DVD-RW/+RW Recommendation? ( pref 8x w/ 8mb cache and QUIET)

MagusG · Post by **MagusG** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:16 pm

Is there a recommendation on a quiet DVD recorder, preferably 8x with an nice cache size. Any recommendation or experiences would be great. Thanks.
-Mag

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:30 pm

I'll recommend the Plextor PX-708A...

But wouldn't you prefer to wait for some lower-priced dual-layer burners to become available? I think that's a better investment.

-Ed

MagusG · Post by **MagusG** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:35 pm

Well, seeing as how this is all speculation at this point, you're probabaly right.

-Mag

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:43 pm

Oh yeah and uh...

WELCOME TO SPCR!!!

-Ed

MagusG · Post by **MagusG** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 11:58 pm

Thanks, I've actually posted here before, like last year or something, but I couldnt remember my username(odd since I always use magusg or magusgx) so maybe my account expired or something, I dont know. Anywho, I'm back, and seeing as how my cash flow will increase soon i am interested in quieting my PC, nothing EXTREME. But nice. I may post a thread on my aspirations here in a sec.
-Mag

ChucuSCAD · Post by **ChucuSCAD** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 5:48 am

I really love my NEC 2500a rumor has it that there is a firmware update to make it dual layer, many people have done this and been happy with the results. As for me I havn't done it yet.
My 2500a sits in an antec case behind its closed door when buring. very quiet.

chucuSCAD

MagusG · Post by **MagusG** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:19 am

Hmm, too bad it doesnt have an 8mb cache, that would be icing on the cake. Anyone got a reco that has an 8mb cache?
-Mag

shathal · Post by **shathal** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 10:04 am

LG 4082B

I got it - nice and dead quiet.

Both it, and the NEC-2500A are RPC-1 able...

LG are now definately in my good books.

Jan Kivar · Post by **Jan Kivar** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 11:00 pm

Nec ND-2510, the dual-layer version of ND-2500 is already on sale at NewEgg. Available in beige, silver and black. The only nitpick is the aforementioned 2 MB cache.

AFAIK only Sony and MSI have models that have 8 MB caches. Maybe a lone LG also. And the new 12x Plex.

Cheers,

Jan

ajagodnik · Post by **ajagodnik** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 1:00 am

I just bought NEC2500, it burns CD/DVD quietly.

But when watching a DVD or a DIVX CD it gets loud, just enough to be annoying when watching a movie.

Has anyone similar experience with other/same DVD drives?

Thanks

Jan Kivar · Post by **Jan Kivar** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 6:38 am

ajagodnik wrote:I just bought NEC2500, it burns CD/DVD quietly.

But when watching a DVD or a DIVX CD it gets loud, just enough to be annoying when watching a movie.

Has anyone similar experience with other/same DVD drives?

Thanks

Can't You tame it with Nero DriveSpeed or CDBremse etc.?

Cheers,

Jan

trodas · Post by **trodas** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 11:03 am

I has a LG and Im happy to get rid of it, as it did NOT support the settings speeds, witch is essential for QUIET playback of DVDs!

NEVER EVER ANYTHING FROM LG AGAIN, i wasted too much time explaining to them why speed setting by sowtware is important.

I got NEC 2500A and what a relief! Very quiet, setting speed with DVD playing on the fly possible and working - 2x speed is quite close to absolutely unaudible (!!!) and also reliable drive. No complains.

Dual leayer possible too, as NEC 2510A
http://ax2.wz.cz/nec2510a_1.gif
or HP 520n
http://ax2.wz.cz/HP520n_1.gif

...however no media found and the firmwares yet to have their quirks, so I stay back with what is working - latest RPC1 firmware and what

Highly recommending!

...only one bottom line - nether 2510A or NP520n seems are capable of setting the speed of DVD rotation, witch is an ABSOLUTE MUST for any DVD drive to be silent, so I will be a little bit worried, if the dual layers orginal drives features this or not...

Any volunteer to be guinea pig?

IdontexistM8 · Post by **IdontexistM8** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 2:56 pm

ajagodnik wrote:I just bought NEC2500, it burns CD/DVD quietly.

But when watching a DVD or a DIVX CD it gets loud, just enough to be annoying when watching a movie.

