In House Review - Sony CRX220A1 52/24/52 CD-RW

by **Ian** on Fri May 16, 2003 8:12 am

Today, CDRLabs takes a long overdue look at the Sony's 52/24/52 CD-RW, the CRX220A1. In this review we'll take a look at some of the features found on the CRX220A1 (like the Turbo Boost function) and then put it up against some of the other 52x writers we've looked at lately. Can Sony's 52x writer hold its own? The results might surprise you so check out the review to find out.

Sony CRX220A1 52/24/52 CD-RW

If you have any comments or questions about this review or the Sony CRX220A1, please post them in the forum by clicking the link below.

by **dodecahedron** on Fri May 16, 2003 11:07 am

it always intrigues me, the performance differences between drives that are supposedly the same. in this case the Sony and the LiteOn.

OK in this instance the drives have different firmwares, but still...and in other cases the drives even have the same fimware...

i wonder if these differences are the same or greater than those that would be observed if one took two identical drives, say 2 LiteOn of the same model and same batch (even same production date) etc. and benchmarked them against one another.

in this particular case: the Sony's CPU usage being much lower than that of the LiteOn. hmm...
can this really be attributed to the different firmware ???

by **Ian** on Fri May 16, 2003 11:28 am

dodecahedron wrote:in this particular case: the Sony's CPU usage being much lower than that of the LiteOn. hmm...
can this really be attributed to the different firmware ???

I think so. I saw the same thing when benchmarking Sony's 48x CD-RW. Their engineers might have tweaked their firmware a little more or something.

by **dodecahedron** on Fri May 16, 2003 1:28 pm

hmm...i'd thought that Lite-On "does" the firmwares for all it's OEM drives such as Memorex, Sony, Buslink or whatnot. including the ones that have a custom firmware...no?

by **dhc014** on Fri May 16, 2003 2:37 pm

I highly doubt that Sony would be too lazy to design the hardware, but then have enough time to write their own firmware. Lite-ON writes all of the firmwares I'm sure.

by **CDRecorder** on Fri May 16, 2003 2:54 pm

Is Sony going to add Mt. Rainier support later with a firmware upgrade?

by **dodecahedron** on Fri May 16, 2003 3:12 pm

dhc014 wrote:I highly doubt that Sony would be too lazy to design the hardware, but then have enough time to write their own firmware. Lite-ON writes all of the firmwares I'm sure.

dhc014, do you have any explanation for the difference in performance between the Sony and the Lite-On, then?
or for my question in general, about performance differences between various Lite-On flavors?

by **Ian** on Fri May 16, 2003 3:40 pm

While TDK and Sony use Lite-On hardware, they take the firmware and tweak it themselves. Enough said.

Memorex.. the only thing they do to the firmware is change the ID string.

by **dhc014** on Fri May 16, 2003 5:03 pm

Tweak, yes...

I can only guess at why the firmwares cause different performance. Maybe it is difficult to add TurboBoost to newer firmwares so they just speed modify the firmware from the CRX210 to work on the CRX220, and the original firmware that they programmed TurboBoost for didn't support Mt. Rainier.

I expect that the CRX225A (another 52/24/52 drive) will be based on LTR-52246K hardware and will support Mt. Rainier. Ian, any chance you could get some info on this new drive?

by **CDRecorder** on Fri May 16, 2003 6:09 pm

dhc014 wrote:I expect that the CRX225A (another 52/24/52 drive) will be based on LTR-52246K hardware and will support Mt. Rainier.

I noticed that the CRX225A has the manual-eject control and the headphone port in a different spot than does the 52246S, and they look like they are in the same place as the ones on the 48246K. I guess this must be how you deduced that this drive is based on the 52246K, dhc014. :wink:

I wonder if Sony will put the Turbo Boost feature on the 225A.

by **Ian** on Fri May 16, 2003 6:22 pm

dhc014 wrote:I can only guess at why the firmwares cause different performance. Maybe it is difficult to add TurboBoost to newer firmwares so they just speed modify the firmware from the CRX210 to work on the CRX220, and the original firmware that they programmed TurboBoost for didn't support Mt. Rainier.

