Media Compatibility With CD-RW Drives - Which Media Is Best?

[liteonrules]

MR. WIZARD,
It's no LITE ON but it does it's job. It burns faster than a LITE ON at 32x and 40x but of course LITE ON blows away the OPTORITE writing at 48x and plus the LITE ON's audio extraction is way faster than the OPTORITE but i still think the OPTORITE was a good buy 39.99 w/20.00MIR=19.99 and does a good job. Please add one more on to the list. THIS PIECE OF JUNK BLANK MEDIA CALLED
16X HAL-VAL (CMC) burns at 40x with no errors

[TheWizard]

Piece of junk blank media? I'd say that's a pretty nice piece of junk if it can write at 40X error free when the disc is only rated at 16X!

[liteonrules]

the hi-val 16x
the label on top flakes off by light scratches and you can see through the other side.

[TheWizard]

I have plenty of CD's with no label on them at all, look through them at a light source and they act like sunglasses. It's pretty cool! Anyway, just because you can see through the discs doesn't make them poor quality per se. Only time will tell.

[liteonrules]

1.) 16x digital research MUSIC cd-r (cmc)burned at 48x The blank came with the drive and it's strange that it burned at 48x without problems plus none of the other (cmc) brand rated under 40x burned at 48x.
2.) 48x LITE ON(cmc) burned at 48x

update: i tried the 16x digital research music cd-r in my LITE ON 48X12X48 and it will only burn at 16x not 48x like the OPTORITE. very strange

[TheWizard]

Wow! Optorite better than Lite-On...at least in one instance. Thanks again, liteonrules.

[kilahchris]

im curious how do you find out the manufacturer of your cdr media???
for example i have Maxelll 40x cdr and i search all over the box and spindle and i find no other manufacturers name?

[cfitz]

Put the disc in your CD-RW drive, then run one of the following tools:

Nero InfoTool - select the drive, and then the "Disc" tab
Nero CDSpeed - select the drive, and then "Extra"->"Disc Info..."

(both of the above available at www.cdspeed2000.com if you don't already have them as part of a Nero installation)

LiteOn SMART Burn Tool - select the drive, and then press the "?" icon

(the above available at http://www.liteonit.com.tw/zip/SMARTBURN.zip )

Other tools are also available, but this should give you what you need. Personally I prefer the information and format of CDSpeed.

This information isn't guaranteed to be 100% correct (see http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq02.html#S2-33 ), but in practice appears to be generally reliable for name-brand media.

cfitz

[Bhairav]

I burnt Sony 40X Supremas media in my Lite-On 52246S , fw6S0a.
Beautiful burn, only the 57 minute"bump" showed up.
Smart-Burn Limit - 48X.

[TheWizard]

What exactly is the 57 minute "bump"?

[dodecahedron]

im curious how do you find out the manufacturer of your cdr media???
for example i have Maxelll 40x cdr and i search all over the box and spindle and i find no other manufacturers name?

in addition to the programs cfitz mentioned, another popular one (if not the best of them all) is CDR Identifier.
get it here: http://www.gum.de/cdrid/

[lppnet]

opsss! Why this old Mitsui 12x Gold Unbranded has a high average C1 in CD Doctor? It is made in Taiwan. Poor than my HP/TY 16x . Any comment? The result is here:
http://www.geocities.com/lppnet/mitsui.htm

Drive : LTR-52246S
Firmware: 6S0A
Software : Nero Burning ROM 5.5.9.17
Burn Speed : 12x

ATIP information of Mitsui Gold 12x CDR (from Smart-Burn):
This Disc is designed for CD-RW/COMBO Drive Only.
Disc Type, Material = CD-R, Phthalocyanine
ATIP Lead-in = 97m 27s 55f
Norminal Capacity = 650.85MB (74m 05s 10f)
Disc Manufacturer maybe = Mitsui
SMART-BURN Speed Limit = 16X

[kilahchris]

Piece of junk blank media? I'd say that's a pretty nice piece of junk if it can write at 40X error free when the disc is only rated at 16X!

