Code:
$ time dd if=/dev/wd1a of=/dev/null count=1000
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
512000 bytes transferred in 0.014 secs (34434057 bytes/sec)
0m0.02s real 0m0.00s user 0m0.00s system
$ time dd if=/dev/rwd1a of=/dev/null count=1000
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
512000 bytes transferred in 0.140 secs (3634144 bytes/sec)
0m0.14s real 0m0.00s user 0m0.07s system
Ok, first this was fun now it's embarrassing
This litle raw vs block issue also seems to have solved my "poor" performance on vlc (at least for dvd playback)