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Review: Optiarc AD-7240S Reviewed by: Liggy Provided by: Sony Optiarc Europe GmbH Firmware: 1.01 Manufactured: February 2009

Sony Optiarc was kind enough to send us the AD-7240S for review. In this review we will be seeing how this drive performs in our tests.

The Optiarc AD-7240S is the first drive to support 24x writing on DVD±R. Besides this it supports 8x/6x writing on DVD+RW/-RW, and 12x DVD±R-DL. The Optiarc AD-7240S also supports DVD-RAM reading and writing at 12x speed.

Company Information

Optiarc started as a joint-venture with Sony and NEC but since December 2008, Optiarc is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony and the AD-7240S is the first half-height DVD burner that was released by Optiarc since then.

Drive Specifications

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The drive

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Now it’s time to take a look at the drive. It was shipped as a bulk version without further accessories.

Drive front

The bezel of the Optiarc AD-7240S is nicely styled. We can also see a few logos, an emergency eject hole, a single green LED and an eject button.

Drive top

Drive bottom

On the bottom of the drive we found one label and we can see the drive was manufactured in China during February 2009.

On the rear of the drive we can see the SATA power and data connector.

The left and the right side of the drive are rather unspectacular.

Now let’s head on to the next page where 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: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R (Intel P35 chipset with ICH9R)
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
• RAM: 4 GB (2*2GB) OCZ PC2-6400U CL5 XTC OCZ2G8004GK
• GFX: Sapphire HD 3850 Ultimate  512MB PCIe
• Sound: Onboard Realtek HD Audio controller
• Hard disk: Samsung HD103UJ
• PSU: BeQuiet Dark Power Pro P7-450W
• Operating System: Windows XP Professional (32 bit) with SP3

Installed software:

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

• Nero CD/DVD Speed
• Nero InfoTool
• Slysoft CloneCD
• Exact Audio Copy
• DVD Fab

System setup:

The Optiarc AD-7240S was connected to one of the SATA ports on the motherboard’s ICH9R controller with the controller set to AHCI mode.

And another screenshot from Nero InfoTool:

From the screenshot from Nero InfoTool above, we can see the Optiarc AD-7240S supports the main media groups. The drive came shipped with firmware version 1.01.

Drive internals:

Now let’s take a look at the Optiarc AD-7240S internal layout.

Internal PCB and drive mechanism

Features and techniques

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PI/PIF Disc quality scanning

Just like previous drives, the Optiarc AD-7240S also supports Disc Quality Scanning with Nero CD-Speed/Disk Speed. However you should be aware that the results of these scans usually show different results than those made with other drives.

16x CAV scan

BookType (Bitsetting):

The Optiarc AD-7240S supports permanent and temporary changes of the booktype for DVD+R DL media using applications like Nero Burning Rom, Nero CD Speed or Imgburn. Changing the booktype on DVD+R or DVD+RW is not supported.

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:

Writing technique

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Now it’s time to take a closer look at the write technology used by the Optiarc AD-7240S.

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

CD Recordable:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7240S, it should be able to write CD-R media at a maximum speed of 48x.

The Optiarc AD-7240S uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 48X. This gives an average speed of 35.13x and a total writing time of 2 minutes and 58 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As we can see, the speed of the Optiarc AD-7240S was about average when writing CD-R media.

CD Re-writable:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7240S, it should be able to write CD-RW media at a maximum speed of 32x.

The Optiarc AD-7240S uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 32X. This gives an average speed of 24.75x and a total writing time of 3 minutes and 58 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As we can see, the Optiarc AD-7240S was a little slower than most other drives when writing 32x CD-RW media.

24x DVD+R/-R writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7240S, it should be able to write DVD+R/-R media at a maximum speed of 24x. According to Sony Optiarc, media from Taiyo Yuden (DVD-R: TYG03 and DVD+R: YUDEN000 T03) is the only recommended media suitable for this burning rate at the moment. Also the drive’s Auto Strategy function independently checks the quality of the media in advance to prevent burning errors and automatically adapts the media’s write speed to compensate for quality fluctuation. Thus in favour of the burning result, 24x speed is not always possible.

