Got myself a LiteON 40X burner today! :)

Cost me CDN$ 210 at Frosty's in Kahnawake on the 132E (south of Montreal by the Mercier bridge), best deal around!

It came with Nero, 2 blank media (CDR and CDRW), an audio cable and screws. Burner was suspend in a well designed flexible foam craddle. Warranty is one year at the store!

Have done a few tests already, like to hear other peoples results. So far it seems my hard drive is too slow to permit full speed burning!!! (coming in in a few days... ;)

Post you results here, i will add mine as time goes on.

Where did you get 40x media from?

I did not, I haven't seen any. I just have LiteON's media, haven't tried yet and will not untill I get my new hard drive!

OC-Freak mentioned that most high-quality short strategy media should burn at full speed, like the Kodaks. As soon as I get my new hard drive (this one can barely sustain more than 16-20X), I will test and post my results.

I do have a slower system (Celeron 566 OC'd at 850 on an Abit Slotket !!!, Abit BH6 Mobo, and presently a Quantum 5400RPM 4 gig full-to-the-brim hard drive)...

Holy Sh!T! You finally broke down and and got rid of the ole Plexy? I'm shocked.. stunned... but not speechless :laugh: :laugh:
Kewl m8, but personally I'm rather skeptical that obtaining consistent real word speeds of 40x is possible with todays busmastering. 24-30x sure but..we'll see


http://www.cdrom-guide.com/ubb/4MoDeRaToRs/SiGnAtUrE_ImAgEs/hoss1.gif

Hey, Hoss, this Plexy wasn't that old!!! I had it for just over a year!!!

Well I made a 60 minute test compilation on one the Princos I got on purpose (cheapest disks I could find at the store where I got the burner) using Nero 5578, it took less than 3 minutes! That media was accepted in Nero for a 40X burn; a Verbatim 24X that had been given to me (was a reject from a buddy- I couldn't use it on my old plexy either), however, could only be burnt to 32X. Figures... The Verbatims have gone down the drain in the past few years, comes to prove it once again!

When you look closely at a CD burnt at 40X, you can see a 1/8" wide zone near the center, probably the TOC; another one that's about 3/8"(20X), then two 1/2" wide(24X and 32X) and the last zone burnt at 40X. You do have to look real closely to notice it.

So 40X burning IS indeed a reality after all, performance is affected only when burning on-the-fly, because data has to go from CD-ROM to the HD buffer (which is usually on the same IDE channel) then to the burner. Maybe using a IDE controller card would help in this case, like what OC-Freak uses.

As for DirectCD use, only the latest version of DirectCD recognizes this burner. I had to get the latest 5.10 update of Easy CD Creator (a 12MB download) before it would work.

BTW, it's supposed to be able to rip Cactus Data Shield protected audio titles! I read it here (http://www.gotapex.com/reviews.php?rev=40x/index.html)

I'm now a happy puppy with the best of all worlds with Nero 5578, DCD 5.10 and CloneCD 3.3.1.1, a LiteON LTD-163 DVD and the LiteON LTR-40125S... Soon to add a Maxtor 60GB HD :)

I'll keep y'all posted...

I can officially confirm CDRLabs.com's (http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.php?reviewid=109) findings.

I burned a 700MB compilation on a cheap unbranded 16X certified blank manufactured by Princo (short strategy) in Nero 5.5.7.8 in 3:30 after a full defrag, 3:46 before defrag.

No errors whatsoever reported in CD Speed surface scan, nor in CDR Diagnostic Full Error Scan.

You can clearly see the 20X, 24X, 32X and 40X zones in strong directional lighting on the disk. They are all approximately the same width.

My system specs: Celeron 566@850, Abit BH6 Mobo, 192MB PC100 SDRAM, 4.3GB Quantum Fireball HD on IDE0 master, LiteON 20125S ZS03 firmware, Feb 2002 on IDE1 Master.

Neddless to say, I'm very :)

Very kewl m8...not going to do the math but that works out to about ??x

Works out to an average of 22.86x rounded to the 2nd dp

I've been thinking about this and surely we are pretty much at the max cdr speed now as the lasers can write at 40x but the discs on the inner tracks cannot physically be spun fast enough to be able to be written at 40x at the moment.

I presume that is what is holding us up....just guessing though :)

Indeed, guys. I don't think it is physically possible to go much beyond that point (writing a complete CD in much less than 3 minutes) but it may well go down to 2.5 minutes or so once burners use the promised CAV technology recently anounced by Oak Technologies (in essence to make writing as fast and behave in the same fashion as reading).

