CDRLabs.com

This is an unofficial review.
Ian is working on the offical review.

Well, I got my drive at noon today.

I only had about 3 hours to install and test it, as I'm on nights tonight.
I also had to let the drive warm up for about an hour as it snowed here again overnight and was still cold when the drive arrived.

There's more testing coming in the next few days. My present night shifts are cutting into my testing time.


As you can see, it's got the 6S02 firmware. It supports Mt. Rainier & C2 errors.

The retail box contained: the drive, a 24x cd-rw disc, a 52x cd-r disc, Nero software disc, audio cable & mounting screws. The drive and contents were in a small box, but were packaged quite nicely by Lite On!

The install was easy. I simply removed my old 16x10x40x LG drive and slid the Lite On into its place.

I powered up, and it was detected right away by windows in My Computer.
DMA was still enabled.


I did a few read tests to make sure the drive was warming up nicely.

1st read test was with an audio cd:


That's Jimmy Buffett's "Barometer Soup" CD. Note how the speed drops off just before the end. I tried another disc: Roger Waters' "Amused To Death". It's 72+ minutes and it did the same thing at the end of the disc.
I'm not too sure what's going on with that.

Next up was reading a data disc:

That's the SP2 update disc for MS Office 2000.

Next up: writing discs!

I wanted to make a test disc with the branded Lite On cd-r that came with the drive. It was not marked with a speed rating, but Nero recognized it as a 52x disc.

So I fired up Nero's CD Speed program again and wrote a 700mb data disc.


Notice that it took a whopping 2:28 seconds from start to finish!

Now you're thinking, great you can burn really fast, but what about quality?

How's this?


Here's the ATIP from that 52x Lite On branded cd-r:

ATIP:97m 26s 66f
Disc Manufacturer: CMC Magnetics Corp.
Reflective layer: Dye (Short strategy; e.g. Phthalocyanine)
Media type: CD-Recordable
Recording Speeds: min. unknown - max. unknown
nominal Capacity: 702.82MB (79m 59s 71f / LBA: 359846)

I was impressed to say the least.

So I tried it again. This time I used Nero and made a compilation of 706mb and overburned it onto 16x rated PNY disc. I was surprised when 40x was the automatically suggested burn speed! It's only a 16x rated disc. I thought, why not? You guessed it. Perfect. Even at 2.5x it's rated speed!

Well. Can it get better?

On to Ultra Speed CD-RW!

After the experience with several cd-r's being perfect even at 2.5x their rated speed, I was anxious to try out the included 650mb Ultra Speed cd-rw.
Here's the ATIP from the cd-rw:

ATIP: 97m 27s 12f
Disc Manufacturer: Plasmon Data Systems, Ltd.
Reflective layer: Phase change
Media type: CD-ReWritable
Recording Speeds: min. unknown - max. unknown
nominal Capacity: 656.10MB (74m 41s 00f / LBA: 335925)

Or if you like Nero's Medium Information:


So I burned a 24x cd-rw data disc.

Notice that it came up just short of 24x, but not by much!
The total burn time was 4:57

Great! It's burns cd-rw lightening quick, but how about the disc quality?



A picture's worth a thousand words!

I was stunned.

So, I full formatted the cd-rw disc and tried a compilation burn from in Nero.

All seemed to go well:



Note the true burning speed indicated: 23.7x

The disc verified too! It's looking better!



So, how was the quality this time?


Wow. I'm still stunned.

It's looking like the Ultra Speed disc may be crappy.
I'm going to try it with both 16x & 10x writing speeds and see if that makes a difference. I'm also going to get a pack of Verbatims later this month when I'm in Florida. 24x cd-rw discs are not yet available in Canada.

I have also ordered a 100 spindle of 99 minute discs from www.yesbuy.net, which I'll be picking up in Florida later this month. I'll post both the 99 minute disc results and the Verbatim's results in the 2nd weekend of December (when I'm return home).

As it stands, the drive supports the following burn speeds:

CD-R:
52x
48x
40x
32x
24x
16x
8x
4x

CD-RW:
24x
16x
12x
10x
4x
2x I tested it at 2x. It works.

The drive does not support 1x cd-rw speed

I've noticed that some of my older 12x cd's are limited to a 32x burning speed. Now that's quite a value on the dollar! Most of my 16x are getting either 32x or 40x.

I plan on getting some 48x Fuji's in Florida to try out.

Correct EFM: I was able to back up MS Combat Flight Simulator 2 (Safe Disc 2.x) with it. But I haven't had time to fully test it today. But it looks as though EFM is supported.

I see one of the pictures is not working.

I'll upload them to a better server shortly.

Spazmogen wrote:I also had to let the drive warm up for about an hour as it snowed here again overnight and was still cold when the drive arrived.

