ACD CD-ROM and DVD Drive Performance and Benchmark Tester

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The CD Tester - CDDA Benchmark Program measures your CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and system performances while playing audio CD's through measuring Digital Audio Extraction (DAE). DAE is the method used to gather access to audio data in an audio disc. The faster and more problem-free your CD/DVD can read digital audio, the more reliable the program which makes use of DAE, will be. CD Test Benchmark Program measures the speed of the DAE and the CPU usage during this operation. Many low end to middle performance computers are affected by DAE that it is almost impossible to perform other tasks on the computer during DAE operations.
Also if the system's CPU is slow, the quality of the digital audio can be
adversely affected by "drop outs".

The CD Test Benchmark Program is capable of two kinds of tests. One type
accesses and measures memory space and the other uses the WAVE output device. By selecting the "Output Device" you choose which tests you want to perform. The tests differ and they are both usefull to find out if your system is ready for and capable of DAE.

1. Memory Space

The memory space test, reads data from your drive as fast as possible into
a memory buffer which is flushed once it is full. This gives you the theoretical
maximum speed with which your drive can read digital audio data.
The test results are affected by a variety of system characteristics, but the most important ones are the CD/DVD DAE Speed and the IDE/SCSI burst transfer rate, the system's main memory WORD transfer rate and general operating systems performance. So the final test results are an average performance benchmark of all these parameters.

2. Wave Output

The WAVE output test is used to measure the performance of the whole
digital system of your computer, meaning the DAE speed and the soundcard
output performance.

On some systems, WAVE output affects the overall system performance by
decreasing the processing speed of the system. This test's main target is to
measure the CPU usage at a 1:1 DAE while the sound buffers is being sent
to the wave output device. At a 1:1 DAE, the CD/DVD should be able to copy
digital audio at 1X (one times speed). That means the system is keeping a constant 176,400 bytes/second transfer rate.

If your system fails this test, is most likely that your drive is using
Jitter Correction, which affects the DAE quality/performance. It is likely that
your CD-ROM or DVD Player is therefore not suitable to be used with Vaap's ACD Advanced CD Player digital range, or similar products from other vendors.
In this case, you should not use a CDDA digital audio CD player, but
instead select an analog solution such as Vaap's ACD Standard Edition
Advanced audio CD Player.


The following are the minimum systems requirements:

CPU : 486 Class or higher CPU
16 MB Ram
CD-ROM / DVD Drive
Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0 or later
A working copy of Adaptec's ASPI Drivers or a compatible clone (such as
Microsoft ASPI Drivers).


Test Results

The test results show if the drive is capable of digital audio
extraction (Can Read CDDA), if it can read ISRC Codes and if it can seek
exactly the requested track (eg. not using Jitter Correction).

The benchmark is performed on 30 seconds of CDDA data, and when you start the
benchmark, make sure you have a audio cd on your drive. Note that trying to
benchmark the audio device output with a data cd, will result in some
disturbing high frequency sounds.

The DSP Usage indicator should indicate values between 80 and 100% indicating
a good flow through of the internal digital signal processing routines.

Finally the program reports the CPU usage during the benchmark and the
minimum and maximum DAE speed obtained.

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