Best Drive for testing PI/PO Jitter

Bob Shem · 29-08-2004

I have the ND-3500A - awesome drive --- so far!

Now I would like to know what is the best drive for testing PI/PO/PIF Jitter, etc on disks burned with my 3500.

I see that Lite-On drives support PI/PO and that the newest Plextor (712) supports Pi/PO testing. My older Plextor (708) did not.

So, which external drive do you recommend? I don't need the fastest burner for testing, seeing that I am using my 3500 for burning. I just need to plug in an external drive and test the disks burned with the 3500. If a cheapo DVD-ROM or low-end DVD recordable would do the job that would be great, although some of the threads that I have read indicate that ROM drives don't support PI/PO/PIF Jitter, etc. tests.

Thanks,

Bob Shem

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**Dee** · 29-08-2004

I made the mistake of getting a DVD-ROM (Liteon 167T) for scanning, its pretty useless and inaccurate. I'd suggest a Liteon 812 or 832 for scanning. i intend to get one myself when funds will allow

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*rdgrimes* · 29-08-2004

If you're going to buy a burner for scanning, the LiteOn 1633 will be a similar price to any others, and offers 12x or 16x ripping with a simple FW mod.

Jitter scans are of very limited value, but very few drives offer jitter anyway, the Nu drive is one.

*mrQQ* · 29-08-2004

yeah, i would need one which is able to report PI/PIF/POF/Jitter, AND would have 16x dvd+r/+rw/-r/-rw reading speed.. anything like that around?

*rdgrimes* · 29-08-2004

As I said, the Nu drive offers jitter. But in general, it's a very poor scanning drive with varying results that are not comparable to other scans. Most of the Phillips-based drives offer some combination of the 3, but not all offer both PI and PIF. POF is an unreadable sector, and any drive can tell you that.

*mrQQ* · 29-08-2004

i see.. any of these drives support 16x writeable media reading speed?

*rdgrimes* · 29-08-2004

AFAIK, only the LiteOn can currently be modded to read all at 16x, but I set mine to 12x because 16x creates too much heat and tends to slow down too easy. (So 12x is generally faster than 16x.) The LiteOn DVD-ROM drives can be modded for 16x rip speeds, but are not reliable scanning drives. In most ripping applications, you will not notice any difference between 12x and 16x.

AmigaBoy · 29-08-2004

Hi all.

Why dont you check out the Plextor PX-712A. It has all the measurements and can read all disks at 12x minimum, and you get PlexTools Pro ready to go.

The price is relatively low too.

HTH.

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Charles D · 29-08-2004

i think everyone that buys a nec3500 should E-mail NEC and tell them we want the PI/PO Error testing ability on the NEC drives . if not possible on the 3500 with firmware, then future NEC drives at least. seems kinda silly to me to have to buy a lite-on drive that costs pretty much the same as the NEC just to do testing...

I did write them, ( no responce yet ) but the more people that make it known that the drive would be "more liked" if they did add that. the more likely it is to actually happen.

maybe i will start a thread on this after i get responce back from them

*ErikDeppe* · 30-08-2004

Quote:

Originally Posted by QQuxa

yeah, i would need one which is able to report PI/PIF/POF/Jitter, AND would have 16x dvd+r/+rw/-r/-rw reading speed.. anything like that around?

Yes, the AOpen DVD1648/AAP, a $30/25 EUR DVD-ROM drive

Less than 5 minutes to read/scan a full DVD+RW disc

The default reading speeds are lower (I think it's 12x for DVD recordables and 8x for DVD rewritables) but it doesn't seem to have any problems reading those DVDs at full speed.
It's definitaly one of the best DVD-ROM drives I've worked with.

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*Bronco04* · 30-08-2004

Quote:

Originally Posted by ErikDeppe

Yes, the AOpen DVD1648/AAP, a $30/25 EUR DVD-ROM drive

...
Less than 5 minutes to read/scan a full DVD+RW disc

The default reading speeds are lower (I think it's 12x for DVD recordables and 8x for DVD rewritables) but it doesn't seem to have any problems reading those DVDs at full speed.
It's definitaly one of the best DVD-ROM drives I've worked with.

