CD-R burning is still very frequently used by consumers for making audio CDs. While CD burners were able to achieve 52x and higher recording speeds, the complexity of DVD burners restricted speeds to either 40x or 48x. Not surprisingly, the lowest four drives in this recording test were all rated at 40x speeds while the top seven all had 48x listed speeds.
The surprising results from the tests was the amount of variation in the recording speeds of the 48x drives. The fastest drive, the LiteOn SHM-165H6S was able to finish recording a full 80-min CD-R disc 39 seconds faster than the Sony DRU-820A model. It was roughly a full minute and ten seconds faster than the slowest drive, the ASUS DRW-1608P. Still, many consumers may not notice much of an overall difference in time between these drives in everyday use.
Playback speeds all ranged from 40x to 50x in speeds. The fastest reading drive also was the LiteOn drive. In terms of access times for searching for data on the CD-R media, the Plextor PX-760A and Samsung SH-S162L both achieved below 100ms for random access tests, much better than their rated access times.
