CD CAPABILITIES

Pioneer has beefed up the CD writing of their new DVD writer to 16 speed - the A04 could only write to CD-Rs at 8x speed, so it is a welcomed upgrade. This upgrade is more significant than you may realise, as it means that you can replace any CD writer you may have in your system with this DVD writer.

We examined the speed at which the Pioneer A05 could write to CDs using various media. The CD media we tried was identified by CDIdentifier and is the same as what we used in the Pioneer DVR-A04:

• Moser Baer India Ltd
• Multi Media Masters Machinery SA
• TDK Corp.
• Ritek Co.

CD-R Media Writing Test

We first examined the writing options that were available to us:

As you can see, it can now write CD-Rs at: 16x, 12x 8x and 4X speed which is much better than the A04's 8x & 4x (BTW the new Sony DRU-500A drive promises greater CD-R speeds).

The first of our CD-R test involved writing a full 80-min CD at the drive's maximum 16 x speed, the result:

Above we can see (using Nero) it took 5 mins and 45 seconds (this is excluding the verification times).

One problem we encountered was when a blank CD-R was inserted into the drive it would pause the machine for around 25 seconds before continuing as normal.

CD-RW Media Writing Test

We next tested the drive's ability to erase CD-Rewriteable media in both, full erase and quick erase mode.

Quick Erase

In the quick erase test, the drive took only 31 seconds.

Full Erase

In the full erase test the drive took 10 mins and 44 seconds to erase an 80 min CD-RW at 8 speed! This result is twice as fast as the DVR-A04 but for a 3rd generation DVD recorder it is an average result (why not add 10x support ? ):

DATA CD-RW

The following test illustrates how long it takes to write a full 80-mins of data onto a CD-RW using this drive:

Here we copied the exact same contents of the CD-R test disk and as you can see the Pioneer A05/105 took 10 mins and 54 seconds (a little slower then expected).

PRESSED DATA CD-ROM READING

Reading a pressed CD should be an easy task for any drive due to the good reflectivity/quality of the disks - this was the first of our read tests:

As you can see from above, the drive managed an average speed of 25.42 speed using CAV. Towards the end of the CD it actually exceeded its maximum stated read speed of 32 and went to 33.60. The CPU usage was very low and the IDE burst rate was good as well - both of which are shown in the graph.

CD-R Media Data Reading

The speeds often achieved with pressed CD-ROM media are not always mirrored with CD-R media due to quality and reflectivity issues (here we test a TDK branded data CD-R):

Like the DVR-A04, the drive had no problem reading the disk at the same speed as pressed CDs. The strange behaviour of crashing towards the end of the test like the A04 is also present (again it was not enough to affect the test). The average CD-R data reading speed was 25.43.

CD Digital Audio Extraction

The drive was next tested for its ability to extract audio from CDs and its quality was reported below. This test was done using "CD Speed 1.01.3" by Ahead.

The A04 performed well in this test and the A05 improves upon it achievement - its overall average DAE speed is 23.05 speed (using the Ritek test CD-R) and as shown above the drive is good for feeding a burner at 12 speed on the fly.

The quality score is perfect and not all drives can achieve this as its quite a demanding test (the A04 could also achive a perfect score). The drive is capable of reading CD-TEXT and reading subchannel data.

Pressed Audio CD

For this test we used a pressed AUDIO-CD and examined the drive's ability to read audio.

The drive performs well in this test with a perfect score and an average 24.86x speed - it does live up to its specifications by doing 32.23x (toward the end of the disk).

C2 Error Information

Next we examined the ability of the drive to accurately extract audio information. This is aided by something called C2 error information which is on a CD. If your drive can report C2 information then it will be faster and more accurate at ripping audio.

We used Exact Audio Copy's "Detect Read Features" option to examine what the drive could do. The drive caches audio which is not ideal as it can affect audio ripping. It has an accurate stream, but unfortunately it can not report any C2 error information from CDs - despite what Ahead's Infotool reported earlier.

Page 3 - Last Updated: 18 October 2002