CDR Tests - Page 1

- Procedure

We tested the LiteOn LTR-32123S/Freecom 32A with Nero v5.5.7.0, CloneCD v3.3.2.1 and Padus DJ v3.50.826 software. We used various media for performing our tests: Mitsubishi Chemicals 74/80min 24x/32x certified, Mitsui 74min 24x certified, Taiyo Yuden 74/80min 24x certified, Ricoh 74min 24x certified, Creation 74/80min 16x, Sanyo Digital 74min 16x and TDK/Ricoh/LiteOn's 74min HS-RW. The only 32x certified media we had was from Mitsubishi Chemicals but also other manufactures have 32x media ready. Note that the posted recording times below, are the best we had from our test results. Different media can increase the time differences.

- Recording preferences

As we explained before, the LiteOn drive supports all speeds above 8x. That includes 12x, 16x, 20x, 24x and of course 32x. Many users might be disappointed since the drive doesn't offer lower recording speed than 8x! The drive includes the "Smart-Burn" system in order to prevent buffer underruns but also for checking the inserted media.

The Freecom drive supports 4x, 8x, 12x, 16x, 20x and 32x recording speeds. The drive makes a lot of noise at both 20x/32x recording speeds since reaches around 10.000rpm! The attached FleSS-BP system seems to be needing improvement since most of our written media contained C2 errors.

- Comparison

Before starting the recording tests, let's see how the drives are compared in the writing/rotation speeds. The Freecom 32A is the faster drive for now since it starts writing at 20x (CLV):

As we can see the Freecom 32A starts writing at higher writing speed than the competitor drives and also shifts up to 32x earlier than both LiteOn/Mitsumi drives. That boosts Freecom 32A average writing speed up to 26.86X when using a 80min CD. The LiteOn/Mitsumi drives even have almost the same shifts points, the Mitsumi CR-480ATE is faster by 0.11X:

The Freecom 32A starts writing at the highest -up to now- rotation speed (10.050rpm) which is gradually reduced towards 16mins. The drive makes a lot of noise during the writing process but it's necessary. The LiteOn/Mitsumi drives start rotating at 8.000rpm and don't exceed 8500rpm anywhere during the writing process.

- 74min CD-R Tests

We created a "DataCD" job with data slightly more than 74mins (74:03:65). We burned the same job with all 4 CDR-W drives:

The Yamaha CRW3200E has the lower burning time at 16x (CLV) writing speed. It needs exactly 310secs to end the task. The Mitsumi CR-480ATE follows, while LiteOn LTR-32123S comes third with 315secs and Freecom last with 317secs.

Mitsumi CR-480ATE and Yamaha CRW3200E don't support 20x writing speed option. However the other drives do, so we have a comparison chart :-)

As we can see the PleXWriter PX-W2410A holds the lower recording time with 259secs. The Freecom 32A comes second with 262secs. The LiteOn LTR-32123S and AOpen CRW2440 are last with 266secs. This test shows that Freecom's 20x CLV writing speed is not faster than Plextor's 16-20x Z-CLV implementation...

Let's see what is happening at the 24x writing speed. As we were expected the Yamaha CRW3200E is the faster recorder at this category. The TEAC CD-W524E holds the second place with 11secs time difference. The Mitsumi and LiteOn drives come last with the exact burning time (239secs).

At last we hit the maximum recording speed of 32x. The Freecom 32A is the faster recorder and its time difference varies from media to media. The best result we had was 211secs (3:31mins). The Mitsumi CR-480ATE is slower by 7secs and LiteOn LTR-32123S by 10secs.