His CDRW Drive should be given full credit for that, not 16x cdr themselves. I am pretty sure that certain other 40x burners would not be able to burn that 16x cdr in 40x speed

[TheWizard]

His CDRW Drive should be given full credit for that, not 16x cdr themselves. I am pretty sure that certain other 40x burners would not be able to burn that 16x cdr in 40x speed

More praise for Optorite! Yay for the underdog!

[Bhairav]

The 57 minute bump... in some Lite-Ons, the burn will go fine, but at the 57 minute mark in the CD_Quality scan in Nero CDSPeed, there will be a slight bump (up and down oscillation) in the graph. It does not seem to spoil the burn quality or anything, just may be a minor bug in the Lite-Ons.
Anyone else seen this? I know that people over at cdfreaks have seen this..
?

[laszlotr]

One stupid question maybe. I heard here that sometimes 16x Fuji (TY's) media burns at 40x. How do you find that out? It actually says while burnig 40x? Or by the time that takes to burn the cd? i have some of those cd's but I was never able to burn them more than 24x.

Thanks

[cfitz]

The 57 minute bump... in some Lite-Ons, the burn will go fine, but at the 57 minute mark in the CD_Quality scan in Nero CDSPeed, there will be a slight bump (up and down oscillation) in the graph. It does not seem to spoil the burn quality or anything, just may be a minor bug in the Lite-Ons.
Anyone else seen this? I know that people over at cdfreaks have seen this..
?

I've seen it, but not always at the 57 minute mark. It seems to occur at different positions on different drives (or maybe models?), but always occurs at the same position for any given drive.

Perhaps this phenomenon is demonstrated in Ian's reviews of the LTR-40125S and LTR-48125W:





I believe when I have seen it the duration of the "bump" was shorter than in these shots, but it is the same general idea.

cfitz

[laszlotr]

Can anybody abswwer my question please? I just burnt a cd at 40x in 12 minutes????????????
The media is HP (TY's) 16x.
What's the deal ?

Thanks

[Bhairav]

I've seen it, but not always at the 57 minute mark. It seems to occur at different positions on different drives (or maybe models?), but always occurs at the same position for any given drive.

Perhaps this phenomenon is demonstrated in Ian's reviews of the LTR-40125S and LTR-48125W:

Oh okay, I didn't know about the bump being at different positions for different drives I have owned 2 Lite-On drives, 1st the 48125W and now a 52246S and they have both shown the bump at about the same spot(57-58 minute mark), so I am sorry if my info was wrong
Apologies
Bhairav

[cfitz]

Oh okay, I didn't know about the bump being at different positions for different drives I have owned 2 Lite-On drives, 1st the 48125W and now a 52246S and they have both shown the bump at about the same spot(57-58 minute mark), so I am sorry if my info was wrong
Apologies

Please, no apologies. You didn't do anything wrong. I could well be the one who is mistaken. But if I recall correctly, I saw a similar bump around the 30-minute mark on a 48x12x48 drive I bought for a friend (I don't recall anymore whether it was a W or S model).

cfitz

[cfitz]

Can anybody abswwer my question please? I just burnt a cd at 40x in 12 minutes????????????
The media is HP (TY's) 16x.
What's the deal ?

Thanks

Hey laszlotr, sorry your questions are getting overlooked. I don't normally recommend posting the same question in multiple threads (in fact I frown on it in general) but in this case I think you really may have posted in the wrong thread and because of that the question isn't getting the visibility it deserves. This thread is intended for reporting of media test results, not for debugging burning issues. Try adding more detail (exactly what drive, firmware versions, software, software revisions, software settings, IDE setup, etc.) and posting your question as its own thread in the CD-RW forum.

cfitz

[glock20rocks]

Mine has those "bumps" all of the place...but they're more like spikes...lots and lots of 'em. General consesus from here is it's a bum drive. Check it out if anyone cares:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cmcallaway/cdr.htm

The drive was about to be used for target practice, but got saved by a pending S&W release. Well, TEMPORARILY saved anyway. Until next March, at least. Then...

