No. But that's the way it came and I've never had any problems.

Ok then. But your quote is still wrong. The Yamaha is at 1.74% errors on a scratched disc (which is why my search for 1.75 only turned up the CPU utilization - you didn't post the original number). The Lite-On is at 11.62%. The LG is 14.73%. None of these are 14%, and 14.73 should have been rounded to 15. But that's all irrelevent because LG IS NOT Lite-On. The VisonTek is the drive based on a Lite-On. LG is a different company and one of Lite-On's competitors.

On my natural 48x drive:
Initializing
[10:19:35] Starting CPU utilization test
[10:19:35] Starting 1X test
[10:19:50] 1 X CPU usage: 2%
[10:19:50] Starting 2X test
[10:20:05] 2 X CPU usage: 3%
[10:20:05] Starting 4X test
[10:20:20] 4 X CPU usage: 6%
[10:20:20] Starting 8X test
[10:20:35] 8 X CPU usage: 11%
[10:20:35] CPU utilization test completed

Oops, yes, you're right. Still, the difference between 1.74% and 11.62% seems like a significant one. DAE errors on almost 12% of the disc? Again, ouch. Not that I'd be reading scratched discs all the time, but it still does seem to be a pretty significant difference in reading accuracy.

rdgrimes, thanks for the CPU usage numbers. That's interesting -- and good news.