Pioneer DVD 106S

...hardware.

The Pioneer DVD-106s is by no means a budget piece of hardware. Anyone interested in stereo and audio equipment in particular will already know that Pioneer have an extremely fine reputation for producing high quality, high performing goods. Ok, they may not be the cheapest in the world but when it comes to branding and performance, I'm a bit of a snob lol and will always try to buy the very best I can afford at the time. ...
...doing), the people down at Pioneer Central have come up trumps with this again, the DVD-106s, that they claim to be superior to many other DVDs on the market with a similar price range and spec.

My pre-buying findings and experiences
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After a few bad experiences in my early PC days, I always research product ranges fully before making a purchase of a new bit of ... more

As an aspiring computer scientist, it's probably bad form that I've done only 1 computer opinion in my history of Ciao. Maybe I'm worried about giving people wrong information, or information that is too complex or irrelevant - but I thought ah bugger it, it's time for some hardware reviews and to give the binary boys something to shout about.

The thing about looking for hardware reviews on the net is that there are quite a few pitfalls. You might firstly have trouble finding any vaguely in depth review of the product at all and if you do, the review is generally of poor quality unless it's done by a professional from a reputable site. If this is the case, and you stumble across a random review on an unknown site, you'll have someone writing a half hearted paragraph that tells you nothing about the product's in depth performance and if you do stumble across a pro site, only the latest hardware is generally included on such sites so unless you're looking to build something of a beast of a computer, you won't find the info on the more budget hardware.

The Pioneer DVD-106s is by no means a budget piece of hardware. Anyone interested in stereo and audio equipment in particular will already know that Pioneer have an extremely fine reputation for producing high quality, high performing goods. Ok, they may not be the cheapest in the world but when it comes to branding and performance, I'm a bit of a snob lol and will always try to buy the very best I can afford at the time. We see now then, that this highly reputable manufacturer of stereo separates and speakers have decided to branch out into the world of computers - with this, one of their latest DVD drives available.

Always at the forefront of technological breakthroughs, (Pioneer recently developed the first DJ CD turntable that could fully emulate a vinyl deck, which would suggest that these guys certainly knew what they were doing), the people down at Pioneer Central have come up trumps with this again, the DVD-106s, that they claim to be superior to many other DVDs on the market with a similar price range and spec.

My pre-buying findings and experiences
-------------------------------------------------

After a few bad experiences in my early PC days, I always research product ranges fully before making a purchase of a new bit of hardware for my comp and would strongly recommend anyone else thinking of upgrading anything to do with your PC to do the same. There were a number of DVD drives on the market that had the latest 16x DVD read speeds available, the more well known of which being offered from Toshiba and Yamaha. After some price checks, I found that the Pioneer 106s tended to weigh in around the centre of the price spectrum, with the Toshiba lying towards the lower end and the Yamaha placed at the other extreme.

Upon a search of the web for reviews of this product, I was unable to find virtually anything that tarnished the reputation of the 106s, reading articles that sung its praises on the aesthetics, installation and performance of this drive. Being also swayed by the reasonable price tag (I paid £63 inc. VAT for the OEM version of this drive, more later on that), I decided to go with the majority and furnish my PC with this little beauty.

OEM vs Retail model
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Generally whenever you buy hardware for your PC, drives in particular, you have to make the choice as to whether you want to buy the OEM or Retail version of the product. So, what's the difference?

Broadly speaking, the differences are as follows: OEM stands for Original Engineer's Model and basically means that you will get the bear bones product, wrapped in anti-static foil in a cardboard box along with a fold up sheet of paper acting as the instruction manual. If you buy the Retail version (places such as PC World will obviously tend to sell this version), you'll get a pretty box to store the product in, any software needed to run it, all the necessary leads and a colourful manual that will tell you anything you wanted to know about installation and usage.

For the reasons illustrated above, you'll tend to pay quite a bit more for the Retail version of the product, in the case of the 106s, I think DABS (www.dabs.co.uk) charged £63 for the OEM and around £75 for the Retail model. I personally didn't see the point of paying the extra to get leads that I already had an a manual with pretty pictures telling me how to put in a drive, but I'd say that for those who don't have an abundance of spare cables and screws lying about, as well as those not used to fitting components yourself, it'd be worth paying that extra bit of cash for piece of mind and more detailed guidance.

It's worth noting that I've read around and the actual performance and internal parts of the drive in each case (OEM and Retail) are identical, so you won't be making any compromise in that area when you make your decision as to which version to opt for.

General product spec
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Here is a general overview as to the specification of the Pioneer DVD-106s:

A slot loading CD/DVD unit (that is what the s stands for in the model name, but a tray loading version is also available)

Eject button (no "Next track" button on this one I'm afraid)

Headphones jack with associated volume control

Connections:
Standard 40 pin IDE connection (for attaching to motherboard's IDE port with an IDE data ribbon)

Power supply connection

CD audio out (to connect the DVD drive to your soundcard and thus get audio from CDs and DVDs)

Note: The audio out on this drive is a standard analog signal connection, the DVD-106s does not come with a Digital audio jack, although the Toshiba 16x DVD does, so if this is important to you and your soundcard supports it, check that out as well before making your choice.