DVD+R

The Optiarc AD-7240S uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write DVD+R at its maximum speed of 24X. This gives an average speed of 17.53x and a total writing time of 4 minutes and 11 seconds.

DVD-R

The Optiarc AD-7240S uses CAV, (Constant Angular Velocity), to write DVD-R at its maximum speed of 24X. This gives an average speed of 17.58x and a total writing time of 3 minutes and 57 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As we can see from our table, the Optiarc AD-7240S was by far the fastest drive when writing our test DVD±R media. The noise level at 24x was quite acceptable too and can be compared to that of the AD-7201S at 16x speed.

8X DVD+RW writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7240S, it should be able to write DVD+RW at a maximum speed of 8x.

The Optiarc AD-7240S uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 8X. This gives an average speed of 7.74x and a total writing time of 7 minutes and 52 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc AD-7240S provided an average speed when writing our test DVD+RW media.

6x DVD-RW writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7240S, it should be able to write DVD-RW at a maximum speed of 6x.

The Optiarc AD-7240S uses CLV, (Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 6X. This gives an average speed of 6.00x and a total writing time of 10 minutes and 6 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc AD-7240S gave an average speed when writing DVD-RW media.

8x DVD+R DL writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7240S, it should be able to write DVD+R DL at a maximum speed of 12x. Unfortunately our media was only supported at 8x speed.

The Optiarc AD-7240S uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at 8X. This gives an average speed of 6.21x and a total writing time of 19 minutes and 18 seconds.

8x DVD-R DL writing speed:

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7240S, it should be able to write DVD-R DL at a maximum speed of 8x. Again our media was only supported at 8x speed

The Optiarc AD-7240S uses Z-CLV, (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at 8X. This gives an average speed of 6.19x and a total writing time of 19 minutes and 19 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc AD-7240S was the slowest drive when writing double layer media at 8x.

12x DVD-RAM writing speed

According to the specifications of the Optiarc AD-7240S, it should be able to write DVD-RAM at a maximum speed of 12x. Unfortunately the drive could only be tested with 5x DVD-RAM media due to the unavailability of 12x DVD-RAM media in Europe

The Optiarc AD-7240S uses CLV, (Constant Linear Velocity), to write at 5X. This results in an average speed of 4.85x and a total writing time of 11 minutes and 29 seconds.

We were unable to measure the speed of the drive with 12x media; however the speed with 5x media met our expectations.

Summary:

The Optiarc AD-7240S has a good writing performance on CD-R media and an excellent performance on DVD±R media.

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’s 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-7240S reached 46.61x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The Optiarc AD-7240S showed a good performance when reading our test CD-ROM media. However seek times seem to be a little high.

CD Recordable discs:

For this test we used a Verbatim Super AZO Crystal 52x CD-R that has been fully written with Nero CD-Speed.

The Optiarc AD-7240S reached 48.00x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The Optiarc AD-7240S was among the fastest drives in terms of speed with our CD-R test disc however the full seek times were higher than those of other drives.

CD Re-writable discs:

Again, we used a disc that was fully written with Nero CD-Speed; this time we used a Verbatim Ultra Speed (32X) CD-RW disc made by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.

The Optiarc AD-7240S reached 40.00x read speed. Let’s compare it with some other drives below.

The Optiarc AD-7240S was quite fast reading CD-RW media, but seek times were a little slow again.

100 minute CD-R:

The Optiarc AD-7240S had no problems reading our 100 minute test CD-R, where it reached 48x.

Audio – Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Optiarc AD-7240S, again we used Nero CD-Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used contains a little less data than the disc used for the other tests, to be exact it’s just above 75 minutes in length (75:06:70).

The Optiarc AD-7240S reached 48.41x when reading our test audio disc. Let’s compare it with some drives below.

Due to the read speed being limited to about 40x, the Optiarc AD-7240S was in the group of slower drives when reading our test Audio CD.

