Cdrinfo has done an article about it. Don’t know if this is the appropriate forum but most ppl on this forum use quality scanning with their home based drives.
Click on the link to see how the results pan out - http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=20622
Your “perfect” burns may be not so perfect in a professional scanner. Makes you think twice about saying a disc is worse in quality just because it scans worse on in cdspeed/kprobe.
Discuss 
Thanks for the link, I’ll be reading that article at first opportunity. 
Some detailed comments about their interpretations:
Both sets of measurements report a major spike, but Kprobe shows it at the half way point whereas the DaTARIUS Analyser almost 2/3 of the way along. More importantly though, is the fact that according to KProbe, this burn is within specs, whereas the DaTARIUS Analyser clearly shows that PISum8 has exceeded the acceptable levels.
They are not interpreting this correctly, since the X-axis on the KProbe scan and on the DaTARIUS scan don’t show the same thing.
The X-axis for the KProbe scan is linear w.r.t. data (bytes) on the disc but unlinear w.r.t. to current radius from the center of the disc. The X-axis on the DaTARIUS scan is linear w.r.t. to radius position but unlinear w.r.t. data (bytes) on the disc.
The two spikes are actually in the same position on the disc, where 2/3 of the way in terms of radius position corresponds to half-way in terms of data (bytes).
EDIT:
The measurements are comparable this time, since the result of the specific recording is very good.
Very good? The DaTARIUS scan shows a maximum PIF of 33!
EDIT2: Both quotes I listed have now been updated in the original article.
So according to that DaTARIUS thing basically all media is just crap 
also i wonder why they didn’t test any MCC004 media which seems to be most commonly used
Not very convinced by the DaTARIUS machine.
The site is in Japanese, but here are some tests with the special Mori MXLRG03 discs on various burners. Tests were done with two different professional scanners and with PlexTools Pro.
http://www.landport.co.jp/mori/veri.html
We can never compare proffesional scanning equipment with our primitive drives scanning ability.
Scanning with KProbe or CD DVD Speed doesn’t matter it’s our primitive drives all depends on.
I for once trust DaTARIUS testing equipment. 
DrageMester already mentioned the difference in scale between KProbe and DaTARIUS, I just like to add that KProbe scale is in burned [I]data sectors[/I] (1 sector=2064 bytes) on disc displayed binary.
DaTARIUS scale shows the radial distance in milimeters from disc center. In some tests we can see a spike past 58 mm indicating a test anomality or that the burner didn’t manage to finish the burn before end of standardised (ECMA) data area on disc.
Nice spotting there, Drage. If they match up, then at least Kprobe + liteon are recognizing a similar surge in errors at the same spot.
It’s a little frustrating to see most discs scan with such poor results in the datarius. I want them to test @ more speeds to see what happens. Maybe slower really is better? They burnt all those discs at the maximum allowed speed so it would be interesting to see a 16x disc burnt @ 8x and an 8x disc burnt @ 6x or 4x.
If only I had the datarius at my house lol. I’d do the most extensive testing ever. 
Thanks for the link, Two Degrees. I can’t understand it very well but from what I could make out (looking at the 109 burn) the professional scans seemed very low in errors, just like in the home based plextor. Makes me wonder how good or accurate the Datarius is. I’m sure we’ll all find some satisfying answers eventually.
Just wondering: maybe different standards should be used when evaluating those Datarius scans. So if the common limit for home scanning is and 8 PIF, for datarius it could be 30, or so.
In my oppinion, it doesn’t really matter how many errors a disc has, much more important is the relative amount of values. Even discs with 10,000 PIFs play fine on most of the current devices, but if can find media with less than 1000 PIFs i will prefer it over the first one. And i don’t care if they have 200,000 resp. 50,000 PIFs on Datarius, as long as the disc with less errors on professional devices has less errors on my home drives.
A test comparing different different professional scanning devices would be very interesting.
From what I can gather of the comparable scans (scans from drives tested by both professional analyzers & Plextor 712UF), the general PISum8 trend is very similar. You have to also take into account that the media being tested is the highest quality pro-grade 8x MXL media so should be capable of being written well (like many T02 burns show in professional scans).
