DAE Reading Tests

- DAE features

CyberDrive CW078D/ WAITEC STORM40	LG GCE-8400B/ TDK CyClone 401248B	Samsung SW-240B	Mitsumi CR-485C

- Pressed AudioCD results

The CyberDrive CW078D has the highest average reading speed of 34.6X and WAITEC STORM40 comes close with 34.3X. TDK CyClone 401248B comes third with 33.7X and Mitsumi CR-485C forth with 33.4X. The LG and Samsung drives get the last two places with 27.9X and 26.3X respectively.

- CDR AudioCD Results

With CDR media, results are different. WAITEC's STORM40 comes first with 34.6X , TDK CyClone 401248B second with 33.1X, CyberDrive CW078D third with 32.7X. Again Mitsumi CR-485C lowers its maximum reading speed to 40x and that affects the average DAE speed. The only drive that produced errors while reading was the CW078D. Although the amount of errors is low, errors were reported with all the media we used.. CyberDrive engineers should consider these results.

- EAC Secure Extract Ripping mode

After many requests from numerous visitors we have added the EAC's secure extract ripping mode results, which ensures maximum produced WAV quality. Below are the test results:

- Advanced DAE Quality

All drives expect from the CyberDrive CW078D got a perfect (100) score in the Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE test. The drive reported 13930 data errors with only 18.13X average reading speed and got a near perfect score of 99.6. Click to see the Advanced DAE Quality results for CyberDrive, LG, Mitsumi, Samsung, TDK and Waitec drives.

- Bad CDR Media results

Despite the fact that Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE test stretches drive's mechanism to the max, we decided to do real life tests with a scratched disc. The disc was dirty, and with some light scratches, enough in order cause problems to most of the tested drives. We used CD DAE software to rip the whole disc (756539616 sectors) and the results were very interesting:

As the test results show, only 3 drives managed to rip entirely the disc. The Samsung performed well with 0.02% errors of the total disc with 13.2X average reading speed. The CyberDrive comes second with 0.07% and TDK last with 15.56%.

- CD-Check Audio Test Disc

The only drive that passed the forth level of CD-Check test disc test comes from CyberDrive. The drive didn't produce any pops during the playback process.

- Ripping 90 and 99mins AudioCDs

- Reading/Ripping Protected AudioCDs

For the test procedure we used 2 protected AudioCDs, which we tested in both recognition and ripping (with CD DAE & EAC) processes:

* Pressed AudioCD with Sony Key2Audio (Celine Dion - New Day Has Come)
* Pressed AudioCD with Cactus Data Shield 200 (Natalie Imbruglia - White Lilies Island)

The CyberDrive and Mitsumi drives had no problem to recognize and rip the contents of Key2Audio and CDS200 protected discs. The WAITEC STORM40 has some issues with CDS200 protection, while both LG and TDK drives cannot either recognize or rip the disc contents of both Key2Audio/CDS200.