LiteOn LTR-40125S P-CAV Recorder - Page 1

Introduction

As many other manufacturers, LiteOn used Zone-CLV to reach 40x recording speed. Yamaha has been the only manufacturer that used P-CAV as the main recording strategy in all models above 12x. LiteOn with a newer firmware upgrade, "changed" from Z-CLV to P-CAV among with the adoption of Mt. Rainier format. In our first review of LiteOn LTR-40125S, we had noticed two negative points concerning the recording speed and the lack of Mt. Rainier. We examine how the new firmware performs in those two categories and of course the whether the results are competitive.

Features

Using the Nero Info Tool software, we can see the drive's properties. What has now changed in the new firmware revision (ZS0D) are:

- The buffer size (1984KB instead of 2MB as reported with previous firmware
- Mt. Rainier support

Nero 5.5.8.2 also reports the drive's new features. Mount Rainier is now supported:

LiteOn's 40x writing speed

LiteOn LTR-40125S with the new firmware, supports the P-CAV 40x writing speed. Below is the Nero CD Speed writing graph, which illustrates the use of P-CAV writing technology:

The drive starts writing at 18.97X and gradually reaches 40x (CLV) speed, at the 68 minutes, and continues until the end in that speed. The average writing speed is now 31.53X, instead of 30.49X with the ZS08 firmware.

The above graph shows the writing speeds of LiteOn LTR-40125S with ZS08 (Z-CLV), with ZS0D (P-CAV) and are compared with the faster 40x recorder from TEAC CD-W540E. Despite the fact that TEAC CD-W540E reaches 40x speed at around 50 minutes, the LiteOn LTR-40125S with P-CAV writing technology is faster.

The above table gives the average writing speed of various 40x recorders. The LiteOn LTR-4125S with the use of P-CAV is faster without any doubt.

The LiteOn drive continues to keep its rotation speeds high enough, above 9000rpm. The drive is noisy but the operation is smoother due to the lack of increased rotation speed shifts (as happens with Z-CLV recorders).