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 Verbatim.

The extraction quality is excellent and the Optiarc gives a good average speed when extracting audio. However it cannot read data from the Leadin or Leadout.

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 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)

The Optiarc AD-7240S is not riplocked and read our single layer disc at 16x and our double layer test discs at 12x

The Optiarc AD-7240S was about average when reading our test DVD-Video test discs.

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-7240S was good when reading our test DVD+R media and also when reading our test DVD+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-7240S was good when reading our test DVD-R and DVD-RW media.

DVD±R DL discs:

DVD+R DL:

The Optiarc AD-7240S read our DVD+R DL test disc at 12x reading speed.

DVD-R DL:

The Optiarc AD-7240S read our DVD-R DL test disc at 12x reading speed.

DVD-RAM:

The Optiarc AD-7240S is supposed to read DVD-RAM discs at 12x. Due to the unavailability of 12x DVD-RAM media in Europe, we could only use 5x DVD-RAM media that was read back at 5x.

Summary:

The Optiarc AD-7240S gives a stable performance reading all kinds of media. While it might not be the fastest drive, it’s not really slow either.

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-7240S 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 the 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. For the Disc Quality Scan a NEC ND-3540A drive with firmware 1.04 was used to scan the discs at 48x speed while an Optiarc AD-7201S was used for the Transfer Rate Test.

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 used for Data CDs.

Different drives have different ways of reporting these errors in a Disc Quality scan.

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:

The CD-R tests started with an excellent result. However the end of the disc showed an increased C1 error rate, but it is unclear whether it was caused by the drive or the media and the written disc itself had no C2 errors and was perfectly readable.

C1 error rates are low on this disc again and the read back test was perfect too.

The result with these Verbatim CD-R discs is excellent again. Highly recommended discs for this drive.

Again the drive performs well on these HP branded discs.

The result is good again but error rates are a little higher than what we got from different discs.

Writing Quality with Re-Writable discs:

C1 errors are high at the start of the disc, but overall the result is excellent.

Summary:

CD-R writing quality is generally good to excellent as C1 error rates are mostly low and we did not have a single C2 error. CD-RW writing quality on our tested media was great too so this drive can be highly recommended for burning CD-R and CD-RW media

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 24x 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 amounts of errors, some players are pickier 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 that is probably caused by the layer break.

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 an 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. Due to a bug in Nero CD-Speed we could only measure the first layer of our DVD±R-DL discs.

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 their 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 to be 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 SHM-165P6S with firmware MS0R along with CD-Speed to measure the disc quality. We will also be using the Optiarc AD-7201S with firmware 1.09 along with CD-Speed for our read-back tests.

An excellent result, PI and PIF errors are low and jitter at 9.25% average is acceptable too. These discs can be highly recommended for usage on the Optiarc AD-7240S.

The result is well within the limits and the writing time is very low. Due to the high writing speed the average jitter is a little higher than what we would like to see but still far away from being bad.

No surprises here, an awesome result from the 8x media manufactured by Taiyo Yuden.

In general a good result on these Pleomax discs, but the error rate is increasing a little towards the end but it is nothing that one should be worried about.

While the error rates are still very low on these discs, we have seen better results on other media and would rather go for those discs instead.

DVD+RW media compatibility and write quality:

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

Below are our obtained results.

We would like to see lower PI values in the area that is written at 6x or maybe even using 8x write speed throughout the disc. However the area that was written at 8x gave an awesome result and surprisingly was even better than what we got on many other non-rewritable discs.

Again the result in the area written at 6x speed could be improved a little while it was perfect again in the area that was written at 8x speed. These rewritable discs should be very reliable

Summary:

The Optiarc AD-7240S burns DVD+R media with generally good to very good quality and even at 24x burning speed the results were surprisingly good, however only one media type is certified for burning at 24x speed on the AD-7240S. On our tested DVD+RW media, writing quality was good too but there is still some room for improvement on the 6x writing strategies.

