I have a LiteOn LH-20A1P that has served me well. It is giving me problems, reading and burning and i am assuming that the laser is shot. When I run disc quality on Nero, it starts out good but about a quarter of the way through, it gets all messed up and i get a burn quality of about 5. I just decided to replace the thing due to my other burner, a Sony AW-G170A is a terrible burner. I mainly use that one to read only. Should i replace the LiteOn with the same or is there a new version that you would recommend?? Thanks
Kstepan50, What have you done to check your Lite-On? About how many burns have you made with the drive and do you use it for reading/ripping as well? Link to f/w from C0deKing at CDF...you want to scroll down until you reach the f/w for your drive (KLON FB FBL EOS). d/l that f/w and un-rar then update your drive if you haven't already. BEFORE you do that I would give your drive a GOOD dose of canned air and see if that helps any. On your Sony AW-G170A go here and d/l the appropriate f/w for it. un-rar of course and update it as well. That should make the drive much better than it already is. These instructions assume a lot. Sorry for that. If you haven't already made these changes, for one you should, it makes the drives you mention much better in all categories. I don't have the exact drives that you do but I have the 18X version of the 20A1P and the SATA version of the AW-G170A. The C0deKing f/w and the L&G f/w helped each drive respectively. Any questions just give a holler and someone will come to your rescue. To answer your question...what company or companies do you like? AND are there any drives that you're looking at right now? It'll make recommendations easier. For Lite-On I would look at the DH-20A3P.....the test f/w for it is pretty danged good I must say. For Sony I would look at the 7173 series. I think they use the NEC chipset that the present Sony you have uses and they are better drives in my eyes. lol. BUT the Sony 7190 series drive is a rebadged Lite-On DH-20A3P so go figure. lol. Sorry for the bombardment of info.....hope you sort it out. Again just post and someone will respond. .....gm
greensman, That was the best/informative info i have received yet. I have the firmware KLON for the LiteOn and i saw the Codekings FW but when i read it, my understanding was that it could only burn at a high rate, which i don't care for I found that x8 burns very well with the LiteOn. Also, maybe you would know. The Sony drive only burns at x16 with the TY x8 DVD+r media i use. I am stumped at why this is. Even if i choose x8 it burns at x16... Last night tried different media and LitOn burned decent. The TY media i was having problems with was the end of the cake that i got. I ordered more and will see if the problem was the media and not the burner. And for the Sony drive, which one of Liggys FW would you recomend. I have played with a few, even x flashing to Opitarc with the same results..
For the Sony try this f/w: Dee's AD-7170A 1.M1 modified firmware. link to f/w Full bitsetting supported and media speedups and tweaks. That should make that drive something you should be proud of. lol. Be sure to check the settings for burning speed, silly I know but you start with the most obvious first. You may have to clear the eeprom in each drive but I wouldn't think so because if I remember right when you flash a drive the eeprom automatically clears itself. I can look this up but I think that's right. I would look at getting Smartburn too for the Lite-On drive. It helps with certain things and should give you some custom options. link for d/l Be sure to "restart" your computer after updating your drives to ensure a fresh install of f/w and clean "memory" so to say. ...gm
Ok, i got the new media in, and it burns all the way through but a few problems. When i check the quality, they are not so good. But i do get different readings on the two burners, with bad parts on differnet parts of the disk. Also, the movies play fine on my DVD players. So i dont know what the problem is. Another thing is that the discs will not play the main sound on my compter, all i hear is the background sounds. Don't know if this is the burner of computer. Guessing the computer due to the fact that it is the same on both burners...
What is the media? MID if you can. You're using Nero CD/DVD Speed I'm guessing but that info would be nice too. If you can provide a scan that would be even better. A TRT (benchmark) scan would be great as well. On your computer (HDD) do you have plenty of room available for ripping purposes and such? I like 10% or more if possible. Of course I run less than that but it's nice to have a little extra room. I already mentioned the defrag bit but I'm doing it again. The more information that you can tell me the more answers I can give you or places to go for answers. Get back and we'll see what we can figure out. ....gm
***UPDATE*** When i run a scan on Nero with speed at x8 i get a really bad scan just in the begining. But when i scan at x4 it is a great scan (score od 95+) which should i believe? And i am using TY02 printable media from mediastore
Burn speed?? I would suggest 8X at first. That media should handle it with ZERO problems. HOw many discs have you burned with the burners? In the last few days that is. And what about the present batch of media? Are doing the scans after you burn them, waiting a few minutes for them to cool down, or after you print on them. I know from READING and other members that the score will be a little lower once you print on them. Hear say so NO real experience here. On scanning you can scan at 4X that's fine but you should get almost the same scan at 8X with those burners. I would scan at 12X and 16X just for poo-poo's and ha-ha's. That might answer some questions too. I'll be waiting. lol. ...gm
I use x8 discs, so with the LiteOn it won't burn any higher but with the Sony, it won't burn anything but x16 even with x8 discs. I have burned what i think is a ton on the liteOn. Probably 100-150 i think maybe more. I really should keep track. I scan after burning and waiting a few minutes. I don;t have much difference after printing so i don't worry. I just don't want to print on a crappy burn and waste the ink.. When i test it on Nero, if i scan it over x4 say x6 or x8 it goes to a score of 50 or lower in the first second or so but looks good after that. even my old burns do the same. But at x4 it gets a great score of 95+. Just really weird..
What version of Nero CD/DVD Speed do you use? I'm not grasping at straws I just want to address all the possibilities out there. go here for the latest "official" version..... link ...gm
It was an older one but got the newest and still the same. Any ideas about the sound? I only get background sound
I don't put much faith in what comes out of a Nero CD-DVD speed test. Take whatever you see, with a grain of salt. Run the ScanDisc test, and if you don't get any read errors, and the DVD plays in your set top DVD player, then all is well.
Good point Bruce. Where is your source coming from? Are you creating it or is it coming from another "place"? It's very strange that you have "background sound". Are these pressed DVD's that you're backing up? I definitely need more info here. ...gm
scan disc comes out with 100% good on all the scans i've done. These are backup discs. Iwas playing around with the DVDs and found that if i play on Media player, there is only background sound. if i play on Media center, i get all sound but the main sound is muffeled. Is there another player you recomend. Again, they play fine on the standalone DVD player.. Guess i'm missing soomething on the computer for the sound
You've gone a little beyond my skills. lol. I would recommend WinAmp for a media player BUT it shouldn't make a difference. I'll see what I can do to get someone else over here. ....gm
Figured it out. The system got changed to 5.1 I only have two speakers hooked up. Changed it and it works fine now. Thanks though for all your help. I guess everything is working ok for now.
