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Introduction Lite-On is a Taiwanese corporation established in 1995. By 1998 they'd become the #1 CD-ROM manufacturer in Taiwan and #4 CD-ROM manufacturer worldwide. With factories in China, the United States and Europe, Lite-On continues to be a force in the optical drive market. More recent endeavors in DVD-ROM and CD-RW waters have brought increased attention to their product line. Lite-On's latest CD-RW, a 16/10/40 unit, competes with drives like Plextor's PX-W1610TA and Teac's CD-W516EB. Lite-On does have a 24X burner in the works and we expect to take a look at it as soon as it's available. Until then, let's see what the LTR-16101B has to offer!
Specifications Specifications according to Lite-On:
The retail box contents:
Finally, the rest of the drive's vitals: The front face is generic with the exception of a printed "BURN-Proof 16x10x40x" on the right and a sticker on the left showing Lite-On's website address. The single LED shows green when reading and amber when writing. The light remains off when there is no disc in the drive or when there is a disc inside that's not being accessed. The rear of the drive includes a digital audio out in addition to standard optical drive connectors. The drive arrived with firmware revision TS0L. Lite-On sent us the latest version (TS0T) prior to testing. This firmware revision recently became available on Lite-On's website. It may be downloaded here. The LTR-16101B offers very quiet performance during both reads and writes. Unfortunately, the drive heats up quite a bit during extended use. While this doesn't adversely affect performance, those who strive to keep internal case temperatures at a minimum should keep it in mind. Current online pricing is as low as $90 for the retail unit. In comparison, Teac's 16X retail box goes for $120 while Plextor's 16X retail unit sells for about $160. This prices the Lite-On well below the competition, threatening AOpen's bang-for-the-buck reputation.
For an overview on methodology, click here. CD-ROM Performance ResultsLow-Level Measurements
Ziff-Davis' CD Winbench 99 measures sustained transfer rates and random access times. The LTR-16101B fulfills 40X specs by pulling in 6060 KB/sec transfers at the outer edge of our test disc. Although it comes in third 3rd in this comparison, the Lte-On trails the leader by less than 1%, a statistical dead heat. In the access time measure the drive ducks in under its 120 ms spec with an average result of 118 ms, good enough for 4th in the comparison.
CD-ROM Winmark 99
CD Winbench 99's CD-ROM Winmark test runs through a timed script of routines from a variety of popular software programs. The presented score averages results drawn from four different test discs obtained from Ziff-Davis. This tests each drive's ability to read from a range of discs pressed with identical data. With a score of 1130 KB/sec, the Lite-On's trails Ricoh's MP7200A by over 30%. It does outdo units from Plextor and AOpen, though. Scores deviate by only 5% between the four test discs, indicating the Lite-On reads a variety of pressed discs with consistency.
File and Disc Copy
The file copy test emphasizes sequential transfer rates by copying a single 634 MB file. The LTR-16101B completes the task in a swift 2:45, trailing only the Ricoh. The disc copy test introduces random accesses through the multiple files and folders on the test CD. Here the Lite-On again performs respectably with a copy time of 3:25. Only drives from Teac and Ricoh (hands down the two fastest-reading burners) defeat the LTR-16101B in this test.
Digital Audio Extraction
CDSpeed99 reveals that the Lite-On is a P-CAV audio extractor like Teac's drive. In fact, results are nearly identical to the CD-W516EB with speeds averaging 28X. Lite-On's drive consistently extracts at full speed even with scratched media and is rewarded by CDSpeed99 with perfect extraction quality. However, CDSpeed99 occasionally reports that the Lite-On does not support accurate streaming. Accurate streaming relates to hitting the correct location when randomly accessing audio and does not necessarily yield poor extraction quality. In the majority of cases, even drives with no support for accurate streaming provide acceptable extraction quality since most correction abilities are far-reaching enough to mask a "missed" random access. We have no explanation for why CDSpeed99 sometimes reports support for accurate streaming and sometimes does not. With CDDAE99, our CD is ripped in 2:26 for an average speed of 27X. This is equal to the Teac and only 6 seconds slower than the Plextor. CDDAE99 also reports perfect extraction quality with zero errors found in various trials with different audio CDs. Informal listening tests with extracted audio tracks confirm CDDAE99's quality results - no abnormal sounds are detected during playback.
CD-DA Error Correction Digital Recordings' CD-CHECK tests each drive's error correction abilities with audio CDs. CD-CHECK is a reference disc with five levels of error gap sizes, each isolated to its own track. Error size and other details may be viewed here. In each track, a continuous 20-second tone plays. The larger the error gap, the more difficult it is for the drive's error correction to mask the error without an audible pop or click occurring during playback of the tone. All drives are tested by playing each track five times with each successful playback (no audible pops or clicks) noted. A result of 5/5 indicates that no pops or clicks were heard in 5 out of 5 playbacks of a particular track. A result of 0/5 indicates pops or clicks occurred during all 5 playbacks of a particular track. Digital Recordings indicates the following interpretation of results:
The Lite-On delivers perfect error correction up to Level-2. At Level-3, error correction drops to 60% successful and falters to 0% by Level-4. No test drive has yet completed even a single pass at Level-5. While not up to the level of the Teac and Plextor, the Lite-On does provide better playback error correction than the Ricoh and Yamaha.
CD-R Media Compatibility and Performance
Lite-On's drive improves to 6110 KB/sec at the outer edge with CD-R media. Again, most of the 40X readers group tightly together in transfer rate performance. Lite-On's access times improve slightly to 116 ms. There are no read issues with a variety of CD-R media of different brands and speed ratings.
CD-RW Media Compatibility and Performance
Write/ReWrite Tests
CD-R Based Duplication
Ahead Software's Nero Burning ROM measures how long a drive takes to duplicate audio and data test discs when burning at maximum speeds. All drives are tested as "source" and "destination," creating results for "imaging" as well as "writing." With the audio CD, the LTR-16101B completes the burn in 5:12, tying Teac's CD-W516EB. Write speeds trail other 16X burners by a slim margin. Because its image times are better than the Teac's, Lite-On's drive manages to edge out the CD-W516EB in total duplication times. The trend continues with the data CD: The Lite-On is a bit swifter than Teac's drive during the image portion, while trailing the Teac slightly in burn times. The end result is a slim advantage for the Lite-On in total duplication times over the Teac. The Plextor continues to lead 16X burners.
CD-RW Based Duplication
Here the test drive duplicates the pressed data disk to CD-RW media at the drive's fastest rewrite speeds. At present, 10X is the fastest rewrite speed available- all drives in the comparison are 10X rewriters. Lite-On's unit leads the pace at imaging, but comes in last place by a slim margin during the burn process with 10X burn times of 8:11. Total duplication times trail the Ricoh by 7 seconds - another statistical dead heat. As expected, today's 10X rewriters perform very similarly.
CD-R Based Stress Tests During a burn process at the drive's maximum write speed, we first run CPU-intensive tasks to see how the drive is able to maintain its task under heavy-load conditions. Then, we hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the Close Program dialog box. This freezes the testbed mid-burn. When Nero indicates the drive buffer is empty, we hit Esc to cancel the dialog box and resume the burn. No problems arise with the Lite-On. The burn process pauses and resumes as expected and the resulting burned data is fully readable.
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