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Review: Optiarc AD-7200A Reviewed by: Dee-27 Provided by: CD Freaks Firmware: 1.05 Manufactured: October 2007

Optiarc have taken their time to produce their own 20x drive. In this review we will be seeing how the new AD-7200A drive from Optiarc performs in our tests.

The Optiarc AD-7200A supports 20x DVD±R, 8x/6x DVD+RW/-RW, and 12x DVD+R/DL-R DL writing technology, allowing Double/Dual Layer discs of 8.5GB to be written. In addition this drive also supports DVD-RAM reading and writing at 12x.

Drive Specifications

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We found the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7200A at the Optiarc website

What’s inside the box

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Now it’s time to take a look at the drive itself and what the drive came shipped with.

Our package was the bulk version and contained the Optiarc AD-7200A drive.

Now let’s take a look at the drive.

The bezel of the Optiarc AD-7200A is plainly styled. We can also see various logos, an emergency eject hole, single green LED and an eject button.

Drive top

Drive bottom

On the top of the drive we found one label and we can see the drive was manufactured in China during October 2007.

On the rear of the drive we can see an digital and analogue audio connectors, jumpers for cable select, slave and master. We can also see an IDE connector and power connector.

Now let’s head on to the next page were we can take a look at the features of the drive….

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Test machine

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For this review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:

Hardware:

• Motherboard: ASUSTeK P5K (Intel P35 chipset)
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
• RAM: 4 GB OCZ Platinum dual channel kit DDR2 800
• GFX: BFG nVidia 8800GTS (640 Megabytes GDDR3 HDCP compliant)
• Sound: Onboard Realtek ALC882 HD audio controller
• Hard disk: 2X 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (SATA 2)
• Case: ThermalTake Armor (silver)
• PSU: Enermax Liberty 620W
• Display: Samsung Syncmaster 245B 24” widescreen LCD (HDCP compliant)
• Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium (64 bit) with Service Pack 1

System setup:

The Optiarc AD-7200A was connected to an IDE channel on the motherboards JMicron IDE controller. As we can see from the above screenshot, Nero InfoTool reports the Optiarc AD-7200A as a UDMA4 device.

And another screenshot from Nero InfoTool:

From the screenshot from Nero InfoTool above, we can see the Optiarc AD-7200A supports DVD-RAM read and write. The drive came shipped with firmware version 1.01, when firmware version 1.05 became available, the drive was updated before starting this review.

Installed software:

For conducting our various tests, we will be using the following applications.

• Nero Burning Rom 8
• Nero CD/DVD Speed
• Nero InfoTool
• DVDFab Platinum
• Slysoft CloneCD
• Exact Audio Copy

Our review PC has Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit installed with Service Pack 1.

Features and techniques

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Drive Internals:

Optiarc AD-7200A PCB

The Optiarc AD-7200A is powered by an NEC MC-10043 chipset

BookType (Bitsetting):

The Optiarc AD-7200A supports automatic bit-setting and supports Bit-Setting on DVD+R DL media.

Here is how you could check if your discs are really written with DVD-ROM book type:

Start Nero CD-DVD Speed and click the Disc info button and you should get something like this:

DVD+R DL with BookType DVD-ROM

Another quick test is to start Nero CD-Speed and look at the disc information:

Disc Quality Scanning:

5x DQ scan using CD-Speed

The Optiarc AD-7200A can be used along with CD-Speed for Disc Quality Scanning. We will examine this feature in a little more detail in the Authors page of this review.

Writing technique

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Now it’s time to take a closer look at the write technology used by the Optiarc AD-7200A:

For these tests we used CD-Speed and wrote a full disc at the drives maximum speed.

CD Recordable:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7200A, it should be able to write CD-R media at a maximum speed of 48x.

The Optiarc AD-7200A uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 48X. This gives an average speed of 34.98x and a total writing time of 3 minutes and 9 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

As we can see, the Optiarc AD-7200A was about average when writing CD-R media.

CD Re-writable:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7200A, it should be able to write CD-RW media at a maximum speed of 32x.

The Optiarc AD-7200A uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 32X. This gives an average speed of 29.09x and a total writing time of 3 minutes and 21 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

As we can see, the Optiarc AD-7200A was one of the fastest drives when writing CD-RW media.

20x DVD+R/-R writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7200A, it should be able to write DVD+R/-R media at a maximum speed of 20x.