More likely, they turned off that feature in the firmware when they added the Turbo Boost mode.

I expect that the CRX225A (another 52/24/52 drive) will be based on LTR-52246K hardware and will support Mt. Rainier. Ian, any chance you could get some info on this new drive?

Yeah, I'll see what I can do.

by **Ian** on Fri May 16, 2003 6:23 pm

If you check out some of the docs on Sony's website, the CRX225 does in fact have the Turbo Boost.

by **dhc014** on Fri May 16, 2003 6:29 pm

LiteOnGuy wrote:
dhc014 wrote:I expect that the CRX225A (another 52/24/52 drive) will be based on LTR-52246K hardware and will support Mt. Rainier.

I noticed that the CRX225A has the manual-eject control and the headphone port in a different spot than does the 52246S, and they look like they are in the same place as the ones on the 48246K. I guess this must be how you deduced that this drive is based on the 52246K, dhc014. I wonder if Sony will put the Turbo Boost feature on the 225A.

Actually, it occurred to me after someone on the old sonycrx2xx.org forum noticed that the only difference between the manual for the CRX220 and the CRX225 was the faster rewriting speed. This is the only posted difference between the LTR-48246S and the LTR-48246K on lieonit.com

Also, I think that someone saw something about the CRX225 being short like the LTR-48246K is.

Ian wrote:Yeah, I'll see what I can do.

Thanks for checking Ian!

Ian wrote:If you check out some of the docs on Sony's website, the CRX225 does in fact have the Turbo Boost.

Of course, this is Sony's most prized feature! :lol:

*Update*
Since the LTR-52327S wasn't out at the time, I never thought that it could be this model, but now I'm leaning toward the CRX225E actually being of the 7S generation. We'll see...

by **Ian** on Fri May 16, 2003 6:49 pm

dhc014 wrote:Actually, it occurred to me after someone on the old sonycrx2xx.org forum noticed that the only difference between the manual for the CRX220 and the CRX225 was the faster rewriting speed. This is the only posted difference between the LTR-48246S and the LTR-48246K on lieonit.com

Also, I think that someone saw something about the CRX225 being short like the LTR-48246K is.

But don't they both rewrite at 24x? Yeah, I saw that about the CRX225 being shorter too.

by **dhc014** on Fri May 16, 2003 6:51 pm

Ian wrote:
dhc014 wrote:Actually, it occurred to me after someone on the old sonycrx2xx.org forum noticed that the only difference between the manual for the CRX220 and the CRX225 was the faster rewriting speed. This is the only posted difference between the LTR-48246S and the LTR-48246K on lieonit.com

Also, I think that someone saw something about the CRX225 being short like the LTR-48246K is.

But don't they both rewrite at 24x? Yeah, I saw that about the CRX225 being shorter too.

I think (and hope) that the 6K might not use CAV for writing, but P-CAV.

by **CDRecorder** on Sat May 17, 2003 12:10 am

dhc014 wrote:I think (and hope) that the 6K might not use CAV for writing, but P-CAV.

I hope so too. I'd like to see a Lite-On with faster RW recording times.

by **mikey4** on Mon Jul 21, 2003 5:04 pm

Yesterday I installed a CRX-225A in my home computer.
How can I verify the writing strategy?

by **dhc014** on Mon Jul 21, 2003 5:08 pm

mikey4 wrote:Yesterday I installed a CRX-225A in my home computer.
How can I verify the writing strategy?

You can start by using mtkflash in DOS to make a backup of your QYB1 firmware! :wink:

Just joking, but I would like a backup if you get a chance!

Real answer:
Pop a blank disc in the drive and run a test with Nero CDSpeed.

In House Review - Sony CRX220A1 52/24/52 CD-RW

In House Review - Sony CRX220A1 52/24/52 CD-RW

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