CD Error Correction Tests

In the following tests we check the drives behavior when reading scratched / defective audio discs. The test discs used were the ABEX series from ALMEDIO.

- ABEX TCD-721R

The performance with this test disc is acceptable for all drives. However, the Samsung TS-H352 had a lower total error count with only a few spikes being over the -36dB limit.

- ABEX TCD-726

The Asus and Samsung drives managed to pass this test with an absolute score of 100.00. The LiteOn reported some errors and its score was lower at 93.3 but still quite acceptable.

- 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.

Once again the Asus and Samsung drives showed similar performance. They managed to playback cleanly the first four tracks, revealing good error correction. The LiteOn on the other hand went one better with a performance that a few drives have achieved in the past. All tracks were played flawlessly by the LiteOn drive.

- Summary

Generally, we could say that the performance is good for all the drives. We would simply highlight the LiteOn's performance with the CD-Check Audio Test Disc.