DVD+R

The Optiarc AD-7200A uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 20X. This gives an average speed of 14.86x and a total writing time of 4 minutes and 35 seconds.

DVD-R

The Optiarc AD-7200A uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 20X. This gives an average speed of 14.87x and a total writing time of 4 minutes and 42 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

As we can see from our table, the Optiarc AD-7200A was the fastest drive when writing DVD+R media and one of the fastest drives when writing DVD-R media.

8X DVD+RW writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7200A, it should be able to write DVD+RW at a maximum speed of 8x.

The Optiarc AD-7200A uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 8X. This gives an average speed of 7.75x and a total writing time of 7 minutes and 23 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The Optiarc AD-7200A was one of the fastest drives when writing our test DVD+RW media.

6x DVD-RW writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7200A, it should be able to write DVD-RW at a maximum speed of 6x.

The Optiarc AD-7200A uses CLV, (Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 6X. This gives an average speed of 6.01x and a total writing time of 10 minutes and 2 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The Optiarc AD-7200A was above average when writing DVD-RW media.

12x DVD+R DL writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7200A, it should be able to write DVD+R DL at a maximum speed of 12x.

We had no media that was rated at 12x writing speed, the fastest being 8x

The Optiarc AD-7200A uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 8X. This gives an average speed of 6.32x and a total writing time of 18 minutes and 46 seconds.

12x DVD-R DL writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7200A, it should be able to write DVD-R DL at a maximum speed of 12x.

We had no media that was rated at 12x writing speed, the fastest being 8x

The Optiarc AD-7200A uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 8X. This gives an average speed of 6.34x and a total writing time of 18 minutes and 49 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The Optiarc AD-7200A was about average when writing double layer media.

12x DVD-RAM writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7200A, it should be able to write DVD-RAM at a maximum speed of 12x.

The Optiarc AD-7200A uses P-CAV, (Partial Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 12X. This gives an average speed of 9.86x and a total writing time of 5 minutes and 58 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The Optiarc AD-7200A was about average when writing our test DVD-RAM media.

Summary:

There is no doubt that the Optiarc AD-7200A has excellent writing performance on DVD recordable media and was the fastest drive we have ever tested here at CD Freaks when writing to DVD+R media and one of the fastest drives when writing to DVD-R media. CD-R writing performance was also very good.

Let’s head on to the next page where we will check reading performance….

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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……

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The specifications of the Optiarc AD-7200A state that the drive is able to write CD-R discs at 48x and CD-RW at 32x. Let us find out how the drive really performs in speed and quality.

Writing Data CD-R discs:

For our data writing tests, we simply burned a full disc using CD-Speed (create data disc) function and burned the discs at the maximum speed allowed.

Write quality:

We will test CD-R discs from many different CD-R manufacturers. To really measure the write speed, we used the “create data CD” function in Nero CD-Speed. The discs were written at the maximum speed that the drive supports. For the quality test, we used Nero CD-Speed’s Disc Quality Scan and combined this with a Transfer Rate Test to test if the resulting disc was readable. Also note that different drives and different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the discs. We used a Lite-On SOHR-5238S drive with firmware 4S09 and scanned the discs at 48X speed.

There is more than one way to handle C1 and C2 error detection/correction, but a simple and common way is to detect and correct up to two errors per frame in each stage and detect three or more errors:

• E11: 1 error detected and corrected by C1 layer
• E21: 2 errors detected and corrected by C1 layer
• E31: 3 or more errors detected but not corrected by C1 layer

The sum of these (per second) is called the Block Error Rate: BLER=E11+E21+E31

• E32: 3 or more errors detected but not corrected by C2 layer

Any E31 is un-correctable by the C1 layer and will result in the bytes in that frame being redistributed into multiple frames which are passed to the C2 layer.

Any E32 is un-correctable by the C2 layer and will result in interpolation being used for Audio CDs or will result in third layer error correction being use for Data CDs.