Living up north and you didn't buy the winterization package with the block warmer?!? What were you thinking?!?!

Spazomgen wrote:cfitz: Those ugly 16x, Smart Buy cd's you like, will burn at 40x!

Oh yes!!!! Long live the spazzed-out Smart Buy bug-dude!!!

On a more serious note, I hate to see the troubles you are reporting so far. I haven't done any CD-RW testing on a modern CD-RW drive, so I wonder if CD-RW's never burn as well as regular CD-R's. There was a thread around here where some people were reporting that they don't use CD-RW because they have been burned (no pun intended) too many times by CD-RW failures. I fall into that same boat. Three to four years ago when I first purchased a CD-RW drive, I did use CD-RW media because at the time there was an economic incentive to do so. But they all became unreadable in very short order, so I lost confidence in them and switched to CD-R only. And with the way CD-R media prices dropped, I have never looked back.

That drop in speed while reading is odd too. I don't recall every seeing a smooth roll-off in speed like that. Usually the drive shifts to distinctly lower speed when it encounters problems reading a disc.

cfitz

I wonder if my Memorex 52Maxx will yield better results that these esp. in audio ripping. It is afterall a name brand, so I expect it prolly will!

Awesome review Spaz!! It really answered a lot of questions I had. The CD-RW side is kinda dissapointing but I agree with cfitz. Looking at the price of CD-Rs, an average user doesn't need a lot of CD-RW burning unless you're backing up regularly and updating the backup.
The CD-R quality is just amazing. 0% damaged at 52x proves all those people wrong who criticized the need for 52x speeds.
Looks like Lite-Ons got a big winner in this drive. Thanx again for the quick review.

Robotnik, Isn't the Memorex a rebadged Lite-On??? Then how can it yield better results?

coolestnitish wrote:Robotnik, Isn't the Memorex a rebadged Lite-On??? Then how can it yield better results?

Different firmware?

Robotnik wrote:I wonder if my Memorex 52Maxx will yield better results that these esp. in audio ripping. It is afterall a name brand, so I expect it prolly will!

You might be onto something there, Robotnik. Perhaps Spazmogen should peel off the little "www.liteonit.com" adhesive label stuck to the front of the drive, and tape a "Memorex" label in its place. I just got a Memorex 48x24x48x, so I'll volunteer to cut the "Memorex" label from the box and send it to Spaz. Of course, that might limit the top speed of Spaz's drive to 48x since my drive is only the 48x variant. Maybe you should send him the label from your box when it arrives.

Actually, your humor does bring up a small point. I believe that some resellers of LiteOn drives (like Sony) use firmware that is slightly different (beyond just the identifier string) than that used in a retail LiteOn drive. But I think the Memorex firmware (again with the exception of identifier string) is the same as the retail LiteOn firmware. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

<edit>I have confirmed that the firmware is identical. See my follow-up below ( http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 8950#38950 ) </edit>

cfitz

man this thread is giving me one more reason to update my lite-on 48x to the 52x, besides, there dirt cheap, for like $75 at newegg.com

Ian, can there be so much difference in Lite-On and Memorex's firmware that one has a lot better results in something like CD-RWs?? I used to think all those rebadged models would have very similar firmware.

either that, or people are lying about there drive being better, even though they use the same chipset, and a lot of times firmware

coolestnitish wrote:Ian, can there be so much difference in Lite-On and Memorex's firmware that one has a lot better results in something like CD-RWs?? I used to think all those rebadged models would have very similar firmware.

In my test, the Lite On was only 2 seconds faster than Ian's Memorex drive in his mini preview. But then I had a 52x rated disc, Ian had a 48x disc.

As for cd-rw, my Lite On was about 14 seconds slower, but the disc is of questionable quality as well.

I guess the jury is still out.

Ian wrote:

coolestnitish wrote:Robotnik, Isn't the Memorex a rebadged Lite-On??? Then how can it yield better results?

Different firmware?

Nope, I don't think that is it. I downloaded the LiteOn 6S02 firmware and the Memorex 6WS2 firmware from the links Ian provided and compared them. Aside from the drive identifier strings, there are only a few bytes of difference between the two.

One difference is that the 6S02 firmware has a '6', 'S', '0' and '2' where the 6WS2 has a '6', 'W', 'S' and '2' - this simply reflects the difference in the names of the two binaries.

The other difference is that the 6S02 contains the strings "XF036" and "XF037" while the 6WS2 contains the strings "XF037W1" and "XF037W2". These strings appear in the same section of the firmware where the identifier strings are, so I think they also are simply identifiers.

My conclusion? The Memorex and LiteOn firmware are functionally identical, with the only difference being in the identifier strings.

That brings us back to Robotnik's comments and my follow-up. The only real difference between Spazmogen's drive and the Memorex is the label. Spazmogen, should I break out my scissors?

cfitz

Nice work Spazmogen.