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 SHM-165P6S with firmware MS0R along with CD-Speed to measure the disc quality. We will also be using an Optiarc AD-7201S with firmware 1.09 along with CD-Speed for our read-back tests.

The result is pretty good considering that this media was written 50% faster than its rated speed. However in favour of a higher writing quality you may consider lowering the burn speed to 20x. Also the writing speed of less than 4 minutes is worth being noticed.

Overall, PI errors are a very low but rise a little towards the end of the disc. PI failure count is very low and jitter is good too. These are highly recommended discs for DVD-R.

The result is good but again we can see an increased error rate towards the end on these Pleomax branded discs.

As expected the drive gives a great result on these Taiyo Yuden discs. This is highly recommended media for the Optiarc AD-7240S.

While the PI error rate is still within the limits, it is much higher than what we got on different media. In favour of quality you should use different media instead.

This is another very good result on these Fujifilm labelled discs. One should not expect problems using these discs.

DVD-RW media compatibility and write quality:

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

The result on this Verbatim DVD-RW media is awesome. PI error and jitter rate are very low.

Summary:

The Optiarc AD-7240S generally burns DVD-R media with a very good quality and even the result at 24x is good. Again only one media is certified for this speed and in favour of burn quality, it’s often recommended to lower the writing speed a little.

On our tested DVD-RW media, writing quality was excellent.

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-7240S supports the DVD+R DL/-R DL standard for writing Double Layer/Dual Layer discs with a size of around 8.5 GB at an 8x writing speed.

DVD+R DL:

For these tests we again used CD-Speed to write a full disc. We then used a Lite-On SHM-165P6S along with CD-Speed to test the disc’s quality and finally ran a read-back test on our Optiarc AD-7201S.

There is a PI spike at the layer break, other than this the result is very good and no drive should have problems reading this disc.

DVD-R DL:

We can see another good result on these Verbatim branded discs, even a little better than the DVD+R-DL disc. These discs can be recommended if your other drives are also capable of handling DVD-R DL media.

Summary:

The writing quality of the Optiarc AD-7240S on our tested DVD±R DL media was very good.

Now let's look at DVD-RAM writing performance on the next page....

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DVD-RAM writing performance:

The Optiarc AD-7240S is a so-called Multi drive, meaning that it also supports the DVD-RAM format.

This drive is one of few drives that also supports the DVD-RAM format. Let 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 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 formats.

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. While the drive is supposed to write and read DVD-RAM at 12x speed, this kind of media is not available in Europe. So we had to limit our tests to using 5x speed media. Lets us take a look at the disc we are going to use in these tests.

Verbatim 5x rated DVD-RAM media

As we can see, the Optiarc AD-7240S wrote our 5x DVD-RAM media with an average 4.85x in 11 minutes and 29 seconds which is what we expected on this media.

Now let’s see if the AD-7240S can read our test disc.

The Optiarc AD-7240S had no problems in reading our test disc at 5x.

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

As we can see, the disc has no errors.

In our forum we had reports about some Optiarc drives being unreliable when reading DVD-RAM media. These drives occasionally read wrong data without indicating an error. In order to test this, we wrote a file of almost 4GB in size to the disc and followed this by 6 binary comparisons of the file, but have not encountered a single bit error. However the written disc had a decent quality as you can see from the following scan with the Optiarc AD-7240S itself and the corrupted data that was reported could also be caused by bad discs but this has yet to be confirmed.

Summary:

There were no problems to report with DVD-RAM on our tested media.

Now let's head to the special features page where we will run some 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 are 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:

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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.

Audio Extraction:

For this test we used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to test the drive’s Audio extraction performance. As we can see from the screenshot below, the drive supports accurate stream and C2 error info but does not do caching which is good.

Below are the results produced by EAC:

Burst mode

Secure mode

The Optiarc AD-7240S performed extremely well in burst mode and was a little slower in secure mode, but none the less, was still a little faster than most of our other tested drives in secure mode.