Different drives have different ways of reporting these errors in a Disc Quality scan.  Lite-On CD-RW drives will report C1 and C2 errors this way:

• C1=BLER=E11+E21+E31
• C2=E32

Here is an easier way to look at Disc Quality Scanning:

A written CD-R disc will always have some C1 errors; C1 errors are easily corrected by the drive’s error correction capabilities. The next level of errors is C2, while C2 errors could also be corrected by most drive’s error correction capabilities; they are not wanted on a good quality disc. A good disc should not contain any C2 errors, and preferably have an average C1 error amount of below 2.0 for the best discs, or at least below 10.0 averages for good quality discs. After C2 errors, there are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

In short, our analysis will be based on this guideline to determine the quality of the burned disc:

CD-R/RW quality scans guideline

Below are the obtained results:

An excellent result to start our CD-R quality tests, (highly recommended).

Our RICOH media manufactured by Moser Baer India has burned with good quality.

The HP media manufactured by CMC Magnetics has burned with very good quality.

Another very good result (recommended).

We have an excellent result, (highly recommended).

Writing Quality with Re-Writable discs:

The result is still good.

Summary:

CD-R writing quality and media compatibility is very good to excellent with the Optiarc AD-7200A and CD-RW writing quality is good.

Now let’s head on to the next page where we will test DVD recordable performance….

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The specifications of this drive tell us that it should write DVD±R at 20x and DVD+RW/-RW at 8x/6x. In this part, we will measure the writing times for various types of DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW discs. We will also focus on write quality and media compatibility.

Write quality:

Disc Quality Scanning - PI/PO:

DVDs use an error detection and correction system (ECC) which is usually transparent to the end-user, but we can get an idea of the "quality" of a disc by  performing Disc Quality Scanning, which shows how many errors the drive is detecting and correcting behind the scenes.

There are two layers or stages of error detection and correction on all DVD media; these are called Parity Inner (PI) and Parity Outer (PO). Data is arranged in ECC blocks containing rows and columns of user data with additional columns of PI error correction and rows of PO error correction.

An ECC block contains 32 KByte of user data with some added control data, scrambled and arranged in 192 rows and 172 columns with an additional 10 columns of PI error correction and 16 rows of PO error correction.

The Parity Inner stage is performed first, and up to 5 bytes in a row can be corrected. Any row with one or more errors is counted as a Parity Inner Error (PIE). Any row with more than 5 errors is considered un-correctable and is counted as a Parity Inner Failure (PIF).

The Parity Outer stage is performed next and will detect and attempt to correct any errors that are still left after the PI stage. Any column that has errors is counted as a Parity Outer Error (POE), and any column that has un-correctable errors is counted as a Parity Outer Failure (POF). If a POF occurs the drive can sometimes re-read the problematic spot and correct the problem; this happens only during normal reading and not during scanning, however.

Disc Quality scanning is influenced by the drive performing the test, and that's why different drives report different results and even the same drive will report (slightly) different results when scanning the same disc again. Please note that PI/PO and Jitter scans only test some aspects of disc quality and that other important aspects are not revealed.

But what is a good scan? That is a discussion that we don’t think will end soon, as different drives report different amount of errors, some players are more picky about media than others, and so on. But as a comparison we present you with scans from two pressed DVD discs:

The scan above shows the results from a pressed, Single Layer DVD-Video disc (Goldeneye).

The above scan shows the result from a pressed Double Layer DVD-Video disc (The Green Mile).

The Lite-On DVD burners used in this review report errors as follows:

• PIE per 8 ECC blocks (rows with 1 or more bytes in error)
• PIF per 1 ECC block (rows with 6 or more bytes in error)

We want to see as low error numbers as possible.
PIE per 8 ECC blocks should be no higher than 280.
PIF per 1 ECC block should be no higher than 4.

Both the pressed DVD-discs above are well within the standards if we ignore the single PIF spike in the DL scan.

If you want to look at the standards for yourself, download the ECMA 267 Standard for DVD-ROM, the ECMA 337 Standard for DVD+R/RW and the ECMA 338 Standard for DVD-R/RW at http://www.ecma-international.org.

Notice that there are other aspects such as disc reflectivity, tracking errors and so on that also will affect the readability of a DVD disc – but for this we do not have measuring equipment available.

Also, another note is that we have scanned the discs at 4X speed, by lowering the speed to 2X (DVD-R/RW)/2.4X (DVD+R/RW) or 1X the amount of reported errors may drop on some discs. We scanned at 4X CLV due to lower speeds taking too much time.

To see if there is a connection between the reported amount of errors and readability of the discs we also include the reading curve from a Optiarc AD-7203A DVD-Writer which by default is able to read DVD±R media at 16x speed. A small speed reduction near the end is still accepted on good discs, but serious reading problems or reading failures is a bad sign.

