The LiteOn SOHW-832S supports 40X CD-R and 24X US-RW recording speeds.

• CD-R Format

The drive supports 8X, 16X (CLV), 24X, 32X and 40X (P-CAV) writing speeds. Below are the recording speeds as detected by Nero Burning Rom.

It's quite possible that due to the Smart-Burn system, the maximum burning speed was reduced down to 32X or even 24X (for example Mam 48X SG Ultra). The user can disable Smart-Burn and get the maximum writing speed. This can be done under Nero Burning Rom->Choose Recorder->Options->Un-tick Smart-Burn Enabled.

Another utility that can be used to check the maximum speed of the inserted media comes from LiteON with the name "SMART-BURN Media Check Program", a very useful utility for LiteON users:

According to Nero CDSpeed, the drive reached the maximum 40X speed. The test started at 18.47X and finished at 41.72X having an average speed of 31.57X. Click on the image below to see the whole graph.

• CD-R Recording Times

For the burning tests we created an 80min data compilation through Nero Burning Rom, recording the data on a 700MB disc. The LiteON SOHW-832S finished the task in 3:16 minutes, for the maximum 40X writing speed, one second faster than the 812S model.

The writing performance varies according to the inserted media, as our tests showed. The SmartBurn system will lower the writing speed if the media ID code is not found in the drive's firmware. Below is a chart demonstrating all recording times with various media.

The best performance came from Mam 80min 52X media with 196secs (3:16mins) with SmartBurn disabled, since when enabled, it allowed only 24X for the specific disc. The highest recording time comes from TraxData 80min 52X media with 201secs (3:21mins).

- Other features

Overburning writing	Up to 99min
CD text reading/writing	Yes

• CD-RW Format

The SOHW-832S supports the 16X CLV, 24X Z-CLV rewriting speeds, with Ultra Speed Rewritable Media (US-RW). The drive also writes at 4X CLV with NS CD-RW and 10X CLV with HS-RW discs.

Below you can see the Nero CD-DVD Speed writing simulation test with blank 24X US-RW media from Mitsubishi Chemicals.

The drive starts the writing task at 16.00X and reaches the maximum 24X at the 14:00 min address mark on the disc. According to CDSpeed, the average writing speed is 22.57X.

We also used Nero Burning Rom in order to burn a data disc with 24X US-RW media from MCC. The data compilation we burned had a size of 651 MB and the duration of the recording process was 4:07 minutes.

- CD-RW Mount Rainier Tests

We used Philips Mount Rainier Validation Suite v2.2 to test the drive's compliance with the Mount Rainier format. All three scripts loaded in the Validation Suite (mandatory command set, Light R'n'R and Heavy R'n'R) but for some reason the Mount Rainier Suite didn't work as it is supposed too.