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-7201S as a reference drive for this purpose and ripped an SL and DL pressed DVD-Video to our hard drive using DVDFab 6.0.1.0 (DVD to DVD full disc option with target size matching the source size of the DVD).

Below we can see our reference results.

SL CSS encrypted DVD Video disc “Repossessed” (Optiarc AD-7201S reference result)

Time taken = 6m:12s

DL CSS encrypted DVD Video disc “The Green Mile” (Optiarc AD-7201S reference result)

Time taken = 11m:45s

Now let’s test the Optiarc AD-7240S using the same testing procedures.

SL CSS encrypted DVD-Video (Goldeneye):

The Optiarc AD-7240S is not CSS riplocked and ripped our test DVD-Video SL disc in 4 minutes and 51 seconds.

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

The Optiarc AD-7240S is not CSS riplocked and ripped our test DVD-Video DL disc in 11 minutes and 38 seconds.

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

The Optiarc AD-7240S was pretty fast when ripping our tested DVD-Video media.

Advanced tests:

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To round off this review, we will run some advanced tests on the Optiarc AD-7240S. 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 found here.

In the screenshot below taken from CloneCD, we see the Optiarc AD-7240S supports everything.

The Optiarc AD-7240S 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-7240S is a two sheep burner.

Overburning CD-R:

We tested the Optiarc AD-7240S to see if it could overburn CD-R media. The results are shown below.

700MB (80 minute) over-burn test:

The maximum value that the Optiarc AD-7240S would accept for overburning CD-R media was 92:57.74. We then setup a test burn with CD-Speed set to this size.

As we can see, Optiarc AD-7240S had no problems in writing our test disc. Now let’s see if the drive can read back our created disc.

The Optiarc AD-7240S easily read back the disc that it just wrote.

This concludes our Optiarc AD-7240S review. To read the conclusion, click on the link below

Positive:

• Good to very good writing quality on all used CD-R/RW media.
• Good to very good writing quality and speed on DVD±R/RW/DL media.
• Can burn selected DVD±R media faster than its rated speed.
• Excellent CD and DVD reading performance and reliability.
• Reads pressed DVD Video SL/DL and recordable media at 16x/12x.
• Noise level at high speed still acceptable.
• Supports Bitsetting (Booktype DVD-ROM) on DVD+R DL.
• Supports Disc Quality Scanning.
• Excellent third party support here on CD Freaks.

Negative:

• Does not support Bitsetting (Booktype DVD-ROM) on DVD+R/+RW.
• No disc labelling technique (Labelflash/Lightscribe) included but available on the AD-7241S and AD-7243S models.

Conclusion:

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

The main positive points:

The Optiarc AD-7240S is a very fast drive as far as writing DVD±R media is concerned, with 24x speed reaching lower recording times than any other drive tested on CD Freaks so far.

The Optiarc AD-7240S wrote our tested DVD±R media with generally excellent quality, not a single burn made us worry about the quality

Reading performance and reliability was excellent. The AD-7240S is a very good CD-Audio and DVD-Video ripper.

The drive supports Disc Quality Scanning to give an impression on the quality of the burn.

The drive’s noise level at 24x is still acceptable and it is very silent at 16x.

The main negative points:

Not many negative things to say about the Optiarc AD-7240S at all.

While disc labelling would be nice, not too many people will need it and those who do can get the Optiarc AD-7241S (Lightscribe) or AD-7243S (Labelflash).

Like previous Optiarc or NEC DVD burners, supporting Bitsetting (Booktype DVD-ROM) on DVD+R/+RW is missing but would be really nice and would allow people to create even more compatible discs.

To sum up, this is what we would say:

“With a great writing quality and decent speed, the Optiarc AD-7240S is generally a very good drive”

Some other drives may slightly beat the Optiarc AD-7240S in regards of speed on certain media types or write quality on specific discs. But there was not a single burn with this drive that was not of good or even very good quality. Because of the excellent writing quality throughout all the tested media and the high DVD writing speed, we decided to award the Optiarc AD-7240S our CD Freaks “Editors Choice” award.

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

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