Writing Quality, 4 drives, several media manufacturers, who is the winner?

Ok I started these comparison about 2 weeks ago, so newest firmware is not used for all drives.

Drives used:

Pioneer DVR-115D
Lite-On DH20A4P (Notice I use an testfirmware as none of the official firmware work properly on my drive for some reason)
Optiarc AD-7203A
Samsung SH-S203B

The discs used are alredy thrown into garbage bin long ago, so no rescanning etc possible, thus results are provided as they are.

For those of you that read Norwegian, you might want to check out http://www.diskusjon.no/index.php?showtopic=893549 where I posted these results over an week ago.

Panasonic TYG03.

Pioneer gave an great result at 20X and so did Lite-On at 20x.
Optiarc wrote at 18x only and the result is not perfect, but good.
Samsung also wrote at 20x but gave some rise of PIE errors near the end and overall gave the worst result out of the four.

Verbatim YUDEN000T03 16X DVD+R.

All drives gave good results and support this media at 20x, so it's almost impossible to choose an winner, but it's possible to choose an looser: Optiarc AD-7203 loose due to the fact it didn't bother writing whole disc at 20X unlike the other writers.

Verbatim 16X DVD-R, MCC03RG20. Made in India by moser Baer.

Pioneer and Optiarc supports this media at 20x and gave good results at 20x too, Samsung and Lite-On only support this media at 18x. Overall Samsung gave the worst result.

Verbatim 16x DVD+R, MCC004. Made in India by Moser Baer.

Pioneer writes this media at 20x with very good results, Optiarc gave good result too at 18x, and so did Lite-On too, but only supports this media at 16x. While Samsung supports this media at 20x it doesn't offer acceptable writing quality at this speed to my preferrences.

No jitter for the Sammy

Yes I know, I noticed later that some scans lacks jitter. Blame Erik Deppe for not making jitter enabled by default and/or for not making the program remeber the settings. Every time I restart the program I have to enable it manually.... and I somehow forgets that now and then

ePro 16X DVD-R ProdiscF02.

Pioneer wrote the disc at 20x and the result is quite good. Lite-On wrote the disc at 20x, and the result is surprisingly good! Som error rise near the end, but I didn't expect an successfull burn at 20x at all. Optiarc and Samsung wrote this media at 16x only. Overall Samsung gave the worst result out of all writers.

ePro 16X DVD+R

Pioneer wrote the disc at 18x with good quality (Except the usual "NEC chipset PIF spike issue"). The other drives wrote the media at 16x and results are good except for samsung which again produces an rather poor result.

Traxdata 16X DVD-R. RitekF1.

Impressive of Pioneer, it wrote the disc at 18x unlike the others that wrote at 16x. And still it managed to give the best result. The result samsung produced is just poor.

Traxdata 16x DVD+R Ritek.P16.

Time to see some really different results!

Pioneer didn't really like this media and slowed down to 8x writing (18 supported for this code) and as we can see there is quite some PIF spikes. Even tried two discs with the same result. Lite-On and Optiarc did ok at 16x, while samsung totally failed as it slowed down writing speed to 4x which resulted in horrible writing quality.

Intenso 16X DVD-R, Daxon016S.

Pioneer and Lite-On wrote this media at 18x with an fairly good result. Optiarc and samsung wrote at 16x. Overall I'd say samsung gave the worst result out of the four.

Intenso 16X DVD+R (printable). Daxon.AZ3

Pioneer was the only drive to write this media at 18x, the rest wrote at 16x. Samsung did very poor with this media.

That was all for now, I'll try some more comparisons of other media types(manufacturers) and post later on. But I'll make an new thread for that as I might include one more drive, and I have updated the firmware versions to new versions as well.

So far Samsung SH-S203B seems to be an really poor drive, so I can't figure out why it has became so popular? I'd even pick an Lite-On over it any day!

It's almost impossible to find a winner, but overall I'd pick Pioneer DVR-115D just because it gave very good writing quality and supported more media than the other drives at speeds higher than 16x. But then again both Optiarc and Lite-On did overall very good too.

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Last edited by OC-Freak; 26-01-2008 at 02:52.

My opinion too

Excellent review for 4 new popular burners with variable media .

My Samsung 203B is also the worst for me for any MID at any speed , the only thing it really shines at is CD-R burning quality .

P.S : your Panasonic TYG03 scans are identical to mine and I thought LiteOn was the only good burner for them untill you posted your Pioneer 115 scans with it

First of all, thanks for all your work OC-Freak.

Nice comparison among all new drives you have, but it's a pitty you got a bad Sammy S203. Can't agree at all with your statement; it's a "poor" burner though. Who wins.... ...don't think you'll find an answer!
There is no such thing as a "winner" with latest burners, not when Nexperia is gone.

yeah pinto2 i have to agree with you there. In chatbox i mentioned to OC-Freak that the Sammy had less PIF errors with most media so i don't see the problem. And we all have our own expectations

Makes me feel confident about my purchase of the 115 yesterday, great work. Looking forward to your future tests

*updated comment post*

Well you are right, almost impossible to find an winner, but I'd go with the 115D since it wrote more media at speeds over 16x, and doing so with same quality as the other drives at 16x.

If it comforts you my SH-S203D seems to be just as poor as my 203B, I have an really hard time getting the 203D to write at the speed supported by firmware. YUDEN000T03 writes at 16x only, even though 20x should be supported. RitekF1 slowed down to 8x writing on the first disc I tried. MCC03RG20 became coaster etcetc. So I'm not so sure....... chances for two bad samsungs in a row?

OC-Freak did you ever see Brad-Pioneers stand on non-recommended media?

Edit:

I'm not sure what thread it's in to link it sorry.

I'm waiting for the Pioneer 215 to show up here in the USA

Brad-Pioneer is posting in almost all threads, and while I do not always agree with him I have to say he supports his company at least! And I must have missed that post so I do not know what it's about.

wow so all 203b's are not this way i hope.. newegg has a killer deal on them and i was about to order one. guess i better wait a bit to see more responses here then.. a friend of mine has now rma'ed 3 sammy 203b's within 4 months (different reasons also). his lite on and pioneer in the same pc are still running fine..i was only getting one due to all the great things everyone here says about it

To really test Samsung 203 performance , you have to have "perfectly" consistent media from the same spindle . When I do this , 203B gives higher PIF / PIE and much higher Jitter specially with DVD+R media .

203D however performs better than other drives with MCC 03RG20 (Not including Pioneer 115 because I don't have it .....yet) ONLY when swapping strategy with MXL RG04 , with jitter "always" <7% (~6.8%) even at 16X burning speed ( CMC PAP6) .

In 203B reviews I've seen , it wasn't tested against other burners like OC-Freak's here but rather against different MIDs which could be so excellent that 203B gave good results with it

I like LiteOn better regarding burn quality , but alas , it is only 2 months per drive before it stops working for me

While it has it's issues, the Pioneer DVR-115D definitely stands out because it writes most media with very low jitter even at high speeds. It is even better now since the release of firmware version 1.18.

Regards,
TerminalVeloCD