LiteOn LTR-52246S or Plextor PX-W4824TA?, Plextor worth the extra cash? Options

[Gecko]

I'm planning to buy a new cd-rw drive soon and have narrowed it down to these two drives. I can get the LiteOn for 70€ and the Plextor for 103€ (both retail, Plextor bulk saves 10€). Now that is quite a difference in price and I'm a cheap bastard, but I understand that sometimes it's worth to shell out a bit more cash for quality. I currently own a Plextor 8432T and it has served me well, but it is getting slow.

From what I've read, both drives perform very well. Currently I'm eying with the LiteOn, since it is cheaper and offers better media compatibility. Apart from the slight speed difference, am I loosing something, if I go for the LiteOn? The Plextor drive is faster writing RWs since it uses P-CAV while the LiteOn uses regular CAV.

One of my main concerns is DAE. Handling copy protected audio CDs is important. My other concern is creating CDs that are low on errors. I use mostly cheap media (which also makes the LiteOn more attractive). The ability to read/write copy proteced data CDs is less important, but desired nevertheless.

What can I expect for 30€ more? Could I be disappointed by the LiteOn? Should I look for other options (maybe even a DVD burner)? Please share your thoughts!

[Dibrom]

I have this LiteOn myself, and from what I have gathered, it has very good C2 performance. It seems to perform pretty well with scratched CD's also. From what I've heard, the latest Plextors are not so good regarding C2, etc, though I could be wrong. If you're planning on using EAC you might want to go with the LiteOn, but if you don't need the extra features that EAC offers over something like the PlexTools, then you might want to go with the Plextor.

If you're planning on using something like CloneCD much, then the LiteOn would almost surely be the way to go.

So personally, I'd probably go for the LiteOn because overall I think it's probably a better drive, but I don't think you can really go wrong either way.

In EAC, with C2 and caching selected, I get around 8-15x with this drive. I don't really know how either of these drives handle copy protected audio discs.

[Bongo]

Both are good drives. I think the Plextor is better for audio CDs in general though. It can read all audio protections that are currently on the market I believe. I think the Lite-On can read most but some are a little flaky.

If copying protected data CDs is important to you though the LiteOn might be a better way to go since some Plextor's have problems with SafeDisc for Data.

Oh yeah, the Plextor you can get PlexTools which supposedly can have better DAE quality than EAC.

[sven_Bent]

here are som technical specs to have in mind

liteOn does up to 99mins cd's officially - plextor only 90's and its not official
Liteon does correct efm coding (two sheep) - plextors does only almost correct (one sheep)
both drive support raw+96 read/write mode
both drives supports "accurate audio seek".

i se NO reason to choose plextor over an liteon..but i also use 99mins cd's and does backups of my games. none of which plextor does a god job

[CiTay]

My other concern is creating CDs that are low on errors. I use mostly cheap media (which also makes the LiteOn more attractive).

Then make sure to use 24x speed. 32x and above may produce more errors. 16x may also produce more errors, as funny as it sounds! I saw this on a page where somebody performed numerous C1/C2 scans with WSES (a low-level drive utility for Lite-On burners). 16x seems to have a different write strategy, leading to more errors with certain CD-R media. Having a Lite-On 40x burner, i did some tests with WSES myself, and my el cheapo Platinum CD-Rs turned out to be quite okay at 24x.

BTW, Nero is quite stubborn on this. When activated, the Smart-burn feature tends to override the selected speed and use the highest speed for that CD-R type, as noted in the writer's firmware table. This can turn out bad, i had several coasters because of this. For instance, Smart-burn always tries to use 40x speed with TDK 24x CD-Rs -> speed is reduced to 4x in the middle of the disc, guaranteed coaster. So turn off Smart-Burn and manually set it to 24x speed.

[Gecko]

Thank you all for your input.
I have found a pretty in depth review of the LiteOn on cdfreaks.com. There's also a review of the Plextor.

On the audio extraction side, LiteOn can read Key2audio 1-3, DocLok 1-3, and CDS 200. It fails on CDS 100. LiteOn has released a firmware upgrade for their 40x burner to read those protection schemes as well. Plextor successfully read all versions of Key2audio (the other two weren't tested). It failed on CCD-Lock. They used EAC btw like I do too. I never really use PlexTools with my old drive for anything. But I guess "single session" and "hide cd-r" could be potentially usefull.

@CiTay: I have found this in the review about LiteOn:
"LiteOn's buffer underrun protection technology is, of course, included in the Smart-Burn technology. [...] Unlike the Burnproof-feature which Plextor CD writers include, LiteOn's buffer underrun protection system is always active and cannot be switched off.
Smart-Burn has a second task, besides buffer underrun recovery: It is supposed to determine the best recording speed for any inserted media."
From what you and the review says, I gather that anti-buffer-underrun can't be turned off, but automatic speed selection can? Is that correct? Is there a way to see, before actually burning, what speed Smart-Burn recommends?

I also thought about burning those cheap brands (mostly Memorex (strange italian manufacturer in ATIP), but also Platinum or Silvercircle (the old manufacturer sucked, but the new one worked ok)) with only 24x myself, and I have no problem with that (interesting that 16x gives worse results than 24x. Perhaps P-CAV vs CLV?). And for that I sure don't need the LiteOn 52x. The slowest commercially available version is the 48x version, but with the currently available firmware it can't read as many audio copy protection schemes as the 52x version. I guess sooner or later they will provide a firmware update like they did for the 40x version. Now I'm not sure if it's worth saving 5€ for that.

[CiTay]

From what you and the review says, I gather that anti-buffer-underrun can't be turned off, but automatic speed selection can? Is that correct?

That's correct. The buffer underrun-protection is always on.

Is there a way to see, before actually burning, what speed Smart-Burn recommends?

None that i know of. Actually, Smart-Burn has two functions: Checking the internal table for the highest possible speed with that CD-R (which is often flawed), and reducing speed during burning, when there are too many C2 errors (real-time checking). The way i see it, the two currently work against each other: It tends to choose excessive speeds, and then encounters a multitude of errors.

[kerminen]

check this thread too...

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....=ST&f=20&t=5329

plextools uses correct offsets for plextor drives, and has 5 different reading strategies. I have succeeded to have excellent rips out of very very scratchy cds. It takes some time, however;) But if you have normal-quality cds, it rips them lightingfast, with a reading mode comparable to eac's secure mode. Plextools automatically speeds down on errors and tries to read them again with slower speed. These advanced DAE strategies appeared on Plextools just couple months ago, so they are not comparable to older plextools versions (prior to 1.15 or 1.16, current one 1.19). Plextor is still improving plextools based on customer feedback and so on, based on their replies on some forums.

Like plexpeople say, "they want to be the king of DAE", and give something back for the premium price.