Pioneer have produced a new variant on the DVR-107: the long awaited and fancy retail box models which come available in black and silver. Although the drive has not yet reached the UK, details can be found on the Pioneer's Japanese website.

The basic tests on this drive are featured on CD-DVDs.net.


The Ivory White DVR-A07XL


The Piano Black DVR-A07XL


The Retail Boxes for the DVR-A07XL

Smart Laser Driver:
The principle of DVD-R/RW recording is that laser writes a series of pulse signal at optimal power, which we call it Multi-Pulse. As the increasing recording speed, the write pulse is more frequently so that the transmission of recording signal should be more precise. Pioneer has moved the circuitry onto the Pick Up, and this is named a Smart Laser Driver

Liquid-Crystal Tilt Compensator:
In order to eliminate the low precision caused by slanted or uneven thickness discs, Pioneer has used the unique "Liquid Crystal Tilt Compensation" system to solve this problem. It provides accurate, reliable READ/WRITE performance with a variety of disc characteristics. With the Liquid Crystal Tilt Compensator active, irregularly curved or thick/thin media is compensated for.

Ultra Dynamic Resonance Absorber, Ultra DRA:
It absorbs vibration caused from imbalanced media. This stabilizes the media for higher quality writing and for quieter read performance, even at high speed.

Quiet Drive:
When the disc rotates at the higher speeds, sweeping wind noise level becomes more audible. To dampen the level, the DVR-A07XL employees a honeycomb chassis to lessen the noise vibration by making the top of the case more ridged. Additional pads are placed internal side of the shell.

Performance Adjusting Firmware:
It can be automatically adjusted between Quiet mode and Performance mode with user input. This satisfies both needs of quiet operation and maximum performance in one drive. With the Performance Adjusting Firmware, the drive will automatically adjust its rotational speed to best suit for performance & quiet mode. The drive plays audio at slower speed, though it rotates at higher speed when music or data is read or copied to the hard disc.

When the CPU issues requests for the drive for data supply its requesting interval is different when CD audio and/or DVD video play and data retrieval such as CD audio/DVD video copying on the hard disc. The former is slower (CD:127msec, DVD:26msec) than the latter(CD:10msec, DVD:12msec). The smart firmware will wait about 7.5 seconds to switch to the relative mode.

Manual drive speed control is possible by the Pioneer Quiet Drive utility, and can save the setting to the firmware.
With the honeycomb chassis and the firmware, the drive noise is reduced by 75%.

Added:  Monday, March 08, 2004
Reviewer:  Flash

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