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Page 3 - CD Quality Tests

Regular Testing

	CD-RW #3 - 1st Burn @32x:
	And now we come to the second burner that I used to test out these new 32x CD-RWs. As you can see, the LG-8525B has done quite a good job of burning this media compared to the Plextor Premium, although the results are still a little higher then I would have hoped for. However, it is important when dealing with CD-RWs, to not just look at the first burn, but also at the next several burns and re-burns, to gain an overall opinion of the quality that we can expect when matching this media to this drive. Let's take a look at how this media holds up after a few more recordings...

	CD-RW #3 - 2nd Burn @32x:
	CD-RW #3 - 3rd Burn @32x:
	CD-RW #3 - 4th Burn @32x:
	CD-RW #3 - 5th Burn @32x:
	As you can see, the scores for this media dropped instantly after the first burn! And despite both quick and full erasing of the CD-RW, the quality never returned to the same level that it was at when the disc was burned for the first time. Also, take a look at the thick spike of C1 errors between 10min and 30min mark... this large spike is caused by when the burner switches from burning this CD-RW at 16x (from 0min-10min marks) to 24x (from 10min-30min marks). Because it is mainly this one area (where the disc is burned at 24x) that is having significant quality issues, I believe that a simple firmware update may be able to fix this problem in the future. So if firmware 1.03 ever comes out for the LG-8525B drive, it may be worth checking to see if it's fixed!

	CD-RW #3 - 6th Burn @24x:
	Since the LG-8525B offered the ability, I thought I'd try burning these discs at 24x and 16x as well. The above scan was done on the disc after it was burned at 24x. As was noticed before, all the portions of the disc (especially the 10min to 30min range) were much higher in C1 errors then one would ideally hope for. You would think that burning the CD-RW slower then its' maximum speed would increase its' burn quality, but in this case the opposite is true! Let's see how it performs at 16x now.

	CD-RW #3 - 7th Burn @16x:
	As you can see, the overall quality of the burn really improved when the disc was recorded at 16x... but I ask you this: Who wants to buy a 32x CD-RW just to burn it at 16? I think I'll leave it at that. Now let's see how this media performs under the cascade test!

Cascade Testing

	CD-RW #4 - Cascade - 1st Burn @32x:
	As you can see, even early on in the cascade test, you can still see the problems arising when the burner switches to burning the disc at 24x from 16x. It appears that the LG burner has a real problem with burning CD-RWs at this speed...

	CD-RW #4 - Cascade - 2nd Burn @32x:
	CD-RW #4 - Cascade - 3rd Burn @32x:
	CD-RW #4 - Cascade - 4th Burn @32x:
	CD-RW #4 - Cascade - 5th Burn @32x:
	I think that these results do not come unexpectedly to most. They pretty much match the same burn quality we've come to expect from this media in combination with this burner. At the same time, the fact that the results are no worse then under regular burning conditions speaks very highly of the media! Still, the amount of C1 errors is daunting!