Jitter:

Jitter is a very complex subject and even more difficult to explain when we start to use optical drives designed for the home market to measure jitter values.

Let’s first look at the DVD specification for pressed DVD discs (in the bold part courtesy of Pioneer Electronics).

“The DVD design target is that when the worst-case disc allowed by the specification, considering the economics of production, is played using the worst-case pickup that can be produced in volume economically, the byte error rate after error correction will still be 1 x 10-^-20, which is good enough to be acceptable for computer applications.

Since the above target is for "after error correction," the error correction capability must be calculated. Considering the trade-off between error correction capability and the overhead of the added redundancy, the DVD format was set to one ECC block per 32 KB. This requires a byte error rate before correction of 1 x 10^-2.
In order to achieve good economy on both the part of the discs and the playback mechanisms. The current disc tilt specification was determined as a result of the efforts on both sides.

As will be explained hereafter, it is difficult to make the error rate a specification of the disc itself. Therefore, a jitter standard is set by the DVD specifications. A simple calculation based on a normal distribution requires that the jitter rate be under 15.4%, and experimental results indicate that jitter must be under 16%, to achieve the required error rate. Since the disc tilt varies within a revolution, it was decided to adopt the design concept that jitter must remain within 16% at the instantaneous peak value of tilt. Since it is actually very difficult to measure the peak value, the concept became to measure the average jitter at under 15%, and the byte error rate at under 5 x 10-3.”

What is Jitter?

In basic terms, we could say jitter is a product of “pit and land distortion” In other words, when the drive reading the disc has to compensate by means of a “tilt servo” which constantly tries to move and refocus the PUH lens for optimum tracking and tries to compensate for the imperfections of pits and lands on the pressed or recordable media. This is further compounded by the hardware used for recording and playback. Not only is the record and replay process limited by the resolution of the optical pickup, it is also horribly non-linear. In addition, the playback of the pits is subject to non-linear crosstalk from nearby pits in the same track, and also from pits in nearby tracks.

The things that causes jitter divide into three main types.

• Variation in pit length and width.
• Crosstalk from nearby pits in the same track.
• Crosstalk from pits in adjacent tracks.

Variation in pit length and width.

The recorded pits themselves are not perfectly accurate. Anything which causes variations in the sizes of the pits will produce jitter. A prime culprit of this is sudden variations in laser power (laser noise). If laser power varies, then the laser beam itself changes and will vary in intensity and possibly focus. This will cause the pit length and width to also vary and we now have jitter.

Crosstalk from nearby pits in the same track.

If the pits are not totally accurate, then the laser beam spot may overrun a pit and gather data from the adjacent pit in the same track, or if the “land” is to short, then the laser beam spot can be influenced by the adjacent pit and this is called inter-symbol interference. Inter-symbol interference is worse at low recording velocities, because the pits are shorter and closer together. And it is the cause of "deviation" of the pit lengths.

Crosstalk from pits in adjacent tracks.

Crosstalk between pits in adjacent tracks is caused by the laser beam spot being larger than the width of the track. It is a largely random contribution and is worse at lower recorded velocities, because the highest frequency components of the readout signal in the wanted track, with which the crosstalk is competing, are weaker.

Some other factors to consider

There are many aspects to consider when we add Recordable DVD media into the mix. We are now dealing with an organic dye, which is inherently unstable. We must also consider the equipment we are using to measure jitter is aimed at the home market. So we must also take into account variations between drives that we are unable to calibrate for such tests.

Now let’s look at some of the hardware limitations of the drives we are using to measure jitter.

If there is no tilt, then the jitter value includes components from light source noise, circuit noise, disc noise, standard interference between symbols (inter -symbol interference), and some small amount of crosstalk from the neighbouring tracks.

Next we consider manufacturing variation in the circuitry.
Variation due to the circuitry have noise-like characteristics, and increase the minimum jitter level, but are thought to have a very small effect on tilt margin. Factors such as offset in the servo circuit, however, both increase the jitter level and decrease tilt margin.

How we will measure jitter.

We will be using a Lite-On DVD writer to conduct these tests along with Nero CD-Speed at 4x scanning speed. In the screen shot below we can see a PI/PIF scan including a jitter test (the purple graph in the lower window) we carried out on a single layer DVD+R media.

