Lite-On LTR-24102B IDE CDR-W - Page 4

DAE Tests

Test Method:
We used CD DAE 99 v0.21 beta and EAC v0.9 prebeta 11 software in order to check the DAE performance of the Lite-On LTR-24102B with various AudioCDs (both pressed and CDR). The posted DAE results are the average of both applications, but the CPU usage was only taken from CD DAE 99, since EAC occupies the system a lot more. As a last note, we used the "BURST" reading mode of EAC. We made a full CD Rip starting from the first to the last track of the CD. The Average DAE reported speed along with the CPU Usage is displayed in the test graphs.

- DAE features:
We used EAC v0.9 prebeta 11 to examine the drive's features. As the program reported, the drive does "Caching" data, "Accurate Stream" and "C2 Error info".

- Pressed AudioCD results: (click here to see the CD Speed 99 graph)
The LiteOn supports up to 32x DAE with both pressed and CDR media. The drive uses full CAV as the main reading technology. However the final result is not the expected one. The drive read the first track of both our pressed/CD-R media at 8X so the final average speed is much slower than the competition:

LiteOn commented that LTR-24102B uses a different pickup than LTD163 (which has superb DAE speed) and that drive automatically adjusts ripping speed for getting maximum quality. Maybe LiteOn will tweak drive's capabilities with future firmware revision and improve it.

- CDR AudioCD Results: (click here to see the CD Speed 99 graph)
The drive performed the same way with our CDR media. Again the first track is read at 8X so the final average DAE speed is low, compared to what Sanyo and TDK drives can give:

- Advanced DAE Quality

The LiteOn got 100 (perfect) score in the Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE test. The Sanyo and TDK drives also got 100. The average reading speed was 22.665x and as we can see from the following picture, the drive can read "CD-Text" enabled AudioCDs and "SubChannel Data" (from audio tracks):

- Bad CDR Media results

Despite the fact that Nero CD Speed Advanced DAE test stretches drive's mechanism to the max, we decided to do real life tests with a scratched disc. The disc was dirty, and with some light scratches, enough in order to cause problems to most of the tested drives. We have used CD DAE 99 software to rip the whole disc (756539616 sectors) and the results were very interesting:

As the tests showed, the TDK CyClone managed to give 0 reading errors but with much lower reading speed than LiteOn LTR-24102B. The LiteOn LTR-24102B produced only one (1) error during the entire process.

- Ripping 90 and 99min CDs

As we can see from the above graphs, the LiteOn 24102B doesn't have any problem ripping both 90 and 99min CDs. Remember that even the drive supports writing up to 24x with 99mins, we advise to lower the recording speed down to 8X.