Is 4x less good than 2X less good than 1X burning?

[daehkcid]

I have a 105 that burns at 4X and have G04 4X media. I stil burn at 1x and have great compatibility, the disc plays on anything. But now im wondering if by jumping to 2X burning will change anything?

[Doom9]

If the drive has an optimized write strategy at 4x, it is likely that such discs will come out better burned at 1x than anything else. Ireally depends on the disc and how much the drive firmware has been optimized to write to a certain disc. At 1x, I doubt many optimizations have been made, but the higher the speed, and the more expensive the disc brand, the more optimizations are usually made (as always there are exceptions and 8x burning still leaves a lot to be desired in many cases).

[daehkcid]

Do you mind if i ask you to explain "optimization" in one sentence?

[alexnoe]

optimize = find out how to configure the laser exactly for writing a certain type of disc at a certain speed

[daehkcid]

Thnx,

So no matter what, 1X is still the way to go..

[alexnoe]

If the drive has an optimized write strategy at 4x, it is likely that such discs will come out better burned at 1x than anything elsedoesn't make much sense to me...i didn't say anything because I read something there which isn't there

[daehkcid]

Yah, that's what mix me up :confused: He prolly meant, 4X both times..

[SomeJoe]

In my experience, the write speed has much less to do with final output error rates than the media quality. And I'm not just talking about the particular media brand, but the particular batch of media you're using.

I routinely check my burns with K-Probe to get a good idea of the write quality. On a given brand & batch of media, I get little variation in the output quality whether that media is burned at 1x, 2x, or 4x. On the other hand, go to a different brand of media, or even a different batch of the same media, and the output may change significantly from the previous brand/batch, yet still be remarkably consistent between 1x, 2x, and 4x writes within the new brand/batch.

I recently ran into a large batch of Verbatim 4x media that had high failure rates. We're talking Avg PI error @ 110, Avg PO error @ 9 (4x writes). Far, far above the normal Verbatim 4x media that typically shows Avg PI @ 20 & AVG PO @ 0.65 (also 4x writes). I talked to Verbatim about it, and they sent me replacement media. Voila, new media batch is back to normal.

Note that this is with a Pioneer A05 drive, the firmware is not standard retail Pioneer, it's a special firmware build that Pioneer did for Primera (the drive is in a Primera Bravo disc duplicator), based on Pioneer v1.21. For other drives or other firmware builds, indeed there could be more pronounced differences in error rates with different write speeds due to firmware optimizations.

[daehkcid]

I also have the same drive ran with a custom 1.33 firmware. How do you test with Kprobe? I heard it's for Lite-On only..

[alexnoe]

BTW, the last C'T dvd recorder test found out that when using a Benq or Philipy 8x DVD+R drive, even 4x and 8x will have the same (high) write quality on Taiyo Yuden and Ricoh 4x media (Verbatim 4x wasn't tested).

[SomeJoe]

Originally posted by daehkcid
I also have the same drive ran with a custom 1.33 firmware. How do you test with Kprobe? I heard it's for Lite-On only..

I bought a Lite-On DVD-ROM drive that's installed in the same machine specifically for testing the burnt media with KProbe. You're correct, KProbe won't run on the Pioneer drive.

[alexnoe]

It also works on LiteOn clones, like Memorex DVD-ROMs.

[Carlos Garcia]

Is there any similar freeware like KProbe that we can use with Pioneer drives?

[idbirch2]

I have to agree with what SomeJoe says - media quality is key here. If you get that right, burning speed really doesn't matter. There was another thread very recently on exactly the same topic here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=73766)

It always seems to get very heated when brought up with some people insisting that lowering burn speed helps and others not. I'm with the latter, knowing for a fact that as long as all your kit is of high quality you can burn at whatever speed you like without problems. (Except in the case Doom9 mentioned - I too have heard bad things about 8x media to date.)

[alexnoe]

One thing: No current drive, except for LG 4081B, should be used with 8x media! Some drives can record 4x media at 8x just as good as 8x media, and the others burn coasters on 8x media....

[daehkcid]

Great, now i feel better burning them at 2x (since even set at 4x it stil only burn 2x on my system.. )

[dvd_maniac]

I was wondering if there is a testing sofware like K-probe that could work on the Sony DRU-530a firmware ver.1.0d? Or can somebody tell me what the best 4x (-) media I can use? By Best, I mean will low error rates...

[alexnoe]

When the C'T tested that drive, it didn't work with any of the tested media (taiyo yuden, maxell, mitsubishi 4x - r, ricoh, taiyo yuden 4x +r, mitsubishi 8x +r).

[daehkcid]

Ritek I'm using and they are very good.

OR i've heard about BeAll.

[theReal]

I have a Pioneer 106 and in the original firmware Pioneer limited the write speed for any non-certified media to 1x

Maybe that makes sense for being on the safe side, however I flashed the hacked firmware version to be able to decide myself if I can write faster with a certain kind of media (it still won't burn 4x on 2x media, but it will burn no-name 2x media at 2x instead of 1x)

[zeszut]

Where can one download K-PROBE?