Now, let's find a reasonable average jitter level. Experimental results indicate that 8% average value or less is a desirable figure, based on the DVD specification. That does not mean that jitter average values above 8% are bad. In fact, many optical drives will quite happily read recordable DVD media with jitter values of more than 14% average without any problems. Other drives, including standalone DVD players may begin to struggle reading discs with average jitter values above 10%. So there is a fairly wide range of acceptable values. One must test our own playback devices to see what they can cope with.

However, for the purpose of having a basic guideline we can use in our reviews, we present a rating system for average jitter values.

• Less than 8% (average) = Very good
• 8% - 9% (average) = good
• 9% - 12% (average) = average
• Above 12% (average) = poor

Here is an easier explanation on how to read the test results

Maybe this got too technical, and you are wondering what to look for in your Nero DiscSpeed/CD-Speed Quality Scans?

Use this as a guideline for good discs:

• PI (Parity Inner): No larger areas on the disc should exceed 280 PI-8 errors, do not worry too much about high single spikes that exceed 280.
• PIF (Parity Inner Failures): No larger areas on the disc should exceed 4 PIF-1 errors, do not worry too much about high single spikes that exceed 4.
• Jitter: An average jitter value of 8% or less is considered very good. You should not worry too much if the average value is slightly above this figure.

And as always; lower is better

DVD+R media compatibility and write quality:

In these tests we will be using a Lite-On LH-20A1L with firmware BL05 along with CD-Speed to measure the disc quality. We will also be using the Optiarc AD-7200A with firmware 1.05 along with CD-Speed for our read-back tests.

PIF errors are extremely low and jitter average is good. Overall, this is an excellent result.

A very good result and a blisteringly fast burn time.

No surprises here, an outstanding result from the Verbatim 8x media manufactured by Taiyo Yuden. The result is even more spectacular when the disc was burned at twice its rated speed.

The result is good, however, jitter is fairly high.

The result is good, considering the disc was burned faster than its rated speed.

The result is very good on this difficult to handle media.

DVD+RW media compatibility and write quality:

We used the same test procedures as in our DVD+R tests.

Below are our obtained results.

The result is simply excellent.

Summary:

The Optiarc AD-7200A can write DVD+R with excellent/very good quality and is able to burn selected media faster than its rated speed. DVD+R writing performance is blisteringly fast, not only at 20x writing speed where it’s the fastest drive we have ever tested, but also at 18x and 16x, where it proved to be extremely fast as well.

DVD+RW writing performance and quality on our tested media were simply excellent.

Now let’s look at DVD-R/RW performance and quality on the next page….

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DVD-R media compatibility and write quality:

In these tests we will be using a Lite-On LH-20A1L with firmware BL05 along with CD-Speed to measure the disc quality. We will also be using the Optiarc AD-7200A with firmware 1.05 along with CD-Speed for our read-back tests.

PIF errors are fairly constant throughout the disc and there is a little PIF cluster near the end of the disc. Jitter average is very good and our read-back test is good.

Considering the disc was burned faster than its rated speed, the result is excellent.

PI errors are slightly high at the start of the disc, PIF errors are low and jitter average is very good. The result is very good.

The result is excellent and the disc was burned faster than its rated speed.

The result is excellent considering the disc was burned faster than its rated speed.

The result is very good.

DVD-RW media compatibility and write quality:

For this test we used the same testing procedures as in our DVD-R tests.

The result is very good.

Summary:

The Optiarc AD-7200A can certainly write DVD-R/RW media with excellent/very good quality and writing performance again is blisteringly fast at 20x, 18x and 16x.

Let’s head on to the next page where we will test DVD R DL writing performance and quality……

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DVD+R/-R Double Layer writing performance and quality:

The Optiarc AD-7200A supports the DVD+R DL/-R DL standard for writing Double Layer/Dual Layer discs with a size around 8.5 GB at a writing speed of 12x. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any media that was supported at this speed.

DVD+R DL:

For these tests we wrote an image file of a DVD-Video compilation of as near full capacity as possible with CD-Speed. We then used the Lite-On along with CD-Speed to test the discs quality; we then finally ran a read-back test on our Optiarc AD-7200A using Nero CD-Speed.

Reviewers Note:
The Lite-On LH-20A1L is not able to perform a jitter test on the second layer of a DL disc. We therefore omitted the jitter test in our DL media tests.

