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OC-Freak,

This is one of the best reviews I've ever read on any burner.

Your research is in-depth, your methodology is spotless and your reporting is clear and informative.

A lot of so-called reviewers out there should read this review to learn from it.

Congratulations are in order, I tip my hat off to you my friend, I'm really impressed!

83bj60

Thanks, it's just what I need to hear.

This is my second review, I've added some tests that was requested after having done my first review.

So keep the suggestions coming and I'll see if I could included them in my next review, if I have the required equipment/test discs needed that is

OC-Freak, there is hardly any more you can do IMHO to make this better, but here's something you might look into:

How about establishing as a standard test the writing quality of a burner on a the worst media you can find, like you did on the Fornet disk on page 6, to see how well it [b]really[/b] burns (using the CD Speed Scandisk function)?

That test could help better establish, by extrapolation, the true writing error rate of a burner, which is not ordinarily possible without expensive BLER testing equipment!

Of course, you'd have to find out and stick with a 'worst quality blank' standard, for all burners but as I know you, you probably already know from experience... :D

One thing that would be greatly helpful is if manufacturers would supply testers with their quality control parameters so that variance may be established: how relevant can we expect these test results to be as applied on the general poulation of the other devices of the same production run? Food for thought!

Anyway, thanks for the great review, man, your input is invaluable!

Thanks again for your fantastic work!!!

83bj60

Fornet International discs will be my disc standard for low quality disc testing, since I got hold on some more.

But there is different low quality brands out there and writers may choose different speeds/calibrate different, which means som low-quality CD-R disc brands will work and others not depending on the writer and speed that the media detection system pick.

One hell of a review!

This is the way all reviews should be.

Could you please put a review online of the 40x Lite-On. It is even better than the 32x.

Would have done so long time ago......but I've still not received the drive!!

Hi Namoh,
You said the 40x Lite On is even better than the 32x. Why do you need a review for this drive then? :9

Nice burner i bought one
it's fast

I have the 40x Lite-on Writer, and all i gotta say is it ROCKS. I have a TON of games, programs, etc. and have backed them all up sucessfully with this drive using CloneCD V4.0.0.0 Beta, and the longest the drive took reading any of the Protected CDs was about 25 mins. Great Drive for the price!! (payed $98.00 and change)

Tot Burner. Can Burn AMD 800 sytem all my music cd 's on 32 speed. Before al lot of problems with Philips. Can understand how they can make this good writer for little money.

Ive just purchased the 40 Speed version, and very new to this technology. My system is running XP Prof, what application/system software should I use to produce backups and are there any good sites regarding backing up DVDs to SVCD/VCD?

As you can tell, I am very GREEN in this area, and would like to avoid any pitfalls... such as firmware probs, XP system updates etc.....

Cheers

1st i would like to agree with 83bj60 that your review was clear and informative.

I also purchased the Lite-on 32x but mine doesn't recognises different mediatypes. I have the LTR32125W running with W2k Prof, Nero 5.5.8.2 and WBS3 firmware.

In your test most mediatypes could be burned at 32x and were readable. So far i've burned 3 different kinds of mediatypes but not 1 is readable at the speed that Smartburn gives me.

The Nashua (700 mb) claims 24x but Smartburn gives me 32x. The actual succesfull writingspeed was 12x.
The Sony (650 mb) claims 16x but Smartburn gives me 24x. Actual succesfull writingspeed was 12x.
The Maxell (700 mb) claims 24x but Smartburn gives me 32x. The actual succesfull writingspeed was 16x.

Am i doing something wrong? Is my drive defect? The highest succesfull writing speed was 16x!!! I don't mind if can't burn at 32x but give me at least 24x. So far no succes.

Help!

My LTR-32123S doesn't work with Nero 5 on XP. The program can't see the CDR drive for some reason. Easy CD Creator 5 fails to load.

Maybe I need a better driver. Where can I get it? The mfr website is useless.

This was a great and thorough review. One question though...are all those tests available with the Nero suite that comes with the drive? I've seen most of them, but haven't really been able to find where Nero lists all the features that the drive supports.

As far as the writing speed goes, I have been backing up all my Audio CD's to maintain my originals. I've been able to write at 4x with the 32123S and firmware XSOU. This review mentioned the drive only burns at 8X minimum. I wouldn't dare burn audio any faster. For fun I burned at full tilt and didn't get any noticable clicks, but listening carefully I could here some hissing...it was very low though. 4x burning for audio seems to be the most reliable for making a good duplicate of your CDs.
This was a kick ass review...very well done. Thanks for having it available for those who don't buy bleeding edge hardware!

after reading this review i went out and bought one and i have to say that its great!:4 i haven't had a single problem or quibble with it yet! highly recommended!

hi all, a lot of you might not now this but you have to turn off windows own cd-recording software in windows xp to be able to use your drives properly...