[cfitz]

The drive was about to be used for target practice, but got saved by a pending S&W release. Well, TEMPORARILY saved anyway. Until next March, at least. Then...

I suppose this is off topic, but what the heck... I presume a S&W release does not refer to new firmware for the 'S' and 'W' series of LiteOn drives but rather to Smith and Wesson?

cfitz

[glock20rocks]

I suppose this is off topic, but what the heck... I presume a S&W release does not refer to new firmware for the 'S' and 'W' series of LiteOn drives but rather to Smith and Wesson?
cfitz

How right you are!

[MediumRare]

I've followed this thread since it started. From other posts, I know there are a lot of users with a LTR-48246S who haven't flashed it to 52x (I won't either, though I would be tempted to upgrade to 32x RW). For some reason no-one has posted any results yet for this drive- maybe its sufficient to look at the 52246S- so I guess I have to start. I'm not sure if the info is still useful, since high speed media is pretty well the normal case now - there is very little available anymore under 32x or 40x. In any case, there are some brands not mentioned for other Liteons.

I normally use Verbatim DataLifePlus for "important" burns because I know what I'm getting and because of the supposed long-term stability. RWs are for data transfer and test burns (media are not as cheap here as in the US or even Canada), no packet writing yet.

Code: Select all

Lite-On LTR-48246S......Bestmedia CD-RW/DST 74min 10X........... 8X
Firmware: SID1..........Intenso/PD 74min 24X....................48X
........................MMore/MBI 80min 24X.....................40X
........................MMore/MBI 80min 48X.....................48X
........................Philips/CMC 80min 16X................... -
........................Ricoh CD-RW/DST?? 74min 4X.............. 4X
........................Verbatim ColourDisc CD-RW/MC 80min 4X... 4X
........................Verbatim DLP CD-RW/MC 74min 16-24X......16X
........................Verbatim Super Azo/MC 80min 24X.........32X
Firmware: SS06..........Bestmedia CD-RW/DST 74min 10X..........*10X
........................TDK Reflex/TDK 74min 12X................16X
........................TDK Metallic/Ritek 80min 40x............48x
........................Verbatim DLP CD-RW/MC 74min 16-24X.....*24X
........................Verbatim Super Azo/MC 80min 40X.........40X

Remarks:
- Worst: The Philips/CMC 16x are pure crap. Of this 10-pack, I only managed to use 4 productively (and only 1 to capacity, at 12x). Even burns at 8x weren't 100% and all burns with my old drive (Tevion/Acer 4-4-32) had errors at 4x !!!
- Best: TDK/Riteks superb at 48x. A check with CD-Doctor showed next to no C1 errors: max=5, mean=0.1,
- I only had 3 TDK 12x disks. The first one was OK at 12x (C1: 93/18), the second was badly damaged at 8x (C2: 1130/59) and the 3rd OK at 16x (SmartBurn limit).
- The Ricoh CD-RWs have an ATIP of 97m27s00f. CDR Identifier says "Disc ID not allowed", CD Doctor says "DST" and Smart-Burn says "RICOH,MCW,maxell"
- The Bestmedia CD-RW (ATIP 97m27s04f) initially allowed only 8x. I tried it again after a firmware update to SS06 and succesfully burned it at 10x, but ONLY after a complete erase. This is an important point in handling rewritables !
- The actual firmware used can have significant influence on performance!!! SID1 only allowed 16x for the Verbatim Ultraspeed CD-RW. Upgrading to SS06 (not trivial) brought the expected 24x.
- The Verbatim Ultraspeeds are also fine at 10x (below spec). At first I thought that this was important, but the 10x-test for this make is really only interesting for burners not capable of 16x.

Sorry for the somewhat verbose post...

G