Has anyone similar experience with other/same DVD drives?

Thanks

Unsurprisingly the 2510 is the same, CD playback is noisy, burning is whisper quiet.

I'll have to see if you can alter the settings with Nero..although it's not much of an issue for me because I'd either play a DVD either in my laptop's inbuilt or on my Yamada 6600 DVD/Divx/Xvid etc player.

Destron · Post by **Destron** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 3:55 pm

IdontexistM8 wrote:Unsurprisingly the 2510 is the same, CD playback is noisy, burning is whisper quiet.

That's a shame, it should be the other way around.

RLiu818 · Post by **RLiu818** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 8:35 pm

so any updates on if the 2510 can be speed adjusted to make it inaudible?

tempeteduson · Post by **tempeteduson** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 11:14 pm

The Plextor PX-708A is very quiet according to Maximum PC, and is their current "best of the best" DVD recorder. That is about to change, though, with the introduction of 12X burners from Sony, TDK, and Plextor's own PX-712. Sony has an 8X dual-layer, dual-format burner called the DRU-700, too. (It is their first DVD burner with an included black bezel.) Maybe you should best wait...

Jan Kivar · Post by **Jan Kivar** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 3:32 am

trodas wrote:...only one bottom line - nether 2510A or NP520n seems are capable of setting the speed of DVD rotation, witch is an ABSOLUTE MUST for any DVD drive to be silent, so I will be a little bit worried, if the dual layers orginal drives features this or not...

Ah shite. Is this reliable info?

Maybe NEC will fix it in a new firmware. After all, 2500 and 2510 are (nearly) identical - there are firmwares for 2500 to enable DL burning.

Cheers,

Jan

ajagodnik · Post by **ajagodnik** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 5:05 am

seems that my nec2500 isn't loud

it was MEDIA's fault! I had two DVD's which were really loud, I copied one to another DVD+ and it is now very quiet (as 12x should be), there is no need to change speed

when watchind divx from CD media in nec, I now use "hdparm -E 4 /dev/hdd" (in linux), to set lower speed (4) and again it is quiet as opposed to 40x speed

I didn't know that media had SUCH effect on noise?!?!

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 5:08 am

ajagodnik wrote:I didn't know that media had SUCH effect on noise?!?!

Yeah, if you get a disc that's slightly asymmetric you'll get all sorts of bad vibrations going on when you spin it at ~10,000 rpm.

MajereXYU · Post by **MajereXYU** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 5:51 am

I just bought a BenQ DW-822A and it is a really good burner....

The brand isnt well known but it's starting to gain ground as they offer good drives at ridiculously low prices.

I bought mine for $90cad which is ~$65US

Specs are as follow :

8X DVD+R
8X DVD-R (4X but upgradeable to 8X through latest official Firmware)
4X DVD+RW
4X DVD-RW
2.4 Dual Layer (On September 30th BenQ will release a FREE firmware to gain Dual Layer Support.)

it burns most good quality 4X media at 8X
Pretty silent and quality of burns is good!

Check out one of the reviews :

http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/143

I'm 100% satisfied with mine!

jinu117 · Post by **jinu117** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:54 pm

Nec 2510

Can't complain at all. besides, I have another DVD player that is quiet anyway

Looking forward to $2 dual layer discs now...

(ok... about in a year).

IdontexistM8 · Post by **IdontexistM8** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 2:53 pm

jinu117 wrote:Nec 2510
Can't complain at all. besides, I have another DVD player that is quiet anyway
Looking forward to $2 dual layer discs now... (ok... about in a year).

Been told in the UK the min for DL disks when they are launched later in the summer is £6!! Approx - $11

bigred · Post by **bigred** » Sat Jun 19, 2004 11:14 am

Edward Ng wrote:I'll recommend the Plextor PX-708A...
But wouldn't you prefer to wait for some lower-priced dual-layer burners to become available? I think that's a better investment.

I agree with Ed. A dual layer could be a better investment, but if you need one now Plextor is the way to go, hands down. Nothing beats a Plextor CD burner, and the same rule is proving to be true for DVD burners. The one drawback is the price, if you really don't need the best burner, save some cash and get the NEC.

