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why don't you try NOT defining what other people feel makes a burner better? Everyone has different oppinions and is open to them, the reasons behind those opinions can be debated, but when it comes down to it, everyone has their own choice.

I think LiteON is better, plain and simple. There are arguments for and against this, does it make it wrong? to you yes, to another person, maybe not...but does that affect me? no.

To me, the "best burner" is the one with the best combination of speed, features, write quality, and price. This is what was in my mind when I wrote my previous post.

LiteOnGuy Wrote

To me, the "best burner" is the one with the best combination of speed, features, write quality, and price.

I agree now can we stop this argument or do I have to sing.

Music: This is the Song That Dose Not End
Lyrics changed to the following.
Stanza one and all folowing stanzas since the song repeats it self in an endless loop.
This is the argument that will not end, it keeps going on and on and on,
It stared inocently enough but now it has gotten out of hand.
Repeate from the begining.

The reason I am gettin so aggrevated is because you peeps dont seem to clasp the meaning of "BEST", not "BEST PRICED".

If we were talking about whats the "BEST" car, would you say for example a Honda Civic is the "BEST" car, because a Civic is good quality and good value for the money??

Or would you say a BMW is the "BEST" car?? I mean, it costs twice as much, but do you get twice the car?? (Debatable)

So when we say "BEST", it is different from saying "BEST PRICED", that is my point.

For "BEST PRICED/PERFORMANCE" it would be the LiteON.

But for "BEST" , there is just no way can be the LiteOn. Just because there is nothing that the LiteOn has that is "better" (again, not talking about price) than the Plex Premium.

Also about features like Gigarec and Securec on the Prem, just because those are features that "you" particularly dont use doesnt automatically default the drive to be compared to a drive without for the "BEST" title. The "BEST" title drive would be a drive with more features that when people do buy a drive, it will have those capabilities for whenever he/she/it decides to use them.

The "BEST" title drive would be a drive with more features that when people do buy a drive, it will have those capabilities for whenever he/she/it decides to use them.

That's a silly deffinition. So you buy whatever has the most bells and whistles regardless of whether you will ever use them? You buy it just because it has the bells and whistles? If the prices are equal, then of course you would, but that is certainly not the case here. Obviously, a small minority of folks do want those gizmos, but for the rest they have no value. The argument is whether the drive is a better drive, not how many gizmos it includes.

ok, I'm getting really tired of this, but:

*YOUR* definition of best is not the same as *MY* definition of best. Everyone looks at different things, and yes, there are things that the LiteON does better then the Plextor Premium. There is no supreme ultimate drive that rates the highest scores in every single field.

I would have considered a Lite-On, except every single review, and almost every comment by users states the drives are loud. That to me ruins the drive, as I used to have a loud cdrom drive and hated every minute of it.

The Plextors are way overpriced in my opinion also. I own a Plextor too, an older model (1210a). Its work good for me, but currently their drives are twice any other drive in cost.

After I got my 1210a many months ago, there was a lot of anger at Plextor for changing their firmware so that you were no longer able to copy certain protections (many people assumed they made some secret deal), Plextor denied it. I no longer trusted Plextor due to that.

and almost every comment by users states the drives are loud

most of these comments come from people who have not owned a high-speed drive before. There is no such thing as a drive spinning at 10,000 rpm that dos not make some noise. They are certainly quieter than the 12x writers I've had that did not have vibration-damping. I do not call any of my LiteOn drives "loud", and my Asus is "louder" than the LiteOns.

I have to agree with rdgrimes, LiteON's aren't really loud for what they do, and you can always slow them down. The only drive that can really get much quieter then the same speed LiteON drive is a Plextor Unit... to be honest I'm not sure it accomplishes this, nor doI understand the reasons why it is a feature you can enable/disable...??? if it really works well, with no drawbacks, wouldn't you want it on ALL the time???

My Plextor drive, even when reading and writing at 52x, is much quiter than my old LTR-48125W, my Aopen 48x12x50, and my LTD-163D. I must add, that the Lite-On drives are a ton quiter than the Aopen.

If you really want a really quiet drive, wait, and save up for the Premium, which is quiet, and you can always use SilentMode to make it quieter. If you just want an average noise drive, get a Lite-On.

aviationwiz: any docs on the SilentMode?

When I decided to upgrade from my old Plex 8432 (a very reliable drive, BTW), my choices came down to Lite-On and LG. I went with LG because of the loudness factor. Several reviews of Lite-On drives I read mentioned how loud their drives were, so for me it was the GCE-8520B, and it has performed flawlessly for me with nary a whisper.

from the PlexTools Professional 2.04 help/manual:

Silent Mode:
This function allows you to change various settings of your drive in order to get a noise-free or silent operation.

Max Write Speed: sets the drive’s maximum write speed.
Max Read Speed: sets the drive’s maximum read speed.
Access Time: sets the drive’s access times as follows:
Fast: 60 ms
Middle: 80 ms
Slow: 120 ms
Tray Speed: changes the Loading and Eject speeds of the tray between 2 (Low) and 6 (High) seconds.

ahh! ok, so it just slows the drive down. I have to say, I think the tray eject time options are a nice touch.

I had thought there might be something more to it, but I guess I was wrong.

the control over the access times is a nice touch too.

dodecahedron wrote:the control over the access times is a nice touch too.

true! and not something any other drive offers either I believe (???).

so what happens if you set the read speed really low, and the access time to really fast?

