Optical recording apparatus

Several drives individually carry out recording and playback with a reference medium that serves as a reference for quality for various media, obtaining characteristic values. The characteristic values are multiplied by a predetermined coefficient to obtain thresholds, and the thresholds are stored in predetermined storage areas of the respective drives. When information is to be recorded on a medium, recording and playback are carried out with the medium under a plurality of recording conditions involving variation in power or pulse width, thereby obtaining characteristic values. Then, an approximated curve is obtained from the characteristic values. The quality of recording on the medium is tested based on an amount of margin that is determined according to positional relationship between the approximated curve and the threshold.