detail information

The specifications of the Lite-On SOHW-1673S state that the drive is able to write CD-R discs at 48x. Let us find out how the drive really performs in speed and quality.

Writing Data CD-R discs:

Let us first take a look at the CD-R write technology used by the Lite-On SOHW-1673S:

As we could see, the Lite-On SOHW-1673S uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write at its rated speed of 48x, this gives an average speed of 37.38x. This seems to be right where it should be for a 48x CD-Writer.

The Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9 uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write at its rated speed of 48x. This gives an average speed of 36.38x.

As we could see the Plextor PX-712A uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) writing strategy to reach it rated speed of 48X. This gives an average speed of 36.43x.

And as a last test we wrote a disc containing 700Mb using Nero Burning ROM software. Writing method used is DAO (Disc At Once), and the disc is set up as a non multi-session disc with 'finalize disc" enabled.

The Lite-On SOHW-1673S used 2 minutes and 47 seconds to write the disc at 48x. Let us see how this compares to other drives:

Compared to the other writers capable of writing at 48x there is only seconds in difference.

Write Quality:

We will test CD-R discs from a total of 8 different CD-R manufacturers. To really measure the write speed, we used the 'create data CD" function in Nero CD-Speed. The discs were written at the maximum speed that the drive supports. For the quality test, we used K-Probe 2 which is a tool developed by a Lite-On employee. It runs under Windows and works with drives made by Lite-On. Also note that different drives and different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the discs. We used a Lite-On LTR-52246S drive with firmware 6S0F and scanned the discs at 48X speed.

A written CD-R disc will always have some C1 errors; C1 errors are easily corrected by the drive's error correction capabilities. The next level of errors is C2, while C2 errors could also be corrected by most drive's error correction capabilities; they are not wanted on a good quality disc. A good disc should not contain any C2 errors, and preferably have an average C1 error amount of below 2.0 for the best discs, or at least below 10.0 average for good quality discs. After C2 errors there are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

Why wait any longer? Below are the obtained results:

CMC Magnetics is not known for making the best CD-R discs, and the result is not so good, there are even some C2 errors near the end.

The quality near the end was so poor that the LTR-52246S slowed down while scanning, end scanning speed was 20x. Which is very disappointing performance in this test.

Good quality with Mitsubishi/Verbatim media - but works at 40x only. This is probably the reason why it works so well.

Again we see the same problem - error increase towards the end. Not good!

Well, what can we say? It's not the result we are used to.

And it continues, errors rise near the end.

Again - problems at the end.

The only disc type recorded at 48x that did not have C2 errors. But we could still see a noticeable increase in C1 errors near the end.

CD-ReWritable:

The Lite-On SOHW-1673S supports a CD-ReWriting speed of 24x, let us see how this compares to other writers. Let us start with taking a look at the writing strategy it uses:

The Lite-On SOHW-1673S uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its rated speed of 24x, this gives an average speed of 22.58x. This seems to be about average compared to other drives, but let us include some other results for comparison.

The Pioneer DVR-107D uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its rated speed of 24x, this gives an average speed of 22.47x.

The Plextor PX-712A, with its P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity) write speed of 24X for Ultra Speed CD-RW discs is among the faster writers due to its high starting speed of 21.12x.

And we did also write a disc in Nero Burning ROM, the compilation we made was 650Mb large and we wrote the disc with the Disc At Once write method.

The Lite-On SOHW-1673S used 4 minutes and 6 seconds for writing the disc at 24x, let us compare this to some other writers:

The slowest drive of them all, partly due to a bit slow Z-CLV writing strategy. But let us take a look at the writing quality with two CD-RW discs.

There are no C2 errors, still not the best result we have seen with this disc type, but we have seen much worse results as well..

Low quality discs, and as we could see the result is not good at all.

Summary:
Well this is the first surprise in this review, after having produced excellent CD-Writers for several years… How could they mess up the CD-Writing quality so badly? Almost every disc had C2 errors at the end and overall this drive is a very poor CD-Writer! NOT the way to go Lite-On :@

But after all, it's a DVD-Writer, so head on to next page and read about DVD-Writing performance and DVD media compatibility…