Does anyone know how good the new combo LiteOn LTC-48161H CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive is for audio extraction? Is it basically the same as the Liteon 52246S? I haven't managed to find any reviews of this drive yet, but i know someone out these must have some experience with it.

.dd.

I just installed mine, haven't done any DAE with it yet though...

did you see this thread? This might help, though it isn't a documented review:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?s=...light=LTC48161H

I btw looked at the LiteOn. I own a LiteOn burner that is in another PC. I decided on purchasing the Plextor PlexCombo PX-320A 24x/10x/40x/12x DVD/CD-RW drive for my new PC just because of its audio capabilites. I disregarded the slower reads and writes and opted for its better features than the competetion. It can read into both the Lead In and Lead Out, and can copy all the Audio protections that the Plextor drives are known to be good at. I don't copy games very often, so it doesn't bug me that Lite-On drives do better with data protections. The Plextor DOES cache audio data, so its two downfalls are only that it is slower than the other newest DVD combo drives in X ratings, and that in EAC, it will rip slower than a drive that doesn't cache audio data. Frankly, I don't really care about an extra minute or so when ripping and writing, I care more about the quality of both of these processes. Yeah, Plextor's are a tad pricey, but in this case I am very happy with my decision. Sad that it doesn't have Mt. Rainier support, but hopefully a new DVD burner purchase in the future will support it. I will probably be complementing this Plextor drive with one of the many 8X dual format DVD burners coming out in the next couple months.

Heck, if you have the money and don't want to buy more than one drive of course, you might wait and see if the new Lite-On or Plextor 8x dual format DVD burners coming out in a few months are reviewed well for audio.

Not actually much to learn from that thread, apart from the fact that the Combo drive can not read the Subchannel Data - is this a big issue?? Could it be fixed with a firmware update?

I did find a review at cdrw central which says that the combo may be even a little better than the 52x at reading damaged audio discs.

.dd.

Hi

To answer your question - i've got one and it works fine - no problems at all. I get an average 12x (secure) ripping speed. Also does C2 reporting.

I haven't managed to find an offset for it yet - I once had one of the CDs in the EAC database, but can't find it now...

I'm not at home at the moment (where the drive is), so I can't tell you what EAC detected as features - if you want to know anything about the drive, let me know, and I'll run some tests for you.

Oh, and I've got a 52246s as well, and i like them equally, but in different ways...

What's the difference? Apart from 48x vs 52x what can the 52246s do that the 48161h can't? Are there any disadvantages in getting the 48161h?

.dd.

Hi

The Combo drive looks different - has a curvy front, instead of the flat front of the CD-RW, and the tray is much more flimsy. Seriously light weight, compared to the 52246.

I think I may have a problem with my 48161h, in that when reading CD-Rs using Kprobe (or cddoctor) to get the C1 and C2 errors after a burn, lots of C1s and C2s show up on the DVD/Combo, and hardly any show up using the CD-RW.

But, writing the disc in the 48161h, and reading in the 52246s, shows no errors at all, so it's not the writing performance of the 48161h that's in question, just the reading back part.

Nonetheless, doing EAC compares with the 48161h doesn't show up any problems, so maybe i'm paranoid.

If anyone else has the 48161h, and has used Kprobe, I'd like to hear about your experiences with C1 error rates.

Also, I rejected an LG Combo drive because of the same problems, but have kept this one - can't be arsed to send it back, as I can't guarantee that it's a design fault, or just my bad luck with two Combo drives.

If you've only got one bay (Shuttle Cube for example), it's the perfect drive. It's not as deep as a 52246, so there're more space in the cube for airflow.

--Tosh

edit: I don't copy games, so can't tell you about subchannel performance or otherwise - have a look at cdrinfo.com for stuff like that...

edit2: oh, and it's a bit quieter than the 52246 overall