Reading performance

For these tests we will use Nero CD-Speed to read various CD and DVD’s, including audio discs and DVD-media. As already mentioned in the introduction, this drive supports:

• DVD-ROM 16x
• CD-ROM 48x

Pressed discs:

For this test we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing the Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD that is close to 75 minutes in length. Below you will see the produced result:

The Optiarc AD-7200A reached 45.38x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The Optiarc AD-7200A proved to be above average in terms of speed when reading our test CD-ROM. Access and seek times were a little high.

CD Recordable discs:

For this test we made a copy of the original Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD. The disc we used was a Ricoh 52X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Moser Baer India.

The Optiarc AD-7200A reached 45.71x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was about average in terms of speed with our CD-R test disc.

CD Re-writable discs:

Again, we made a copy of the original Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD; this time we used a Verbatim Ultra Speed (32X) CD-RW disc made by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.

The Optiarc AD-7200A reached 38.90x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was about average when reading CD-RW media.

100 minute CD-R:

The Optiarc could not recognise our test 100 minute CD. We would conclude that the Optiarc AD-7200A is not suitable for reading or writing 100 minute CD-R media.

Audio – Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Optiarc AD-7200A, again we used Nero CD-Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used is slightly larger than the disc used for the other tests, to be exact it’s nearly 79 minutes in length (78:53:31).

The Optiarc AD-7200A reached 40.03x when reading our test audio disc. Let’s compare it with some drives below.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was about average when reading our test Audio CD.

Audio Extraction:

For this test we used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to test the drives Audio extraction performance. As we can see from the screenshot below, the drive supports accurate stream and C2 error info and does not support caching.

Below is the results produced by EAC:

Burst mode

Secure mode

The Optiarc AD-7200A performed extremely well in both burst and secure modes, making the Optiarc AD-7200A an excellent drive for Audio CD ripping.

Advanced audio – DAE quality test:

Before we move on to testing DVD read speeds, we will take a last audio test, and this time we used the “Advanced DAE Quality Test” feature in CD-Speed. For this test we used a CD-R media from RICOH (Thanks to RICOH Europe (BV) for sending us this media).

The extraction quality was excellent and performance was very good. However, the Optiarc AD-7200A does not support reading lead-in or lead-out.

DVD reading performance:

Again, we will use Nero CD-Speed to measure the reading performance, this time for various types of DVD discs. The drive should read pressed single layer DVD-discs at 16X.

Pressed DVD Video:

For our DVD reading performance tests we are going to start with a single and Double Layered DVD video discs. While only 1X speed is required to watch DVD movies, it’s useful to be able to read the discs at higher speeds if you’re going to extract (rip) the content of the disc to your hard drive.

DVD Video (single layer)

DVD Video (double layer OTP)

DVD Video (double layer PTP)

The Optiarc AD-7200A is not riplocked and read our single layer disc at 16x and our double layer test discs at 12x

The Optiarc AD-7200A was one of the slowest drives when reading pressed DVD-Video media.

DVD – DVD+R/RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD+R and a RICOH 8X DVD+RW with about 4.4GB of data. Below are the results:

DVD+R

DVD+RW

The Optiarc AD-7200A was well above average when reading DVD+R/RW media.

DVD – DVD-R/RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD-R disc and a Verbatim 6X DVD-RW disc filled with about 4.4GB of data. Our test results are found below:

DVD-R

DVD-RW

There are hardly any differences in the speed, compared to reading the DVD+R/RW discs.

Once again the Optiarc AD-7200A was well above average when reading DVD-R/RW media.

DVD±R DL discs:

DVD+R DL:

The Optiarc AD-7200A read our DVD+R DL test disc at 12x reading speed.

DVD-R DL:

The Optiarc AD-7200A read our DVD-R DL test disc at 12x reading speed.

DVD-RAM:

The Optiarc AD-7200A read our DVD-RAM disc at 12x using a P-CAV reading method.

Summary:

The Optiarc AD-7200A has very good reading performance and proved to be a reliable reader throughout our tests.

Now let’s head over to the next page where we will test CD-R/RW writing performance……