Performance:
16x DVD read speed

40x CD-ROM read speed

Note: I'll supply more detailed performance info in the benchmark results section later if it is of interest to you.

Installation
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As with virtually any CD-ROM/DVD drive, installation is quick and simple and the DVD-106s is no different. Just connect the data port on the drive to an IDE channel on your motherboard, supply it with power from the power supply unit inside your PC case and hook up the audio out connection on the drive to your CD audio in connection on your soundcard and you're away. Screw the drive into place within its holding bay with a screw keeping it stable at each corner, turn on the computer and the drive will be automatically detected by Windows if all connections are ok and everything has gone to plan. The DVD-106s does not need any drivers installed for operation within Windows, although if you want to use it within DOS and have bought the OEM version, you'll need to download the DOS drivers from the Pioneer site.

For documentation files/drivers and general support try:

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/Pioneer/CDA/ServiceAndSupport/SelfHelpForIndDet/1,1457,2271,00.html

Note: The above is an overview of ease of installation, not a guide that should be followed to the letter to install the drive from scratch. If you are unsure as to the procedure, always consult the documentation and remember that in general upgrading your PC is your own responsibility regarding what you change and what consequences may arise.

First impressions
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My first impressions upon using the drive were very good. It was extremely quiet in comparison to other drives that I have owned and seemed nippy enough when reading both CDs and DVDs. The audio quality it supplied was crisp and clear (although understandably your soundcard and speakers will enter the formula) and the drive looked good within my PC's tower case. The slot loading mechanism seemed reliable and took no getting used to whatsoever - there is no worry of this being overly susceptible to dust and dirt as the narrow entrance is protected by what feel like fine fibres. All the same, you should regularly clean your drive's lens using a CD-cleaning disc that can be obtained from most record and computer shops.

The Pioneer was quick to react with auto-run and CD recognition after a CD had been inserted and the deliverance of DVD graphics and sound was very good with no excessive noise or freezing up due to laboured reading speeds or poor buffering of data.

Benchmarking information
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For those of you that are at all interested lol, I've run some tests on this drive with a benchmarking utility (GPBenchCD)) to get a more detailed picture of how the 106s performs. These tests basically obtain accurate statistical information on the drive's behaviour and performance, but it's worth noting that they are very rarely constant - that is, the figures can depend on the operating system, software used and the hardware that is installed along with the drive, so keep in mind that these figures should just be seen as relative estimates when placing them alongside other models.

My system:
I performed the tests using GPBenchCD software as said above, running the tests on an AMD Athlon 1.2GHZ CPU with 256MB of PC1600 RAM and a 40GB, 5400 RpM IBM Deskstar hard disk. The operating system was Windows 98 second edition and a full 80 minute (700MB) disc of data was used.

Sequential read:
This basically took the disc and read the complete contents of the data from start to finish. Sequential read tests the speed at which the drive can read sequential data from a CD - usually illustrated by installing software from a CD for instance.

The drive actually started reading data at 20x, half the quoted maximum read speed. This is normal as many drives tend to accelerate towards their maximum speed as they read more and more data. The 106s hit maximum speed (40x - approx. 6MB per second) after reading around 80% of the data supplied. This to me would seem to suggest that you're going to have to continuously read a large amount of data from a disc to obtain maximum speed. An average speed of around 30xish would seem to be fair and this compares roughly with other drives on the market.

Random seek:
This test is used to mimic the process of a program requesting a random piece of data from the disc - i.e., not necessarily requesting sequential data. The 106s did very well on this front, averaging around the 78ms mark - pretty fast in comparison to other 40x models.

Digital audio extraction:
In basic terms, this is the process of taking an audio CD and extracting each song from the disc into CD quality MP3 format to be stored on your hard disk. Using Easy CD-DA software, working on a single 12 minute track and having optimised the software to get the best out of the drive, extraction rates averaged out at around 6.5x. I know that it is possible to get higher speeds of extraction from the drive but haven't yet figured out how to tune the software to allow this.
However, when extracting to CD quality WMA file format, the drive climbed to speeds well over the 8.5x mark during the extraction process.

Conclusion
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Again note that the above values are extremely sensitive to the test system and environment so they may vary elsewhere.

Conclusion
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At the end of the day, I stress that I'm no hardware expert, but after all those figures, what does the verdict boil down to? We're looking at a quiet and efficient drive here, that performs well and lives up to the expectations that Pioneer have placed upon themselves for high performance and durability. It is easy to install and in my opinion excellent value for money. The technical support section for this drive on the Pioneer site looks very comprehensive and they appear willing to answer any queries by phone or email if the answer to your question doesn't lie on the site or in the instruction manual.

Highly recommended.

Cheers for the read
Craig - April 2002

PS: for a professional outlooks in a more controlled testing environment, check out sites such as:
www.cdrlabs.com
or
www.tomshardware.com

 

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