So guys, hold on to your 24X burners... What's 30-45 seconds off of a burn? nothing ( unless your name is OC-Freak, that is :laugh: )

Well I think the next step will be with the Serial ATA interfaces. Until then we are about maxxed out, they may get up to 30x but I can't see anyting above that with UDMA & IDE. But from what I read Serial ATA Mobo's are going to be quite a bit more expensive to build.

Well folks, I said I'd come back with some results about the LTR-40125S burner so here goes:

The new Lite-ON LTR-40125S (not so new anymore ;) ) performed very well with all official firmware revisions ZS03, ZS08 and ZS0A burning at high speed in Z-CLV mode on cheap 16X certified Princo media (Silver) up to approximately the 70 minute mark or so. On my Lite-ON LTD-163 DVD-ROM, some C2 errors were found at the end of the burn past that region (in the 40X zone) but none when detected when read on the burner and on my old 32X Toshiba XM-6502B CD-ROM.

Disks were tested using CD Speed Scandisk Surface Test function, file error was tested using CD Check.

None of the disks (I've burned approximately one spindle of 50 just for testing purposes!) had any data errors using CD Check and no audio or mixed CDs gave problems when burned at high speeds either (based on approx. 5-10 test burns of this type of disk at high speed). This is when read on the above-mentioned drives as well as on my son's old Playstation and on my good Technics 5 CD changer.

To give an idea of the role of media versus hardware, with my old Plextor 1210A the Playstation was giving mixed results using the same title (a Duke Nukem game with audio tracks) with this media, which would indicate this burner actually burns as well as any other big-name, more expensive burner out there.

However, there was a very noticeable difference when using the unofficial ZS0G firmware. Disks burnt using this firmware invariably gave C2 and sometimes uncorrectable errors when tested on the Lite-ON DVD-ROM (tested under GH5E and GH5K firmwares), yet no errors were reported in CD Check (file error scan). Using the Toshiba CD-ROM or the burner revealed no errors or sometime the odd C2 error almost invariably around the 50 to 60 minute mark. Further close to the edge the error rate invariably seem to decrease with all tested readers, even if the drive had too little errors to even slow down.

These tests reveal a sensitivity of the LTD to errors and a definite increased C2 error rate using the unofficial ZS0G firmware with cheap 16X certified Princo disks, but no confirmed serious uncorrectable errors.

The few tests done on my best media (Kodak Gold certified for 8X burning) did not give any errors at all no matter what firmware was used and what reader was used to test for C2 errors. In CloneCD in particular, I was able to burn a complete CD at 40X on the Kodak even though Smart Burn limits it to 32X! That 74 minute disk (or close to – Win98 SE) took exactly 3 minutes to burn using the ZS0G P-CAV firmware, about 15 seconds faster than the previous Z-CLV firmwares. Not bad for a disk manufactured over 2 years ago and certified only for 8X burning!

To sum it up, after a few weeks of testing, I have come to the following conclusions concerning this burner:

The Lite-ON LTR-40125S gives good results at high speeds even on marginal media for data and audio on most readers. However, for utmost reliability, particularly if using the unofficial ZS0G P-CAV firmware, it is best to use better media to avoid possible read errors with some readers.
Z-CLV burning creates visible zones on the disk whereas P-CAV doesn’t (makes a neater looking disk).
P-CAV burning saves about 15 seconds from a complete burn when compared to Z-CLV burning, as the burner does not stop to switch speeds. The spindle stays almost at a constant speed until it reaches 40X, close to the end of the disk, when it starts dropping a bit to maintain the maximum of 40X burning.
All official Z-CLV firmwares lead to reliable burning at high speed even on marginal media such as the Princos but the ZS0G P-CAV which has not been officially released by Lite-ON seems to need some tweaking to lead to more reliable read for all readers.
P-CAV burning leads to more C2 errors when cheap media is used as verified by the Lite-ON LTD-163 DVD-ROM, but this may indicate that this reader is perhaps excessively sensitive to certain burn conditions that may not cause errors on other readers.
P-CAV burning is definitely the way to go if the error problems revealed by the LTD-163 reader can be solved. Because the errors seem to happen almost always around the part of the disk where 34-38X burning occurs, I am under the impression that this problem lies within the burn algorithm of the firmware, as the same title burnt under Z-CLV on the same media leads to much less errors even in the 40X zone considering that P-CAV burning needs sophisticated and constantly changing laser beam intensity and duration calculations and control, which could be sufficiently off at these particular speeds to cause the problems encountered and would have to be tweaked further before being published.