The result is excellent.

Considering our 2.4x media was written at 4x, the result is good.

DVD-R DL:

The result is excellent.

Summary:

The Optiarc AD-7200A writing quality with our tested DVD DL media was excellent.

On the next page, we take a look at DVD-RAM writing performance.....

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The Optiarc AD-7200A is a so-called Multi drive, meaning it also supports the DVD-RAM format.

This drive is one of few drives that also supports the DVD-RAM format, lets us look at the recording side of the disc, and as you can see it has differences from the other DVD+R/W/R9 DL and DVD-R/W discs.

We can see a very fascinating pattern of darker spots. These tick marks are "address information" ("Pre-mastered Pit Header Field") which are embedded onto the disc. This is header information in front of data sector area, and is the same format as HDD and MO.

A DVD-RAM’s disc can be formatted in the following formats:

• FAT32
• UDF 1.02
• UDF 1.50
• UDF 2.00
• UDF 2.01
• UDF 2.50

By formatting a DVD-RAM disc with FAT32 it will act like a removable hard drive and all writing will be done as “background processes”. Meaning you do not have to wait for it to finish, you can start or work with other applications while the DVD-RAM is working without noticing any “hangs” or CPU slowdowns.

DVD-RAM has error correction, but also has error replacement to spare sectors as a "defect management" function. This gives higher reliability than other DVD format.

Another advantage with DVD-RAM is that the discs can be formatted/erased/written at over 100.000 times before it will/can cause/report any errors. Let’s try to read back the 2 discs that we wrote:

Lets us take a look at the media we are going to use in these tests.

Maxell 12x rated DVD-RAM media

As we can see, the Optiarc AD-7200A wrote our 12x DVD-RAM media at its maximum rated speed of 12x in 5 minutes and 58 seconds.

Now let’s see if the Optiarc AD-7200A can read our test disc.

The Optiarc had no problems in reading our test disc at 12x.

We then ran a CD-Speed’s Scandisc function to check the disc for errors.

As we can see, the disc has no errors.

Verbatim 5x rated DVD-RAM media

As we can see, the Optiarc AD-7200A wrote our 5x DVD-RAM media in 11 minutes and 32 seconds.

Now let’s see if the Optiarc AD-7200A can read our test disc.

The Optiarc AD-7200A had no problems in reading our test disc at 5x.

We then ran a CD-Speed’s Scandisc function to check the disc for errors.

No problems reported on our 5x DVD-RAM media.

Summary:

The Optiarc AD-7200A proved reliable at both reading and writing our test DVD-RAM media. When using 12x media the drive completed a full disc in 5 minutes and 58 seconds, which should be fast enough for every day backups.

Let’s round off this review with the Authors page, with some real world and advanced tests....

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Author’s page:

Introduction:

On this page, the author of the review has the freedom to run tests that she/he thinks will enhance the review. These tests, unlike our standard tests, which we try to keep consistent throughout the whole review team, so that our reviews are as consistent as possible. This page gives the reviewer the opportunity to show some advanced and real world tests that other review team members may not be able to run.

Real World tests:

Real world tests are designed to simulate what normal users might use their drives for in everyday use. For example, writing discs with a burning application.

Nero Burning Rom:

In the following tests, we will burn discs from the main media groups with Nero Burning Rom.

CD-R:

For our data writing tests, we simply set up a new compilation of 703Mb using Nero Burning ROM software. Writing method used is DAO (Disc At Once), and the disc is set up as a non-multisession disc with “finalize disc” enabled. The screenshot below shows how long it takes to write a disc at the highest speed. (48x)

The Optiarc AD-7200A burned our test CD-R at 48x in 3 minutes and 12 seconds.

Let’s compare with other drives in our table below.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was above average when writing our test CD-R.

DVD R:

In this test we will measure the time for writing to DVD R discs. We used Nero Burning Rom to burn an ISO compilation containing 4483Mb of data. We used the Disc-At-Once write method.

The Optiarc AD-7200A burned our test DVD R at 20x in 4 minutes and 55 seconds.

Let’s compare with other drives in our table below.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was one of the fastest drives when writing our test DVD R media.

DVD DL:

In this test we will measure the time for writing to DVD R DL discs. We used Nero Burning Rom to burn an ISO DVD-Video compilation containing 8103Mb of data. We used the Disc-At-Once write method.

