the Miflop 16x DVD-R media has capable of recording at its rated speed of 16x which is we would expect for Taiyo Yuden media ( its 8x media has been 16x rated on many drives for a while now ). Once the maximum available recording speeds for each device had been discovered using VSO Inspector, CD Speed from Ahead software was used to record a test DVD of maximum capacity to see if the review recording devices achieved their maximum recording speed.
As mentioned on page one of this review, the hardware used for these tests consisted of the NEC 3500AG, NEC ND-3520, Pioneer 109XL, BenQ DW 1620A, Plextor PX-716A and the Liteon-IT 1693S, all of which are maximum recording speeds of 16x for DVD-R media.
The DVD's created here with CD Speed will be used later on during the Disc Quality, Transfer and Verification tests. Tests carried out included the recording of 5 pieces of media to each drive with the exception of the Plextor PX-716A which had 5 pieces tested with both the Power Rec feature enabled and disabled and the BenQ DW 1620A which had 5 pieces tested with the default strategy for the drive and 5 more with an edited strategy courtesy of Ala42s excellent MediaCodeSpeedEdit software (more about why this happened later in the review).
The NEC 3500 with firmware LD2.TC achieved the quickest recording to the Miflop 16x DVD-R media with both the Pioneer 109XL and NEC 3520 achieving consistently similar times. The BenQ DW 1620A and Liteon 1693S also recorded all pieces of tested media in consistent times. The Plextor PX-716A managed 6 minutes and 05 seconds with the Power Rec feature enabled as an average recording although some where faster and some where slower with its slowest recording time being 6 minutes and 24 seconds. The Plextor PX-716 would only consistently obtain a 16x recording speed to the Miflop 16x DVD-R media with its Power Rec feature disabled - Plextor owners will understand that the Power Rec feature really does make no 2 recordings the same and this sort of variation is normal with Plextor drives.
Overview of recording times
These are the recordings that come closest to being the average recording times for each writer and have been calculated by recording 5 pieces of media to each drive. The quickest and slowest times for each drive will not be used in this review.
| | Writer used: | Average recording time | | 3500 AG NEC (firmware: LDv2.TA) | 5:44 | | | DVR 109 XL Pioneer (firmware: 1.50) | 5:53 | | | ND 3520 NEC (firmware: LD1.UF) | 5:56 | | | PX-716A Plextor (firmware: 1.07) | 6:05 | | | DW 1620A BenQ (firmware: B7V9) | 6:06 | | | 1693S LiteOn (firmware: KS04) | 6:12 | |
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"Of course achieving the fastest recording speed does not always mean you achive the best quality recording as we will be quick to point out to our readers. There is no point in
having the fastest recording if the quality suffers! Hardware manufacturers do sometimes slow media down in firmwares or limit the max speed for each particular piece of media recorded to achieve the best quality possible and prevent a bad recording."
Please read on to see what our other tests discovered about the recorded media during our Disc Quality, Transfer and Playback
tests.
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