I have flashed my new SONY CRX 195E to Lite-On firmware in following sequence. VS06 ¨ ZS0N.
The appearance of the back of the drive and interior just resembles Lite-On. God! I hate that we do not have Lite-Ons in Sri Lanka!!
First I wrote a data CD with Original SONY firmware. For all writes, I used TDK blanks with following data. All the CDs written were checked for quality with CDSPEED on both Lite-on and ASUS E616. For burning I used Nero burning ROM 5.5.9.9.

This Disc is designed for CD-RW/COMBO Drive Only.
Disc Type, Material = CD-R, Phthalocyanine
ATIP Lead-in = 97m 15s 17f
Norminal Capacity = 702.83MB (79m 59s 73f)
Disc Manufacturer maybe = RiTEK,TG
SMART-BURN Speed Limit = 40X

The first burn with Sony firmware gave me a write without any errors reading on lite-on. But it gave unreadable sectors at 75% mark when read on ASUS. All the CDs with all FRM [Firmware] gave no errors when read on Lite-on, but had some errors on ASUS DVD. [It sucks! Being a dedicated reader] So, I decided to check CDs for quality on ASUS as it gives low threshold for errors.
With 48X FRM [VS06] I had 48X write capability, Mount Rainier support and 2MB buffer. It gave perfect quality read with Lite-on but a chunk of errors around 85% area on ASUS. [0.008] It gave me about 20s advantage over 40125s FRM. All the burns were done at 40X, Smartburn on.
Then I flashed to LTR40125s FRM [ZS0N]. Then I had 40X write, MR support and 2MB buffer. Best write quality was achieved here. All disks written were free of errors on Lite-on. I wrote about 7 CDs with this FRM. About 50% of disks were free of errors with ASUS. Rest had [0.005%-0.008%] small errors mainly at the end part of the disk [80%]. So I am going to stick with ZS0N as it gives MR support and P-CAV support. I think 40X write speed gives more error free write compared to 48X speed with present day media. If there is any hardware difference between 40X and 48X, [at least tolerance of drives] 40X is more native speed I thought.
CloneCD works flawlessly. With WinOnCD 5.02 with latest updates I had problems. When writing to 60% mark the writer just halts for few seconds and LED turns yellow indicating it shifts tracks. My ASUS is refusing to work with WinOnCD. The CD Mate worked flawlessly again.

Can someone answer these questions?
1. Has SONY done any hardware change apart from changing the face-plate?
2. Is it OK to flash 40125w to 40152s as it seems Sony was originally LTR 40125W
3. What is the best writing software for Lite-on OCed? Nero? WinonCD? CD Mate?
4. What is the best FRM for 40125S with MR support and P-CAV? [There are few!]

Athlon xp 1600+
Gigabyte VTXE F8 Mother Board
Kingston 256MB DDR RAM
Maxtor D740X 40GB
Quantum Fireball Lct 08 8.4GB
ASUS E616 DVD ROM
Sony CRX195 ¨ Lite-on LTR 40125s Writer
Creative SB live
Gigabyte GF2010D [Geforce 2 Pro] Graphic card
Zoltrix Cobra Internal Modem
Zoltrix Genie TV card

Original and some tweaked Sony firmware and support links can be found here

http://kickme.to/sony195


Interested in making your Sony CRX195 [40X write] to CRX220 [48X write] with original Sony firmware?

Check this link

http://forum.firmware-flash.com/viewtopic.php?t=7040