The Optiarc AD-7200A burned our test DVD R DL at 8x in 18 minutes and 54 seconds.

Let’s compare with other drives in our table below.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was about average when writing our DVD+R DL test disc, but we don’t yet have a large enough sample base to really compare.

Standalone DVD-Player compatibility test:

We only have 3 standalone DVD-Players available and 1 standalone DVD-RAM DVD-R recorder to test the DVD+R DL medias (Book Type: DVD-ROM) and the DVD-R DL media (Book Type: DVD-R):      

• Panasonic DVD-RV32
• Panasonic SA-HT520
• Proline DVDP350
• Panasonic DMR-E50 recorder

Compatibility results:

All our DVD Standalone devices played the DVD+R DL media burned by the Optiarc AD-7200A without any problems.

Only one DVD Standalone device would play the Optiarc AD-7200A burned DVD-R DL media without any problems.

We would like to mention, that the compatibility issue with standalone DVD Players/Recorders and the DVD-R DL media format is caused by incompatibilities with the standalone devices used in this review, and not the Optiarc AD-7200A or media format used.

CSS Encrypted DVD-Video ripping tests:

Most modern DVD burners don’t have Video riplock and in most cases will read a pressed DVD-Video SL disc at 16x speed. However, some drives use a CSS riplock when it comes to extracting data from the disc. If you attempt to rip a pressed DVD-Video with CSS encryption to your hard drive, then the ripping speed may be locked at a much lower speed than 16x.

To test this feature, we needed a reference from a drive that we know does not employ CSS riplock. We choose the Optiarc AD-7203A as a reference drive for this purpose and ripped a SL and DL pressed DVD-Video to our hard drive using DVDFab Platinum (full disc option).

We should point out, that ripping and compressing a DL DVD-Video disc to DVD 5 format is quite CPU intensive. The more power your system has, the less likely your system power will affect the results. The PC used in this review is equipped with a fast Intel Quad Core processor and fast hard drives. We checked to make sure our review PC was not having an impact on the results.

Below we can see our reference results.

SL CSS encrypted DVD Video disc “Goldeneye” (Optiarc AD-7203A reference result)

Time taken = 6m:12s

DL CSS encrypted DVD Video disc “The Green Mile” (Optiarc AD-7203A reference result)

Time taken = 12m:43s

Now let’s test the Optiarc AD-7200A using the same testing procedures.

SL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (Goldeneye):

The Optiarc AD-7200A does not employ CSS riplock and the drive performed very well, completing the test in 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

DL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (The Green Mile):

The Optiarc AD-7200A does not employ CSS riplock and the drive performed very well, completing the test in 12 minutes and 44 seconds.

To compare with other drives, we present the table below.

As we can see, we don’t have a large database of results to compare with. But the Optiarc AD-7200A performed very well with this test.

Advanced tests:

To round off this review, we will run some advanced tests on the Optiarc AD-7200A. These tests are: “Sheep Test”, and some special disc tests.

For this test, we will use the Sheep tests made by Alexander Noé. Why is it called sheep test? That’s because the logo of the first 1 to 1 copy program called CloneCD is a sheep. When looking at supported writers, you will notice that the feature list has sheep to indicate if a feature is supported or not. In this case we are interested in the writer’s ability to backup/write weak sectors. Also called: “Correct EFM encoding of regular bit-patterns”.

• No sheep: Can’t backup any safedisc 2 versions without the help of software tricks
• 1 Sheep: Can backup safedisc 2 up to version 2.4x without software tricks
• 2 Sheep: Can backup safedisc 2, including version 2.5x
• 3 Sheep: Can write all possible weak sectors, few if any writers could do this.

One of our forum moderators Womble; has written a guide concerning the “Sheep Test” that can be and be found here.

In the screenshot below taken from CloneCD, we see the Optiarc AD-7200A supports everything.

The Optiarc AD-7200A supports DAO-RAW96 recording mode, which basically means, it can write uncorrected data and sub-channel data.

As we can see from the results, the Optiarc AD-7200A is a two sheep burner.

Overburning CD-R:

We tested the Optiarc AD-7200A to see if it could overburn CD-R media. The results are below.

700MB (80 minute) over-burn test:

The Optiarc AD-7200A reported a maximum overburn capacity of 83:28.18. We then setup a test burn with CD-Speed of slightly less than maximum and burned the disc, 83:20.50 to be exact.

