Panasonic LF-D311 IDE DVD-RAM/R - Page 5

DAE Tests

- Test Method

We used CD DAE 99 v0.21 beta and EAC v0.9 prebeta 11 software in order to check the DAE performance of the drive with various AudioCDs (both pressed and CDR). The posted DAE results are the average of both applications, but the CPU usage was only taken from CD DAE 99, since EAC occupies the system a lot more. As a last note, we used the "BURST" reading mode of EAC. We made a full CD Rip starting from the first to the last track of the CD. The Average DAE reported speed along with the CPU Usage is displayed in the test graphs.

- DAE features

We used EAC v0.9 prebeta 11 to examine the drive's features. As the program reported, the drive doesn't "Caching" data, supports "Accurate Stream" and "C2" error info.

- Pressed AudioCD results - (Click to see the Nero CD Speed graph)

The Panasonic LF-D311 supports up to 24x, when ripping AudioCDs (both pressed/cdr). Its real performance was close to 19.3X, faster than Pioneer DVR-A03 but also slower than Ricoh MP5120A. No error occured during the ripping process:

- CDR AudioCD results - (Click to see the Nero CD Speed graph)

The Panasonic LF-D311 performed well with CDR Audio discs. The drive has 19.4X average reading speed, while the Ricoh MP5120A is faster with 23.7X:

- 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. Note that for each drive we used the build-in detection function:

- Advanced DAE Quality

The Panasonic LF-D311 gets a 100 score (best) in the Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE test. The drive's average reading speed was 19.27x and no errors were produced. As the following picture shows, the drive cannot read CD-Text but can read SubChannel Data:

- Bad CDR Media results

Despite the fact that CD Speed 99 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 99 software to rip the whole disc (756539616 sectors) and the results were very interesting:

With the Panasonic LF-D311, CD DAE crashed all the times, when trying to rip our bad CDR media...

- Ripping 90 and 99mins AudioCDs

The Panasonic LF-D311 cannot recognize 90 and 99 min CDs.