I know this thread has been dormant for a week or so, but I hope you won't mind me resurrecting it.

rdgrimes wrote:If I had to choose? no "Premium". LiteOn 52327S without a moment's hesitation.

rdgrimes, since you posted this you've gone on to do some very extensive tests on the 52327S yourself. Do you still feel the same? How does talk of the 52326S effect your preference?

I'm totally clueless about C1 & C2 errors. Higher numbers are bad, right? (How high is bad enough to worry about?) What I really want to know is... are these errors something that firmware can & will correct?

I am on the verge of buying a DVD-ROM drive and a CD-RW drive. I've decided on the LiteOn LTD-166S DVD drive, but I'm undecided about the CD burner - it'll be the 52327S, the 52246S or the ASUS CRW-5224A.

If you were me, what would *you* choose, and why? Please help me decide.

(Incidentally, how come ASUS doesn't rate a mention in this debate? I see a lot of LiteOn vs ASUS debate, and LiteOn vs Plextor debate.)

I hope you'll take the time to help this desperate newbie!
Thanks, in advance.

How does talk of the 52326S effect your preference?

There is no 52326S drive, and never will be, according to "inside sources" at LiteOn.
I have all of the drives you're considering, my preference would be:
52327S, then 52246S, then Asus. But it really depends on your intended use. The Asus excells in reading/ripping speed, but has issues with burn quality. My Asus is currently a paperweight.
As to your questions about error scans, if you choose the Asus drive it is academic cause it doesn't work with any current testing tools.
Lower is better with errors. Only a year or 2 ago, we were used to seeing C1 rates in the 100-500 (max level) range, but media and drives have improved enormously to the point where we often see C1 max under 10.
No amount of C2 is acceptable, although a disc with C2 is still readable most of the time.

Thanks for the speedy reply! And thanks for the insight.

I'll happily ignore any claims of a 52326S, if you say so. It simplifies my decision to only have three drives to consider.

As for the ASUS... I'm getting conflicting opinions (LiteOn vs ASUS debate ), but since I'm leaning towards LiteOn anyway, I'm happy to fall that way. From what you say, the ASUS isn't what I'm after. I'll be using the 166S for reading/ripping (which I hear it's good at). I want my burner to be reliable and fast.

Regarding error scans, I'd be interested to test my current drive - Iomega ZipCD 650 24x/4x/4x. The drive has performed well enough - not too many coasters, but a few game backup failures (eg, NOLF2). But I would hope that the numbers would be off the chart, thus putting to rest my concerns about the 52327S's error scans.

How about the effect of firmware on error scans?

How about the effect of firmware on error scans?

Depends on the firmware, some updates have no effect, others do. We have learned to expect steady improvements in the LiteOn F/W updates, but sometimes they make things worse, so you have to wait and see. In any case, the changes are small. Mostly they improve compatability with specific media. Interpreting error scans is something of an art, but for general purposes, lower is better. You can burn most of the common 48x media at 40x on any of these drives and expect very acceptable results.

OK folks, help me out here. Here's my big-a$$ question, from a guy who is not all that tech savvy with hardware:

About 4 years ago, on the advice of some CDR live music traders when I began trading myself, I bought Plextor drives to read and burn. They advertise (and most folks in the community agreed) that they do flawless DAE. I tried EAC but it took HOURS to burn a single disc at 4x. So I just used my SCSI Plextors, and because I was nervous about the copy quality, I DID listen to the first many shows that I copied and confirmed that over and over, noise was not introduced. After that I stopped listening to the copies, but never got a single complaint or question (I always delivered with an inventory of known glitches from my originals).

This was when I was trading heavily 4 years ago or so. I've been out of the scene since then and am just now getting back into it and getting myself up to speed with the newer technology. So I have a few questions and would love some answers from all you knowledgable people.

1.) If I upgrade to a faster burner but one that is (E)IDE rather than SCSI, is it likely that I will have to refrain from multi-tasking while I burn? I used to run Win98 with a 333MHz Celeron and 64MB RAM; I now run WinXP pro with a 1.66 GHz AMD Athlon and 512 MB RAM. Should this boost in power allow me to multi-task without destroying the quality of my burn or creating constant buffer underruns?

2.) How long should I expect it to take to extract a 74 min audio CD to the HD using the proper EAC settings? What are people's experiences? Is it ridiculous that it took so long for me to get a flawless burn from a CDR at 4x?

3.) Any recommended burners for these needs? I'd like to get something reliable but hopefully not as expensive as my SCSI Plextors were. I AM MORE CONCERNED WITH DAE QUALITY THAN ANYTHING ELSE, BY FAR. Speed is a distant second place for me. I'm trying to get music turned around quickly, but it has to be flawless (or if this is technically imposible, at least flawless to a good ear).

Thanks a lot in advance for any help anyone gives. I'm really eager to get back into the trading scene and want to do it right without killing myself!

Alan

is it likely that I will have to refrain from multi-tasking while I burn

No problems

How long should I expect it to take to extract a 74 min audio CD to the HD using the proper EAC settings

Most current burners will do this at 40x-48x with no errors. With verifying, 5-7 min.

LiteOn 52246S is a proven performer, as are the LiteOn DVD-ROM drives. Many people use a DVD and burner combo.

Those are the speeds to expect with EAC running in Secure Mode? Or are you saying that burners such as the LiteOns you mentioned do flawless DAE on their own and don't require Secure Mode or any EAC at all? If the latter, how have you (or others) verified this? Sorry, just want to know what I'm doing before I start sending bad discs around...thanks a lot.

I'm not familiar with EAC, I use the freeware CD-DAE from Nero. Just ripped a 71 min audio CD in 4:30, reading twice and verifying...no errors.
I rip and burn audio at 40x and have never seen a "bad disc".