Greetz!

I was wondering if any of you already tried to flash the LITE-ON LTR-52246S with the firmware of the LTR-52327S... I have read somewhere that either it wouldn't be possible, as LITE-ON now uses version 7 of the chipsets, or that the drive could get damaged.

Thanks,
Sebastian Mares

Sure, It's not possible. Mediatek 7 is used in new drive.
IMHO, LiteOn drives don't get damaged if you flash wrong firmware.

A friend somehow broke his 40x Lite-On by overburning a CD... go figure. The drive is still detected, but it reads/burns no CDs anymore. I also have a 40x Lite-On, in fact, i recommended it to him... I don't overburn, though. He now ordered a Traxdata drive.

What exactly do you mean with "overburn"? Is it like burning 80 minutes to a 74 minutes CD-R, or do you mean writing to 90/99 minutes CD-Rs?

I think in this case he means burning 90min CDs.

Edit: typo

You do know that the Traxdata drives are rebadged LiteOn's ?

It seems that the firmware makes all the difference then... compare c't 7/03, p.162ff

I've tryed to overburn 102min in 99min CD-R with LiteOn 24102B drive... of course disk did'nt work but my drive is still working as before.

I have to ask again what he meant by that. What i can confirm is that his old drive is completely dead.

I ordered a LTR-52246S yesterday, let's see how it performs. I heard rumors that WSES isn't working anymore (different chipset compared to older Lite-On's), is that true? That would be unfortunate, since i plan to do some C1/C2 error scans...

He meant that he was trying to overburn a standard 700 MB CD-R. About 3 minutes too much data, if you know what i mean. The burn finished, and the burner was dead after that. He presumes that the laser passed the edge of the CD or something.

Well i have also try to burn 700 MB CD-R with 75min audio, but also after that the dirve still works...

no matter how many time you flash (mtkflash or mtkwinflash, it NEVER damage your drive. I did it dozens times with my 40125W when try to flash to 48X-24X-48X. It just doesn't work/dectect in Windows. You reflash the back-up firmware.



52246S with 24X RW is more than enough for me, 32X RW is useless like USB2.0 on webcam

But there was indeed a problem, the changelog of the latest firmware update for almost every Lite-On model says: "Strengthen the stability of the OVERBURN function" (http://www.liteonit.com.tw/english/e-down-f.asp?show=1).

BTW, i got my LTR-52246S now. The drive came with the firmware "6S0D", i flashed it to "6S0F". Quick field report: Starting EAC with a new CD drive/burner *always* leads to a blue screen (this under Windows XP!). Same this time. Also expected, Nero only shows 52x, 8x and 2x as burn speeds on the first run. After one CD was burned, Nero shows all speeds again (i only burn in 24x, BTW).

I also found a good tool to do C1/C2 scans, similar to WSES, it's called KProbe. Did some scans and the results were as expected. Few C1 errors in the beginning and mittle of the disc, higher rates (up to 100 C1/sec) and some isolated C2 errors towards the end of the CD (cheap Ritek-based media, freshly burned at 24x).

By askoff:

74min = 650MB >>> Why should 75min on 700MB disc be a problem?

To CiTay:
Burning at lower speed doesn't necessarily mean less C1/C2 errors.

• 703 MB disks support 80 minutes of audio data.
• I was able to write 750 MB on a 703 MB disk and everything went perfectly. The drive still operates as it should do and I can access all 750 MB of the disk.

PS 1: I have done that overburning with the firmware D using an Aldi (Tevion) CD-R.
PS 2: Do you spell "disk" or "disc"?

I know. But there was a big comparison of CD-Rs and burn speeds on a website a while ago, complete with C1/C1 graphs, done with a Lite-On. Turns out that several CD-Rs burned with 24x have lower error rates than with 16x. I've done my own scans with WSES and KProbe, and i'm quite satisfied with the results of my 24x burns, so i don't see any reason to increase the speed. The time savings aren't really worth mentioning.

Is there any tool for measuring C1/C2 errors on other drives than LiteOn? I have a TEAC CD-W512EB, and I'd really like to know how much error it produces.

Btw.
Number 12 in 512 means "12x recording" (!) - so, 24x means... a Ferrari?

What about 52x drives... are they Concordes?

Yes, indirectly via CD Speed with the CD Quality check. It displays C2 errors if your drive supports it, and a non-continuous graph means that there were uncorrectable C2 errors. But it's not very reliable, since it doesn't show C1 errors, and the CD-R can be bad due to other reasons, for instance high jitter.

Plextor bundles a quite advanced tool with their Plexwriter Premium called "Plextools Professional". It can show C1, C2 and CU (uncorrectable by CIRC, same as C2 in CD Speed), jitter, BETA (reflectivity), focus error and tracking error. However, the c't magazine found out that jitter, BETA and FE/TE measurements are unusable, due to high variation between different Plexwriter Premium drives. Also, the results of a professional hardware analyzer from Audidev Labs were totally different. C1/C2/CU are usable, though. c't also revealed that the laser strength regulation via "VariRec" always leads to a higher jitter rate, so Plextor users should make sure not to use that.

WSES or KProbe for Lite-On (only usable with the CD-RW drives!) and Plextools for Plextor are the only halfway reliable software tools for measuring the error rates right now. I'm sure other CD-RW manufacturers use similar tools for internal QA, but other than WSES and KProbe, no other tool leaked to the internet yet AFAIK.

By Sebastian Mares:

Probably sound like one...

Thanks, CiTay!

Thats right. I was buring almost 750MB and about 85min.

i never get C1 errors with my LTR-52246S

BS. Even a brand new CD-R has thousands of C1 errors.

You probably mean C2 Errors.

CD Doctor performs similarly to WSES and works on quite a few
drives (mostly Lite-On rebadged drives).

Here is the CDRLabs thread. Read all the way through. The link to the
English version is halfway through the thread.

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=8095