Did you set the CD Speed for 52x? I found out it had a default of 50x.

Like you, I also had some problems with the supplied CDRW media. At least yours still works. Mine is hosed.

I got a max transfer speed of 53.29x which I guess isn't too far from exploding CD territory.

Action Jackson wrote:Nice work Spazmogen.

Did you set the CD Speed for 52x? I found out it had a default of 50x.

Like you, I also had some problems with the supplied CDRW media. At least yours still works. Mine is hosed.

I got a max transfer speed of 53.29x which I guess isn't too far from exploding CD territory.

How did you set the CD speed? I haven't changed a setting. Everything is default.
I found the suggested burning speed really varied wildly depending which brand & type of disc was used. Some discs were 12x but burned at 32x. Others were 16x that were great at 40x.

As bad as the cd-rw disc is, Nero was able to verify the data that was on it!

That 52x CMC disc was fantastic!

I'm going to try a few burns with Smart Burn disabled and see what the difference is.

Spazmogen wrote:How did you set the CD speed? I haven't changed a setting. Everything is default.

Under "File", goto "options", then "Transfer Rate". You'll see it. I found it makes a difference in the benchmark results. I was a little concerned that I couldn't get it close to 50x originally.

Spazmogen wrote:That 52x CMC disc was fantastic!

Yup. I wish I had more of them. Know where I can get some?

Spazmogen wrote:I'm going to try a few burns with Smart Burn disabled and see what the difference is.

I tried it with HP 16x media [TY, same as my Maxell 24x]. I figured, well, if I'm going to kill the media, then kill it all the way at 52x!

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7204

Spazmogen: Let me know how fast you can burn the Smart Buy and older 12X discs you have error free on the drive. You said the Smart Buy discs *will* burn at 40X, but I don't know if you tried yet.

cfitz wrote:Perhaps Spazmogen should peel off the little "www.liteonit.com" adhesive label stuck to the front of the drive, and tape a "Memorex" label in its place.

Try this one

Although it would sort of defeat the purpose of 24X CD-RW, I wonder if recording at 16X would produce a disc with significantly less errors (not a sea of yellow and red). That would be as interesting as seeing the results with the Verbatim Ultra speed CD-RW discs.

Joker

Joker wrote:Although it would sort of defeat the purpose of 24X CD-RW, I wonder if recording at 16X would produce a disc with significantly less errors (not a sea of yellow and red). That would be as interesting as seeing the results with the Verbatim Ultra speed CD-RW discs.

Yes, that would be interesting, particularly if the 16x setting is CLV. 16x CLV isn't much slower, on average, than 24x CAV.

cfitz

BillyG wrote:Try this one

Why didn't I think of that? I've got to get away from this postal mail dark-ages type of thinking and join the 21'st century...

What I really want to know now* is where is Robotnik? He started all this and then just walked away from the wreckage...

cfitz

*this one's for you, Tolyngee

Just a few things I like to add (maybe a little too late in the discussion. but I was away for a few days...)

First of all, 5:30 doesn't seem like 24x to me (when writing the ultra speed cd-rw). Taking so long it can only mean that the SmartBurn kiked in and limited the writing speed (so the disk might have been bad).

And second, due to a big need of free space on my hdd I had to write quite a few cd-rws not long ago. I used Traxdata 4x(74min) and 10x(80min), Primedisc 10x(74 min), Memorex 10x(80min). Did the scandisk test on all of them (I allways do) and it was only green. On all of them. And it wasn't the first time I had used these cd-rws. The Memorex had quite o few scratches and was used more than 30 times (just to give you an ideea). So, I can say that the cd-rw disks (at least the high speed ones) are quite reliable.

DaBlacK wrote:First of all, 5:30 doesn't seem like 24x to me (when writing the ultra speed cd-rw). Taking so long it can only mean that the SmartBurn kiked in and limited the writing speed (so the disk might have been bad).

It's using CAV though. It's probably not going to be as fast as say a drive that writes to a CD-R using 24x P-CAV or 24x Z-CLV.

DaBlacK wrote:...I had to write quite a few cd-rws not long ago...Did the scandisk test on all of them (I allways do) and it was only green. On all of them. And it wasn't the first time I had used these cd-rws...So, I can say that the cd-rw disks (at least the high speed ones) are quite reliable.

i concurr.
green. super green.

cfitz wrote:Yes, that would be interesting, particularly if the 16x setting is CLV. 16x CLV isn't much slower, on average, than 24x CAV.

i belive 16x CLV would be faster than 24x CAV. on a full disc, much more so on a disc that is not the full 650MB.

a question: does it rewrite at 16x CAV or 16x CLV ?

dodecahedron its 16x CLV