detail information

Reading performance:

For these tests we will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD's, including audio discs. As already mentioned in the introduction, this drive supports:

• CD-ROM : 52x 
• CD-R : 52x
• CD-RW : 42x

Pressed CD-ROM:

For this test we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD that is close to 75 minutes long. Below you will see the produced result:

The Lite-On SOHR-5238S reached 51.50x and will actually go beyond 52x on larger discs as we see later on in the read tests. Let's compare the result in the table below with some other CD-RW drives:

The Lite-ON SOHR-5238S performed very well, reading a pressed CD-ROM, it was faster than all the other CD-RW drives, seek times were also good.

CD-Recordable Discs:

For this test we made a copy of the original Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD. The disc we used was a Plextor 48X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Taiyo Yuden.

Once again the Lite-On SOHR-5238S performed very well on CD-R's. Showing a good turn of speed and good seek times.

CD-Recordable Full Disc:

This time we created a full 80 minute disc using Nero CD-Speed's 'create data disc" function and read back the resulting disc. The media for this test was a Plextor CD-R, rated at 48x manufactured by Taiyo Yuden

As we can see from the results, this drive is a very fast reader, reaching a maximum read speed of 53.51x, with an average read speed of 40.36, and reading the full disc in an impressive 2 minutes and 4 seconds.

CD-Rewritable Discs:

Again, we made a copy of the original Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD; this time we used a Verbatim Ultra Speed (32X) CD-RW disc manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.

As we can see from the screenshot above, the Lite-On SOHR-5238S is locked at 42x reading CD-RW. Let us compare it to other drives below.

As we can see, the Lite-On SOHR-5238S wasn't as fast as some of the CD-RW drives, but once again the seek times were very good.

Audio - Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Lite-On SOHR-5238S, again we used Nero CD/DVD-Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used was 78 minutes 53 seconds in length.

Once again the Lite-On SOHR-5238S performed very well on our Audio-CD read test.

For our final read test we used Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to extract the audio to our hard drive. According to EAC the Lite-On SOHR-5238S supports Caching. This feature can cause some problems when extracting Audio from an Audio CD.

Below are the results produced by EAC:

Burst Mode

Secure mode

The drive performed extremely well in burst mode and only marginally slower in secure mode.

Advanced Audio - DAE Quality Test:

To conclude our reading tests, we will take one last audio test, and this time we will use the 'Advanced DAE Quality Test" feature in CD-Speed. For this test we used a CD-RW Audiophile media from EMGETON (Thanks to Bell Technologies for sending us this media).

The extracting quality is excellent and it should support everything that is required of the drive.

Overall Thoughts:

The Lite-On SOHR-5238S is an excellent reader; it passed all the reading tests with flying colours and proved to be a fast and reliable reader.

Now it's time to head on to a more interesting part: Writing CD-R and CD-RW discs…