Well, it's long overdue already.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/141

It's the usual stuff - just like you know it from earlier reviews.

About 130 Images and over 50 hours of work - but here it is.

Comments/suggestions is welcomed as usual - but keep it constructive.

Onto the next drive - which is a BenQ DW822A.

Next review will bring one noticeable change: Kprobe 2 instead of Kprobe 1. Giving results even better comparable to the standards/specs.

You wish

Give me a break - I'm dope tired at the moment Fixed it

Nice work as usual OC

Although, it's too bad you couldn't and/or didn't mention the great community support and amazing array of tools (even though most are unofficial) available to the drive.

I'd also like to mention that the firmware needed for bit setting (US0J) is now official and has been released on LiteOn's webpage since yesterday (2004/04/26).

My gosh, isn't the grammer and spelling extra specially good this time?

Oh goodness. Who ever could have been the person that did the final grammar and spelling check...

*pokes grimes*

Good thing the word grammer wasn't in the review at all!

Eh he he he. Some reading material...

Some comments...

1) About the -R writing strategy... I've found that the late-6x writing strat that you saw for -R applies to +R, too. For example, when I was using GS0F, it wouldn't jump 6x until that later point when burning a 4x Ricoh at 8x. When burning a 4x Ricoh with GS0H, the burner *tries* to jump to 6x at the early point, fails, continues at 4x, and then tries the jump again. I would certainly be very interested to see where the jump occurs for a 4x Ricoh burned at 8x on the 812S (or 832S ).

2) About your TY -R burn that had a high error spike at the end, caused by a disc defect... I had the same thing happen to me! A dark spot that was visible at the outer edges. So I'm not the only one who got a bad TY disc. *hopes that this doesn't mean TY's quality is going downhill*

You say the drive uses Z-CLV to write onto CD-RW media but the graphic shows P-CAV.

why didn't you use the liteon 411 to do kprobe tests?

Forgot to mention that, but I found the 812S to give scans that are almost identical to my 411S scans, over 95% of the results were within + - 5% difference compared to the 411S. So I threw out the old 411S leaving space for more newer drives

That's really reassuring, cosidering all the variations in reading/scanning quality that have been reported!

G

Our drive came shipped with firmware US0A, firmware US0G will be used in this review (Firmware US0J is used in a few tests, but the majority of the tests are done with FS0G).

Just thought I point at that I believe you meant to say US0G rather than 'FS0G'..

I, too, have gotten very consistent results, with varying firmwares, temperature, I/O layer... I think that as rdgrimes put it, if the KProbe is done right, the reading difference shouldn't be that great.

Umm...maybe there was a Frasier re-run on while he was working on the review?

Please read using your best Scotty from Star Trek voice:

Domi....we need more power! It's the Lite-On review ... it's drained the Dilithium crystals and brought the servers to their knees!

Great Job OC-Freak! We got a ton of extra hits today !!!!!

Yes, are very similar. I have made the comparison.
I hope that the LiteON engineers read the review to know in the detail merits and defects of the drive (firmware).

No, no, no ........... do the Lite-On SOHW-832S first!!

Great! Very interested in it's writing quality.

As far as I could see, these were all variations with the same drive, though. Differential testting using one drive is always the best way to go, because the hardware variation is (mostly) removed. OC saw equivalent results for different drives, though and that is apparently not a given.

G

That is true. I guess I posted mostly because there have been a lot of posts recently questioning consistency even on the same drive.