IdontexistM8 · Post by **IdontexistM8** » Sat Jun 19, 2004 4:01 pm

bigred wrote:
Edward Ng wrote:I'll recommend the Plextor PX-708A...
But wouldn't you prefer to wait for some lower-priced dual-layer burners to become available? I think that's a better investment.
I agree with Ed. A dual layer could be a better investment, but if you need one now Plextor is the way to go, hands down. Nothing beats a Plextor CD burner, and the same rule is proving to be true for DVD burners. The one drawback is the price, if you really don't need the best burner, save some cash and get the NEC.

I'm not sure the gap between Plextor and the leading others i.e. NEC is that large anymore..especially if you are using high-quality blanks like Taiyo Yuden. It may be more noticeable with 'cheap' brands depends how low you wanna go.

Anyway I'll be adding a Plextor down the line when I put my new build plan back on track..

Yeah...I know dual burner overload

EDIT - In a sudden moment of insanity I've just ordered the Plexwriter Premium to stick in another USB enclosure I've got lying around. Worked out that the NEC 2510 and the Premium when you put the prices together actually comes to the price of the Plextor 712a

Getting the best of all worlds

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:43 pm

ALL drives which rotate cds at 40x or faster are loud. Some are just louder than others.

My PX-708a becomes sufficiently quiet if I throttle it down to 10-24x CAV read speed using Plextools Pro (cd read speeds). At stock read speeds it is NOT quiet by any useful SPCR measure.

I suspect NEC becomes quiet at similar levels, because it is on a same quietness level as PX-708 to begin with.

IMHO, LiteOn drives need to be throttled down even further to become quiet (I've tried 851S, LTH-165s).

And bad discs (eccentric) will always spin louder in any drive, because they cause the drives to vibrate.

Jan Kivar · Post by **Jan Kivar** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 6:37 am

Could some owner of Nec 2510 post the available read speeds in Nero DriveSpeed (get it here if You don't use Nero).

Cheers,

Jan

IdontexistM8 · Post by **IdontexistM8** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 6:49 am

Jan Kivar wrote:Could some owner of Nec 2510 post the available read speeds in Nero DriveSpeed (get it here if You don't use Nero).

Cheers,

Jan

Now this might not be 100% accurate as the drive is in an enclosure but it's seeing this

CD - 40x 32x 24x 20 16x 10x 8x 4x
DVD - 7x 4x(6566) 4x(5408) 2x 1x

Jan Kivar · Post by **Jan Kivar** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 7:01 am

IdontexistM8 wrote:Now this might not be 100% accurate as the drive is in an enclosure but it's seeing this

CD - 40x 32x 24x 20 16x 10x 8x 4x
DVD - 7x 4x(6566) 4x(5408) 2x 1x

Thanks, that was fast!

What about when You put a CD-RW in? A review @ cdfreaks.com says that both audio-CDs and CD-RWs are read only at the max. speed. This was on a NEC ND-2500A, and maybe Nec fixed it with a new firmware.

Cheers,

Jan

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 7:20 am

Something possibly worth waiting for is the upcoming 16X DVD+R Pioneer that also burns DVD+R9 (not sure what speed; probably just 2.4X, but 4X would be dandy!).

-Ed

IdontexistM8 · Post by **IdontexistM8** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 7:24 am

Jan Kivar wrote:
IdontexistM8 wrote:Now this might not be 100% accurate as the drive is in an enclosure but it's seeing this

CD - 40x 32x 24x 20 16x 10x 8x 4x
DVD - 7x 4x(6566) 4x(5408) 2x 1x
Thanks, that was fast!

What about when You put a CD-RW in? A review @ cdfreaks.com says that both audio-CDs and CD-RWs are read only at the max. speed. This was on a NEC ND-2500A, and maybe Nec fixed it with a new firmware.

Cheers,

Jan

I don't have any audio CD-Rs or CD-RWs to hand but with a regular pressed audio CD you can't seem to alter the overall speed. The selection of speed to 4x only appears to be for each track. So you'd have to select it again each and every time...Not helpful

EDIT - Just tried Plextors Professional with it and although once again in the drive settings the same thing occurs again in Winamp, using the apps in built player you can get playback 4x.

Ok not much help if you haven't got Plextools but it is blissfully quiet.

Perhaps someone else knows an alternative way round it?