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eggman · May 7, 2005, 12:40 AM

OK, call me a brat...

I just replaced my G5's origional DVR-106D with a DVR-109. Installation went without a hitch. Tiger recognized the drive. I can burn to it from the Finder and from iTunes.

Wonderful! That's just the way this stuff is supposed to work, no? So, what's my freaking problem?

Just this... the DVR-109 is supposed to be able to burn CD-Rs at 40x... and yet, when using the Finder to burn to a CD-R, the maximum speed option offered is 32x.

Huh? That represents a 20% loss of performance... which isn't insignificant.

So, my questions for the class:

1) Is this an anomaly? Do any folks have the option to burn at 40x?
2) Is there a legitimate reason for this?

One other interesting thing. In Tiger's wonderfully detailed System Profiler, there's a category for Disc Burning whcih lists my new drive's specs... including this amazingly mixed message:

PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-109:

Firmware Revision: 1.17
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Unsupported)
Profile Path: None
Cache: 2000 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW, +R DL
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Burn Underrun Protection DVD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO
Media: No

So, under "Burn Support" it seems to be saying "Yes" AND "Unsupported". I guess that means that it works, but they wash their hands of me? Cute.

Anyways, if you see an extra 8x of CD burning capacity lying around, it's mine. Tiger's misplaced it for me.

bryoung · May 7, 2005, 12:19 PM

I added a DVR-108 and this it wat is says.

PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-108:

Firmware Revision: 1.14
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Vendor Supported)
Profile Path: VendorSupport.drprofile
Cache: 2000 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW, +R DL
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Burn Underrun Protection DVD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO
Media:
Media Type: CD-ROM
Blank: No
Erasable: No
Overwritable: No
Appendable: No

In iTunes i have a max burn speed of 24x. But my main point is that under bunr support it is vendor supported.

B

CIA · May 8, 2005, 03:49 PM

Anyways, if you see an extra 8x of CD burning capacity lying around, it's mine. Tiger's misplaced it for me.

One reason may be the firmware version. You still have it at 1.17, the latest is 1.40. I have a 109 at my house running the 1.40 firmware, I'll check tonight when I get home (in NH to see mom for Mothers day) & look into it's max speed. I don't burn a lot of data CD's anymore since I got my 1GB USB Jump drive.
I know iTunes maxes out at 24x for quality integrity reasons.

Do you have Toast to check what it says is the fastest speed you can burn at?

eggman · May 9, 2005, 12:21 AM

Originally Posted by CIA

One reason may be the firmware version. You still have it at 1.17, the latest is 1.40. I have a 109 at my house running the 1.40 firmware, I'll check tonight when I get home (in NH to see mom for Mothers day) & look into it's max speed. I don't burn a lot of data CD's anymore since I got my 1GB USB Jump drive.
I know iTunes maxes out at 24x for quality integrity reasons.

Do you have Toast to check what it says is the fastest speed you can burn at?

Toast, oddly, gives me inconsistent results: I've had its drop-down menu max out at 52x... and I've also had it only offer me up to 32x. At least once, for certain, I saw it go to 40x. Lord knows what's going on.

If it's an issue of upgrading the firmware, I'm stuck - I don't have a PC to drop it in for doing a firmware flash. It sucks that I just got it from NewEgg 3 days ago and it's already out of date, eh?

bimmerphile · May 9, 2005, 01:51 AM

Have you checked the media that you're using to make sure it's 32x/40x/52x etc compatible?

eggman · May 9, 2005, 08:47 AM

Yep... I'm consistently using media rated at 52x.

CIA · May 9, 2005, 11:53 AM

Just saw on xlr8yourmac.com that the 1.50 firmware for the 109 is out. I tried to DL it but pioneer pulled it off the site. hmmm...
After digging around a bit seems the 109 is sensitive about media, and will only allow 40x on certain brands. I checked in toast and it shows 32x as max for me as well using "52x" rated media. Funny as my Lite-on combo drive DVD/CD-RW will burn the same discs at 48x and it's a much older drive.
Like I said before, I rarely burn data CD's anymore anyway, so 32x is fine for me. Either way iTunes limits it to 24x, and I burn more audio CD's then anything else.

IceEnclosure · May 25, 2005, 03:56 AM

1.50 was released again, damnit, I'm trying to use VPC to update it and it says it can't find my drive. drats.

amazing · May 25, 2005, 11:03 AM

For flashing the firmware: go to xlr8yourmac.com and you'll find links to ways to flash on the Mac. I've used the recommended links to update the firmware on my DVR-108 in a fw-400 enclosure.

As for burning speed: That's dependent on how the drive senses the disks. Firmware updates are to allow drives to work with newer disks and newer materials. Even within a stack of 50, you'll find inconsistent quality and failure rates. And that's on top of the quality differences between brands. Brands are constantly outsourcing to different factories, such that TDKs can come from different places, therefore meaning inconsistent quality from stack to stack. On the PC side of things, there're software that reads the mfg code off the individual disks, so you can tell where it's coming from.

Bottomline, from experience: Even though a manufacturer advertises a certain speed, that doesn't mean you'll get that speed. It's all marketing-speak, did you expect big biz to suddenly discard marketing-speak??? Next, even though Toast will tell you it can burn at a certain speed, if it runs into problems with the disk, it downtrains to a slower speed. Burn time is the only measurement, and unfortunately Toast doesn't report the total burn time (which it really should.)

I've been told there are forums devoted to rating the most consistent disks--which change constantly. For example: The consensus used to be that TDK DVD-R was good. They also follow which factories are being marketed under which brand-name and which is the cheapest and bestest...way too much work for me to follow the whole schmear.

IceEnclosure · May 25, 2005, 11:56 PM

Originally Posted by amazing

For flashing the firmware: go to xlr8yourmac.com and you'll find links to ways to flash on the Mac. I've used the recommended links to update the firmware on my DVR-108 in a fw-400 enclosure.

I've got a DVR-A09 and the Logitec flasher does not apply. Without a PC or modifying one of the firmware updaters that are out, I can't do anything.

people are working on it though.