In the following tests we check the drive's behaviour when reading scratched / defective audio discs. The test discs used were the ABEX series from ALMEDIO.

- ABEX TCD-721R

Although there are some high levels present, the results indicate rather good CD error correction capability. The maximum error loudness level was -6.9dB, which is quite high. The total error count at 2,706,323 is also very high. However, there were no skipped samples. It should be reminded that the reading speed of this burner can reach up to 48x and we expected to see worse performance than this at such a high reading speed. The Total Test Result score of 74.8 is quite good.

- ABEX TCD-726

The ABEX TCD-726 test disc is always easier to read but we did not expect it to be that easy!. No skipped samples and no error muting samples indicate excellent performance. This makes the burner a very good reader for defective CD media, in terms of speed and readability.

- CD-Check Audio Test Disc

The CD-Check Test Disc is a very useful tool for evaluating the Sound Reproduction / Error correction capabilities of a CD player. The disc offers a signal combination with disc error patterns to rate the drive's abilities to read music and reproduce it completely. Five tracks on the disc contain a sequence of progressively more difficult tests. These tracks are referred to as Check Level-1 through Check Level-5.

The tracks are reproduced through a software multimedia player (i.e. Windows Media Player). Each level is considered as passed, if the tone is smooth, continuous without interruptions, skipping or looping. The higher the Check Level passed, the more reliable the sound reproduction of the tested drive.

After reading the ABEX series discs, we were expecting good performance with the CD-Check Audio disc and the DW1640 did not let us down. It is not common to see drives being able to read flawlessly the 4th track and especially the 5th track. Unfortunately, there was a small interruption near the end of the last track and this is why the BenQ drive did not get 5/5 mark for that track.

- Summary

The overall performance of the burner with defective and problem CD media indicates a very reliable and fast reader.