It’s been some time now that I think that the Datarius system used by CDRInfo hasn’t been calibrated properly, or is kinda defective.
Considering that very often, their comments are extremely suspect and sometimes shows deep ignorance of what they’re doing (what [B]DrageMester[/B] picked just adds to the long list of goofs in their reviews), I wouldn’t be suprised that they simply can’t use this machine properly, or are unable to detect that it needs calibration…
I remember that just about a year ago, these guys could declare as “excellent” burns that showed deeply troubled reading curves in a transfer rate test, simply because the test didn’t [I]fail[/I]. People like that can’t be taken seriously. I wonder how they managed to get a Datarius, but the fact that they do have one doesn’t mean they use it properly.
These comments of mine don’t mean that I trust homemade scans over professional scanning 
- rather that even on professional equipement, I won’t trust unprofessional/unsound methods. 
- The best car is only as good as its driver.
I’d be interested in [B]Dakhaas[/B]'s and [B]Dolphinius_Rex[/B]'s take on this.
EDIT Looks like someone noticed DrageMester’s input corrected his article…
"Both sets of measurements report a major spike at the same position of the disc. Notice that the X-axis on the Datarius graph indicates radius (mm). More importantly though, is the fact that according to KProbe, this burn is within specs, whereas the DaTARIUS Analyser clearly shows that PISum8 has exceeded the acceptable levels."
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=20622&PageId=9
DrageMester posted this at the CDRInfo forum as well. It’s often useful to speak [I]with [/I]the authors rather than just talk [I]about[/I] them.
G
(who isn’t a great fan of CDRInfo either)
Touché.
Hehe, yeah I posted a thread there where some of us posted some things.
That’s a good point you make about it not being calibrated properly, Franck. What I’m thinking is how can a disc with 33 PIF max or higher be read perfectly on a Pioneer drive? My pioneer craps out on way less PIF, hell a lid block of 3 PIF caused an uncorrectable in my 111. I think something fishy is going on. If home drives and professional ones are closer than we think, it could very well be that our home scans are much more useful that we think (I never really thought home scans were completely useless, that’s for sure, they’re a great second opinion on things and they can often show some useful info).
I especially think the datarius they are using is playing up after seeing Two Degree’s post that had a different professional scanner that pretty much agreed with the home scanner.
less PIF…as reported by a drive reporting PIF very differently, right?
Do you get my point…?
Hahaha… you got me there
Didn’t think that one through properly.
http://www.datarius.com/news/news-PDF/PR_CDRinfo_DaTARIUS.pdf
The CDfreaks review team should maybe approach Audiodev or other analyzer manufacturers about a similar agreement
[B]Francksoy:[/B]
If you have any doubts about the validity of the data from the cdrinfo DaTARIUS analyzer, maybe it would be better to post your comments on their forum or contact the review team there directly, they seem to be willing to listen to critique.
Done
http://www.cdrinfo.com/forum/tm.asp?m=138359&mpage=1&key=𡴄
[…]the reason why I’m posting here is that after having thouroughly examined all of the Datarius results you have posted in this article and in previous tests posted since you have the analyser, I’m enclined to think, from the systematically out-of-specs results for about any disc tested, that something isn’t quite right. I wouldn’t be surprised that there is something wrong either with the Datarius analyser itself, or with its calibration (most likely).
Do you calibrate the analyser before each test with the Philips reference disc?
I would really like to see tests performed with your Datarius on commercialy pressed DVD-ROM and DVD-Video. This would give a reference to understand what’s up.
Also you could ask the company itself if they consider the results that you get with their analyser as consistent with what other users of the Datarius system get…
It’s unlikely to be so, as they have stated in the conclusion:
The drive used in the DaTARIUS Analyser is calibrated regularly…
IMO the reviewers there have more understanding of the principles of disc testing than from most, if not all, other sites.
I remember that just about a year ago, these guys could declare as “excellent” burns that showed deeply troubled reading curves in a transfer rate test, simply because the test didn’t fail. People like that can’t be taken seriously. I wonder how they managed to get a Datarius, but the fact that they do have one doesn’t mean they use it properly.
That mistake is minor as compared with what others have made.