The best? - PI 3428 / PIF 118?.... looks horrible to me! Still readable?

jason_godly · 30-08-2004

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charles D

i think everyone that buys a nec3500 should E-mail NEC and tell them we want the PI/PO Error testing ability on the NEC drives . if not possible on the 3500 with firmware, then future NEC drives at least. seems kinda silly to me to have to buy a lite-on drive that costs pretty much the same as the NEC just to do testing...

I did write them, ( no responce yet ) but the more people that make it known that the drive would be "more liked" if they did add that. the more likely it is to actually happen.

maybe i will start a thread on this after i get responce back from them

I emailed them about this too... hope we can get some good response back from them.

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*mrQQ* · 30-08-2004

those pics are broken now :/

*mrQQ* · 31-08-2004

so that AOpen drive needs firmware mod to read at those speeds?

*Halcyon* · 31-08-2004

There is no best single drive for PI/PO/PIF/POF jitter.

All results will vary and different drives will be differently "inaccurate".

Consumer drives cannot be used to measure true burn quality, only disc readability in the drive you measure in.

If we assume that PIF variance correlates well with readability, then getting any drive that produces consistent results from one scan to another (on the same disc) and reports at least PIF, might be worthwhile getting.

If you want to get to the bottom of it, you buy as many drives as there are different drive makers that use different chipsets/puh/transport (e.g. BenQ, Toshiba, LG, Plextor, LiteOn, etc).

Then you read the disc back in all of them and combine the result to get a rough overall view of the readability of some particular disc.

*Kenshin* · 31-08-2004

It's boring enough to scan in one drive. An alternative might be to use very reliable burners plus very reliable blank media and forget about PI/PIF.

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Pontyac · 01-09-2004

I agree with Kenshin. I don't see the point in all this testing. As long as you've got a good burner/media and your burner burns good discs time after time, why waste time with all this testing. Give a few of your discs out to friends, and of course watch em yourself in your standalone. You'll know soon enough if there's any problems.

*Jamos* · 02-09-2004

In every test I have conducted Jitter offers very little to the knowledge that a disk is readable or not. If jitter is high usually so are the error rates. I still do not see a need for jitter testing. If someone can show me a good pi/pif scan with high jitter, I would like to see it. But saying this, I am in no way a expert in this field, it is just something I do not test for and have gotten no bad disks due to

.

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Last edited by Jamos; 02-09-2004 at 00:35.

*mrQQ* · 02-09-2004

i just need new dvd-rom. so i might aswell get a drive which reports everything - just see it as a kind of hobby.

besides, Halcyon, i don't think you're quite right. while i can't judge about the absolute burn quality by one scan, i can judge about relative quality to other burns scanned with same drive.

*ErikDeppe* · 02-09-2004

Quote:

Originally Posted by QQuxa

so that AOpen drive needs firmware mod to read at those speeds?

No, the speed can be set to max. in the Disc Quality test.

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*HenryNettles* · 06-09-2004

Quote:

Originally Posted by ErikDeppe

Yes, the AOpen DVD1648/AAP, a $30/25 EUR DVD-ROM drive

Less than 5 minutes to read/scan a full DVD+RW disc

The default reading speeds are lower (I think it's 12x for DVD recordables and 8x for DVD rewritables) but it doesn't seem to have any problems reading those DVDs at full speed.
It's definitaly one of the best DVD-ROM drives I've worked with.

I am quite interested in this drive. Many people say the results from the Liteon DVD-ROM drives are not repeatable, that is, if you run the test twice in a row on the same disk, the results will vary by a large margin. Have you tried running the test more than once on the same disc, and did the results stay roughly the same?

Also, the images that you had posted originally showed some very high numbers for PI/PIF. Was that accurate, that is, was the disc you scanned really, really bad, or does this drive give much higher numbers for PI/PIF than a Liteon recorder?

At the very least, this drive would appear to be an excellent candidate to replace my Liteon 163 that I use for ripping. It would appear to rip quite a bit faster, and if the quality test can be relied on, that would make this drive a real winner.

Best Drive for testing PI/PO Jitter

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