detail information

Negative Points

• Not a very complete package, only 1 CD-R and 1 CD-RW
• Bundled media is bad, the CD-RW is not even good for the speed which it is certified for
• Strange issues with reading 99 minutes discs
• Strange behaviour with EAC secure mode
• Sometimes weird behaviour in SAO mode
• Couldn't pass the test for
• 24x CAV rewriting is much slower than 24x P-CAV writing of Yamaha's and Plextor's latest drives
• No manual included
• Compared to Plextor's latest writer, seek times could still be improved
• Noisy when operating at 48x / 52x speed
• SmartBurn didn't detect the maximum speed reliably
• Failed with Cactus DataShield 100

Point you have to decide about whether + or -

• At speeds lower than 52x, recording starts at lower speeds.
  + : You can use media which might explode at 12.000 rpm
  - : slower
• Had a tendency to slow down when overburning at 52x
  + : can prevent coasters
  - : slower
• you get technical support not really by LiteOn
  Hundreds of users usually know more than the technical support department of any manufacturer.
• Nothing like Plextor's PlexTools "single session"-option but the LTR-52246S doesn't seem to need such an option.

The drive performed pretty good in many points. I'm not speaking about 52x CD-R writing. That might even be the least impressive feature, since it gains only a few seconds, while it is noisy and increases the risk of exploding discs. Maybe, discs will not only be "52x certified" in future, but something like "52x, up to 13.000rpm" (less than 12.000 is required for 52x recording).

When LTR-48125W had been launched, its media compatibility was not really good. This does not happen again. The media compatibility of the new drive is impressive, far better than Plextor's. The bundled CD-RW media was not written properly in a Plextor 4824A either at 24x, so it is a bad media issue, not a drive specific one.

Former LiteOn drives didn't read rather many protected audio CDs, which forced many potential customers to buy an expensive Plextor or Yamaha drive, if this feature was required. When firmware VS08 for LTR-48125W had been launched, suddenly more protected audio discs could be read and ripped, letting people hope again that LiteOn is working on this. Now, firmware ZS0P for LTR-40125S, as well as this drive, show that LiteOn did not intend to disappoint us. The LTR-52246S now proves that LiteOn has taken a very very clear position: People are allowed to make backups of their own audio CDs, and LiteOn obviously wants people to have the possibility to do this.

The drive's DAE capabilities are pretty good; it can read audio CDs at 48x speed. Although 52x would have been nice to see, it would only gain a few more seconds, probably at cost of reliability. About the weird issue with EAC, I don't have any idea. When reading discs that require secure mode, I thus recommend you to use CDDA2WAV if you encounter this issue as well.

Fast error skip is about as fast as for former LiteOn drives. It's enough for discs with not too many bad sectors, such as SafeDisc protected discs, but it gets really slow for discs with lots of bad sectors. Remember: The test discs that contains 157.000 bad sectors took 9 hours to be read. Reading a good image of WarCraft 3 using CloneCD still does not work. Thus, it is a good idea to have another reading for some protected data discs.

The package doesn't contain any addons. Just a CD-R, a CD-RW, and a tiny leaflet. If you need any technical support, don't wait for LiteOn to help you. Your way of getting technical support is our LiteOn forum .

Introduction