CD Speed - New Audio Disc
Now for the CD Speed digital audio extraction (DAE) tests. Our audio tests consisted of two pressed CDs: one new and devoid of visible scratches and another with many scratches (although none that rendered the disc unplayable in a CD player). First, the results when reading the new disc:

Pioneer drive reading new disc

The Pioneer drive isn't exactly a speed demon when it comes to DAE, but it gets the job done, and scores a 10 on quality with the accurate stream box checked.

Philips drive reading new disc

The Philips drive, on the other hand, turns in a much better DAE speed, and still manages to score a 10 on quality with accurate stream.

CD Speed - Scratched Audio Disc
Extracting audio from a brand new disc is the ideal, but what about all of those old, scratched-up CDs in your collection that you'd like to encode to MP3? The scratched disc test presents more of a worst-case DAE scenario:

Pioneer drive reading scratched disc

The Pioneer drive had issues with the scratched CD, erroring out in all trials.

Philips drive reading scratched disc

The Philips drive started out well, then seems to kick it into low when it encounters problems. The 9 on the DAE quality meter shows all was not well.