As we can see, the Optiarc AD-7200A had no problems in writing our test disc. Now let’s see if the Optiarc AD-7200A can read back our created disc.

The Optiarc AD-7200A had no problems in reading our test disc.

MINI DVD discs:

In this section we are going to test if the Optiarc AD-7200A is capable of writing and reading mini DVD-RW discs with a capacity of 30 minutes/1.46 GB.

The Memorex media is made by CMC Magnetics.  Thanks to Memorex Europe for sending us this media.

The Optiarc AD-7200A had no problems in writing our test mini DVD-RW disc. Now let’s check if the Optiarc AD-7200A can also read back our test disc.

The Optiarc AD-7200A read back our test mini DVD-RW disc without any problems.

Video-CD disc:

For our final test we wanted to see how the Optiarc AD-7200A would read a Video-CD, for this test we created a Video-CD with Nero Burning ROM 8, and used NERO CD-Speed to read the disc back. Below is our result:

The Optiarc AD-7200A had no problems in reading our test VCD, although the reading speed was locked at 20x.

Disc Quality Scanning:

The Optiarc AD-7200A is able to scan CD and DVD media for quality using CD-Speed. We will now briefly examine this feature.

To start off, we needed a reference scan from our Lite-On LH-20A1L using the same test disc, so we could compare the results.

Lite-on LH-20A1L reference scan:

Lite-On LH-20A1L reference scan

Optiarc AD-7200A 5x scanning speed:

Optiarc AD-7200A 8x scanning speed:

Optiarc AD-7200A 12x scanning speed:

Optiarc AD-7200A 16x scanning speed:

Although the results can’t be directly compared to our Lite-On LH-20A1L scan, the Optiarc AD-7200A appears to have done a reasonable job of scanning the disc at the various scanning speeds. As expected, PI errors increase as the scanning speed increases. It’s a useful feature to have, if you don’t have access to a Lite-On drive for PI/PIF scanning.

This concludes our Optiarc AD-7200A review. To read the conclusion, click on the link below....

Positive:

• Excellent/very good CD-R/RW writing quality.
• Excellent/very good DVD±R/RW writing quality and performance.
• Excellent DVD±R writing quality.
• Can burn selected DVD±R media faster than its rated speed.
• Very good reading performance and reliability.
• Reads pressed DVD Video SL/DL and recordable media at 16x/12x.
• DVD-RAM read and write at 12x
• Supports automatic BitSetting (BookType DVD-ROM) on DVD+DL.
• Very good Audio CD ripping performance and quality
• No CSS riplock.
• Can overburn CD-R media.
• Can read and write mini DVD media.

Negative:

• No BitSetting (BookType DVD-ROM) for DVD+R/RW media.
• Can’t read or write to 100 minute CD-R media.

Conclusion:

Let us summarize the most important positive and negative points below:

The main positive points:

The Optiarc AD-7200A is a blisteringly fast drive as far as writing DVD R media is concerned, recording the fastest ever DVD+R burn in our reviews. Not only were the 20x DVD R burns fast, 18x and 16x burns were also extremely fast.

The Optiarc AD-7200A wrote our tested DVD±R/RW/DL media with excellent/very good quality and is a huge step forward from the Optiarc 717x series drives.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was able to burn all our tested CD-R media with excellent/very good quality and media compatibility was excellent.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was also able to burn selected DVD±R/DL media at faster than its rated speed.

Audio CD ripping performance and quality was very good indeed.

The Optiarc AD-7200A is a reasonably well built drive. Noise levels, even at 20x are not intrusive.

 

The main negative points:

There are not that many negative things to say about the Optiarc AD-7200A.

DVD+R/RW BitSetting would be nice and would enhance compatibility with some older standalone DVD players. This is not a big problem, as there are many firmwares available from the CD Freaks community that support this feature.

We would also like to see support for 100 minute CD-R media.

To sum up, this is what we would say:

“The Optiarc AD-7200A is blisteringly fast when writing DVD±R media and writing quality across all media groups is generally excellent. It’s a must have drive”

We were very impressed by the Optiarc AD-7200A writing quality and performance. We decided to award the drive our “CD Freaks Editor’s Choice Award”.

We found the best price available in the UK at the time of writing the review, to be at E-Buyer. £15.71 Inc VAT.

You may comment on this review below or in this forum thread.

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