NU DDW-081/082 DVD±R/RW

 

Reading performance:

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For these
tests we will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD and DVD’s, including
audio discs and DVD-media. As already mentioned in the introduction this drive
sports a specified read speed of 12X for DVD’s and 40X for CD’s.

Pressed
discs:

For this test
we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing PlexTools v1.08 that is exactly 74
minutes long. Below you will see the produced result:

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The drive
reached its rated speed of 40X with a good margin, below is a comparison table
with other drives:

Pressed
Discs

Average
Read
Speed

Start
 Read 
Speed

End
 Read 
Speed

Seek
Times
 Random

Seek
 Times 
1/3

Seek
 Times 
Full

Plextor
PX-708A

31.40x

18.48x

41.45x

98ms

116ms

175ms

LG
GSA-4040B

24.57x

14.68x

32.24x

101ms

125ms

183ms

Mediagear
/
BTC DRW1004

31.98x

19.09x

41.88x

92ms

105ms

164ms

NEC
 ND-2500A

31.00x

17.85x

41.05x

104ms

114ms

166ms

Lite-On
LDW-811S

30.83x

18.04x

40.57x

107ms

110ms

177ms

Pioneer
DVR-107D

30.86x

18.36x

40.76x

122ms

142ms

281ms

NU
DDW-082

32.36x

18.56x

42.70x

114ms

106ms

159ms

The drive was
able to outperform all the other drives, random seek time is a bit high, but 1/3
and full seek times is outstanding!

CD-Recordable
Discs:

For this test
we made a copy of the original PlexTools v1.08 CD. The disc we used was a
Verbatim 48X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemicals
corporation.

 

Nothing
changes here and the result is about identical to reading the pressed disc. The
usual comparison table is found below.

Again superior
reading speed along with excellent seek times, very well.

CD-ReWritable
discs:

Again we made
a copy of the original PlexTools v1.08 disc, this time we used a Verbatim High
Speed (10X) CD-RW disc made by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.

 

The drive
reads CD-RW discs at 40x as well (this is another improvement in the B364
firmware as it reads at 26x max with earlier firmwares).

It nearly
laughs at the other drives as most drives is locked at 32x or lower reading
speed for CD-RW discs. Only the Plextor PX-708A is able to get somewhere near
this drive at reading CD-RW discs. And the seek times is still very
good.

Audio ‘“
Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the
digital audio extraction performance of the NU DDW-082, we again used Nero
CD/DVD-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 about 78 minutes
long (77:56:57).

 

The drive had
no problems with reading the audio disc at full speed and everything seems good,
so let us compare the result with other drives:

Again it has
excellent reading speed and seek times and outperforms all the other
drives.

Below is the
results produced by EAC:

 

Burst mode

 

Secure mode

The drive
performed very well in the burst mode test, but only around average in the
secure test.

Advanced
audio ‘“ DAE quality test:

Before we move
on to testing DVD read speeds we will take a last audio test, this time we used
the ‘Advanced DAE Quality Test” feature in CD-Speed.

 

The extracting
quality should be very good, but we could see that it does not support reading
data from lead-out.

DVD reading performance:

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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
12X.

DVD ‘“
DVD-Video:

For our DVD
reading performance tests we are going to start with single and dual 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.

 

 

As we can see,
the reading speed for DVD-video discs is locked to 6x CAV for DVD-Video discs.
Just for comparison here is some test results from single layer DVD-ROM
discs:

 

The drive had
a few problems reading the disc (Baldur’s gate DVD-ROM), but the disc should be
in good condition and most other drives have no problems reading it. But it did
reach almost 12x at the end; with a full disc it would for sure reach more than
12x.

*Notice that
the disc contains a bit less data than the disc used with the other drives, this
is because the other larger discs we had is made with DVD-ROM booktype and this
may affect the reading performance and thus we have switched over to this disc
with DVD-Video booktype.

It lags behind
many of the other drives due to the lower reading speed of only 6x CAV for
DVD-Video discs.

DVD ‘“ DVD+R(W):

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For this test
we used a Taiyo Yuden 4X DVD+R and a Ricoh 4X DVD+RW with about 4,4Gb of data.
Below are the results:

 

 

The reading
speed was locked to 8x for both DVD+R and DVD+RW, look below for comparison
results.

The drive did
very good again and is only slightly slower than the Pioneer
DVR-107D.

DVD ‘“ DVD-R/RW:

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For this test
we used a Taiyo Yuden 4X DVD-R disc and a Verbatim 2X DVD-RW disc filled with
about 4,4Gb of data. Our test results are found below:

 

 

There are
hardly any differences compared to reading the DVD+R/RW discs.

The drive is
again right up there with the fastest drives.

Overall thoughts:

The drive has
some outstanding CD-Reading performance for all types of discs. It does also
have excellent seek times in most tests.

It’s a good
reader for all types of DVD discs as well, but some of you may find the read
speed lock of 6x for DVD-Video a bit annoying.

But overall it
gets a nice plus in our book for good reading performance and low seek
times.

But now
it’s time to head on to a more interesting part: Writing CD-R
discs…

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