Upp3rd0G

As you may have seen I have tested the 3 following drives:

LiteOn Ltd-163
Plextor Px-40ts
LiteOn Ltr-40125s

The results give me the following questions:

Each test has been performed twice for a certain speed, but they all show big differences compared to eachother. How is this possible? I would have expected more or less the same results... What factors might influence the reading of the test cd?

The Plextor was always considered as the king of DAE... This turns out to be a myth. How come that everybody was always mistaken? (The results are too bad to even consider this drive as a good DAE drive... )

Some people say that with respect to the Plextor Px-40ts the newer generation cd-readers has taken over, for example the Ltd-163... I think that the results of my Ltd-163 are bad... It deals very bad with the 'blackened' part of the test cd. It deals pretty good with the scratches. But it reads errors near the end of the cd while there aren't any... Would a firmware upgrade improve results? (My current firmware GHOE, doesn't cache audio, while more recent firmware all cache audio...)

The LiteOn Ltr-40125s shows very good results on the 'blackened' part of the cd, almost all errors are corrected! But it performs very bad on the scratches... It loses track somehow... and from the beginning of the scratches untill the end of the cd it sees 1 big error... So this drive is not good for reading scratched cds...

I would think that the drives would perform best on the slowest possible speed. The graphs show this is not the case. Anybody any idea why?

Should I test all possible speeds? As all the results show, the lowest speed is not the best. For the Plextor, it looks like 8sp is the best.

The spikes in the graph caused by the scratches are very high, higher then Andre's results. Did I make my scratches too deep? Is my testcd too difficult? But the spikes caused by the 'blackened' part are most of the time also a lot higher then Andre's result... is my black part 'too black'??? Should I make a new test cd?

So I was under the assumption that I had 3 good drives, but they all disappoint me... What do you think is my best drive?

Andre Wiethoff

I would say the LiteOn Ltr-40125s, as it seem to have the best error correction facilties. The optics of the LiteOn Ltd-163 seem a little bit better, but all in all quite a good drive it seems...

Your scratches seem far to deep, so you cannot tell anything about it (only a good optics can help there...)

cu, Andre

BobHere

Well,

This makes me want to go out and test my drives, I have been slack! I have 2 LTR40125s (a long story), an LTD163 and a Ricoh MP7120a. I also have access to another LTR40125S (quality control tests?) and an LTD163D. The interesting thing is that my testing on real damaged CDs has shown that the MP7120A beats the tar out of both the 40125s and LTD163 as an audio ripper.

My LTD163 does not handle concentric stratches at all well (even light ones) whereas the Ricoh doesn't even notice they are there. Also, where CDs have damage to he reflective layer, the Ricoh can still recover more (seemingly) correct information than either of the Liteons, perhaps an indicator to superior CIRC. One thing, the Ricoh rips better fast than slow, I assume the optics and servos are 'tuned' for the higher speeds.

I may get a chance to post some interesting results I have. I have found another one of those strange CDs with repeatable errors - they ar always entertaining.

Regards,
Bob

Upp3rd0G

I must admit that my current scratches are a lot deeper then scratches caused by real life usage. Will a new reference cd with less deep scratches give me a better insight in which drive is the best?

Andre Wiethoff

Not that much... The real interesting test (without need for good optics) was the error correction facilities... (Black bar)

cu, Andre

BobHere

Can't say about the Plextors. I have tested a number of the Firmwares for the LTD163 and I don't believe that audio ripping quality was improved in any of the later ones. Whereas caching and problems with ISRC have been introduced. It may be different with the LTD163D, I haven't tried changing the Firmware there - I don't own the LTD163D that I have access to.

One question, do you use the LTR40125s to burn CDs using EAC? If so, if you rerip the CDs do you get ISRCs of all zeros if there is no ISRC info in the que sheet? I do.

I have tried disabling the "Drive is able to write UPC/ISRC" option but that makes no difference, it still burns these all zero ISRCs. If there is a ISRC in the que sheet, it does write it properly. Hmmm, perhaps I should try out Feurio to see if it is the drive alone or the combination of EAC and the drive. The Ricoh does not do this - I think.

Also, I don't use the LTR40125s for ripping as it seems to have a strange ripping issue when used with C2 where it gets these areas of exactly 6.6966 seconds (295323 samples) of different samples about once every 4 CDs. I think it is an issue with the cache, it is of the right order, if the CD is reripped the problem is not repeated so it is not the CD.

Regards,
Bob

Upp3rd0G

No, I only rip with EAC, use Nero to burn it. So I can't say anything about it, also because I really don't mind if the ISRC values are not correct.