Me again!

I am looking for a new DVD-RAM burner and am not quite sure which one to buy. The LG GSA-4166B and the NEC ND-4551A look pretty good. I even heard rumours that the NEC should be able to write to DVD-RAM at 16x with a firmware upgrade. So, in terms of write quaity, which burner do you guys recommend? I was about to go with an LG because of their write offset (which was 0), but after testing a mate's GSA-2166D, I found out that LG changed the hardware and the new one has a write offset of -30 samples. Now I see no advantage in buying an LG over a NEC for example.
Is there any other burner you recommend (I know of LITE-ON, HP and Pioneer, but after looking at some reviews on CDRInfo, CDFreaks and some other sites, I am not really happy with them).

Sebastian

I got an NEC 3500A and at that time I decided to buy the NEC instead of the LG, eventhough I was very very satisfied with my LG-CD-Burner - another league (field), another competition. I am very very satisfied with that drive.
As NEC drives are damn good I guess a NEC drive is a really good choice in combination with ...
That's my opinion at least...

The NEC one is a very good burner in terms of quality and speed (I have the 4550, no laser labelling), tho a terrible scanner, but to me the L&D modded firmware (http://liggydee.cdfreaks.com/page/4550/) is the key: RPC1, no rip lock and bitsetting, not to mention many speeded up media types.

EDIT: Grammar + link.

What do you mean with "terrible scanner"?

Also, AFAIK, the ND-4551A does not have riplock and it supports bitsetting with the original firmware, too.

The 4550/4551 are not riplocked at all. Bitsetting doesn´t work with all media types in the official versions.
It is very unreliable scanning for PI/PIF errors. My 4550 scans some media up to ~600 PI errors where my liteon only scans ~80. The media works fine.

I mean using it to check the quality of the burns with Nero CD-DVD Speed, it gives inconsistent results.

You're right regarding the riplock (sorry), Bitsetting is supported for DVD+R9 media only with the stock firmware, for DVD+R and DVD+RW you need custom ones, which also can set it to DVD-ROM automatically.

A LiteOn DVD burner will make any DVD look good in terms of PIE/PIF ... simply because the LiteOn drives are more tolerant towards low-level disc errors (such as jitter, RRO and AN) ...

Most NEC DVD writers do (according to CDFReaks reviews) feature only substandard DVD error correction which could be the reason for your overall higher reported error rates. LG models, on the other hand, havre always been assessed as very capable when it comes to DVD error correction.

Nevertheless, my vote goes for NEC over LG ... the error reporting feature is too tempting for me

This wasn´t the case for my NEC 3520 it was not that far away from my liteon 16P9S DVD-ROM.

In a review of 30 DVD writers by Chip online the LG GSA-4167B was the overall winner.
The people at CDfreaks.com also reviewed the LG burner and found very few weaknesses. Also the Pioneer DVR-110 performed very well in their test.

DVD-ROM's (especially LiteOn) will generally report higher PIE/PIF values ...

I have both a 3540A and a 4167B for all the reasons already given and both use modified firmware.

My NEC 3550A is working flawlessly, and it's a non-caching drive to boot!

out of curiosity, why would you need DVD-RAM for?

Edit movies recorded with stand-alone DVD recorder (that rips to DVD-RAM, DVD+R and DVD+RW), backup stuff to external HDD and DVD-RAM (double-safety).

Similarly , I am considering an LG GSA-4167B or NEC ND-4570A.
Are both of these drives non-caching ?
Any opinions on which drive might be a better bet for DAE , and decent CD + DVD writing on average [inexpensive] media?

Thanks!

Not sure about ND-4570A, but my ND-4551A doesn't cache (well, it does, but its cache is smaller than the data that EAC demands to be read AFAIK - JeanLuc can tell you more ).

I have LG GSA-4120B (which should be quite similar to 4167B) and AFAIK it caches audio. As for writing, I have no problems at all (maybe except the cheapest DVD+R DL media).

The LG is a great drive, but watch out for the possible power supply issues. Many people (me included) have those. But to be fair, I know 2 other people that have no problems with the drive. Read more here:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=166553

And the settings for the 4167B:
Drive has Accurate stream
Drive does not cache audio
C2 - yes

I wonder if Feurio! agrees.