Is it normal for a Lite-On LTR-32123S (XS0U) to be burning CDs that sometimes come out looking slightly mottled in the right light, with some dark spots (1mm²) where a piece of dust had been followed by a short pattern of light-dark-light-dark-light?

Also, My FujiFilm (Taiyo Yuden) 80mm CD-Rs come out looking like bullseyes when recorded at full speed. The transistions occur right when the drive changes speed.

These discs all seem to be operating properly, even in my cranky Panasonic SL-291C Portable CD-Player.

My old HP 8200a 4x always burned discs that were consistent in appearance. These discs that my Lite-On is burning are just plain ugly:

This is normal. One hardware review site normally posts a picture of the burnt CDs showing the different speed zones on the disc. He uses a blue/green dye disc to do this because with gold colored discs it is very hard to see the zones.

The reason your HP made consistent appearance burned discs was because it burned at a CLV (no zones) while your LiteOn is a Z-CLV burner. But then you knew that, didn't you?

Bottom line: Some dyes will show the differences between the speed zones more clearly than others, but if the disc works then don't worry about it.

As for dust, I ALWAYS use a can of compressed air to blow off BOTH sides of the disc I'm about to burn. DUST BAD! BAD! BAD! BAD!

Great! I couldn't find too much information on the effects of Zone-CLV recording, so I was worried that there might have been something wrong with the laser or how it is calibrated.

Thanks for putting my mind at ease.

As Arnold would say: "No Problemo!"

And if you still are worried about your discs, try to do a read test with Nero CD-Speeds Scandisc function (surface scan).

A good disc should be 100% readable in all different readers.

A disc with some % damaged is still useable.

A disc with some % unreadable is most likely unuseable (Still some readers may be able to read it in some cases).

on a completely different note
how did you get the picture into your post?

Simple. I used IMG tags.


{IMG}http://(location of picture on the web){/IMG}

Just replace the curly brackets with straight ones.

so I need to have web space yes?
post a picture on my web space and implant a link between img tags

am I right

Yes.

thanx godzilla525