X-bit labs - Print version

Today we would like to introduce to you a new DVD drive from LiteOn capable of burning DVDs at 12x speed. This is a well-done device that provides an opportunity to estimate the quality of the written discs and has good technical parameters. More benchmarks are available in our new review!

The 12x DVD burn speed seems to be kind of inconvenient for developers of optical drives. Few manufacturers have released such models, the majority preferring to wait for 16x. Today I will discuss one exception – the SOHW-1213S drive from Lite-On is capable of burning DVDs at 12x speed.

Of course, I would also be glad to test the Sony DRU-540A drive, which is a twin brother of that model, but fate was merciless to it. It became available in shops only after the announcement of the famous Sony DRU-700A that ushered us into the era of dual-layer recorders, and thus gained little popularity. Notwithstanding the impressive speed formula (for that time), the resellers just refused to take this model arguing that no one needed a drive that cost about the same money as the DRU-700A, but could only burn single-layer media.

Well, they were right on the issue, although left us ignorant as to the capabilities of the DRU-540A. But now we’ve got the Lite-On SOHW-1213S, the prototype of Sony’s drive. This model is not the most advanced offer from Lite-On now, since there’s a dual-layer drive available from the company, and the 16x modification is coming up, but it’s anyway better to test a device later than never.

Closer Look

As usual, we’ve got the OEM version of the drive, without any accessories. The retail version comes with a pack of mounting screws, a blank DVD-R disc from Taiyo Yuden, a software bundle to watch and burn DVDs, and an audio cable (a real curio nowadays). I do wonder why some manufacturers don’t differentiate their retail and OEM products by reducing the cache memory amount in the latter, for example. The price difference between these two shipped versions isn’t often worth the accessories, save for the software. But I’ve got off the point. Let’s get back to the drive.

We’ve got a classic Lite-On here: the design of the front panel hasn’t been changed for a long time, only its shade varies slightly between different models. The controls and indicators are the same as in any other Lite-On device, too. By the way, Lite-On is among the few optical drive manufacturers who still put a headphones socket and a volume control on DVD-burners even.

There are no changes at the rear panel, either. There’s still no hole to ventilate the drive’s innards. By the way, Lite-On is still manufacturing its drives in the “shortened” design – the depth is smaller than standard, which is an advantage considering the current miniaturization trend in the computer systems industry. The connectors are all labeled at the real panel – inexperienced users should find it helpful. Now, let’s take a look inside:

The SOHW-1213S drive is based on a third-generation chipset from MediaTek Inc that consists of two chips: a main DSP MT1816E and an auxiliary MT1828E chip that controls the servomotor. The drive uses an SF-DB 10SA optical pickup unit from Sanyo.

Of course, this DVD-burner supports all the exclusive technologies from Lite-On intended to reduce noise and vibration, to improve burn quality and to avoid the buffer underrun error.

Here’s the information reported by Nero InfoTool and DVDInfo about the SOHW-1213S drive:

Note the support of Streaming and S.M.A.R.T and the lack of Mt. Rainier for both CD-RW and DVD+RW media – the last fact is rather strange for a modern device. It’s all clear with the drive’s technical characteristics, although the 12x DVD burn speed and the Z-CLV algorithm for burning 12x DVD+Rs is not the height of progress anymore. But the drive has been around in the market for rather long, and we should make allowances for that.

Performance

CD WinBench 99

I took a PX-712A drive from Plextor for the comparison’s sake as it is close to the Lite-On SOHW-1213S in characteristics (but not in functionality!) The Plextor got a higher overall score, but only due to its smaller access time. The Lite-On, however, develops a much higher velocity both on the inner and outer tracks (the difference is most noticeable on the outer tracks). The Lite-On consumes less of CPU resources, too (below 1 percent). Thus, the SOHW-1213S can quickly perform linear reading (by the way, it is the fastest DVD-burner I have tested so far), but can’t be boastful of its access time.

CD-R Burning

I burned the discs at the maximum (48x) as well as 24x and 16x speeds. The Plextor can’t write to CD-R discs at 24x, so we can only base our comparisons on the remaining two speeds. The Plextor was 3 seconds faster at 48x, while the Lite-On was 5 seconds ahead at 16x. This is yet another confirmation of the fact that it takes about the same time for different optical drives to burn CD-R media at the same speed. The difference, if any, is negligible.

The reading graph above is good – the drive reaches its max declared speed, but there’s a slump between minutes 20 and 30. Otherwise, I have no complains.

Here are the results of Nero CD Speed for the CD-R written at 48x. The average read speed is reported to be similar to the CD WinBench result – the Lite-On SOHW-1213S is faster than the PX-712A and once again confirms the title I’ve ascribed to it above – the fastest DVD-burner I’ve ever tested (I mean, with CD media). The seek time is still high, though. It is not just higher than that of the PX-712A, but is also higher than that of “any DVD-burner I’ve ever tested”. Before that, the Pioneer DRV-108 drive was holding the “record” of the slowest random seek (122msec). The new record is 139 milliseconds. The Lite-On wins the ergonomics test (the total time it takes to load and recognize the disc) with an advantage of 1 second over the PX-712A. However, with an absolute result of 16 seconds it is still among the category of “ruminative” devices. The SOHW-1213S also shows a slightly faster burst rate than the Plextor, but its result is anyway rather average – a long way to the Pioneer DRV-108’s 35MB/s.

We’ve finished with the burn time, let’s check the quality of this same burning. We’ll see below how well the SOHW-1213S handles CD-R discs.

It’s nice we have no C2 errors, not to mention CU ones, on the disc. There are rather high peaks of C1 errors at the beginning and end of the disc, but they are still acceptable and rather small in extent. As for the Beta and Jitter parameters, the former starts fluctuating since the 50-th minute, and the latter – since the 30-th. The closer the end of the disc, the greater the deviations are. But as we saw in the read graph, the drive has no problems reading this disc, save for a single area where it slows down. Now let’s examine the quality of the disc written at a lower speed.

There’s still a surge of C1 errors at the beginning of the disc. Peaks of C1 errors are higher than they were on the disc written at 48x speed, but remain in the acceptable range. On the other hand, the level of C1 errors is not increasing at the end of the disc. The total of first encoder errors has decreased after I’ve switched to 24x, but not too much: from 34,042 to 33,857. There are still no second encoder errors. As for the Beta/Jitter parameters, the graphs are normal at 24x speed. While there are still minor Beta fluctuations at the end of the disc, Jitter is within the norm throughout the entire CD-R. The overall quality of the written disc has got better at the smaller burn speed, but not much. What if we drop the burn speed to 16x?

Again, there’re numerous C1 errors at the beginning of the disc, but their peak values are smaller. In comparison to 24x speed, there’s no increase of C1 errors at the end of the disc. The total of first encoder errors has diminished again, although by a small degree – from 33,857 to 32,279. There is a single surge of C2 errors at the end of the disc. Their amount doesn’t allow speaking about any problems with the written medium. Most probably they are due to some minor defect on the surface of the blank I used. The Beta/Jitter parameters are also within the norm, with only minor fluctuations present. Overall, there’s again a certain improvement of the burn quality, but we might have hoped for something much better from switching to 16x burn speed.

All in all, it seems like you profit little by choosing a lower CD-R burn speed with the Lite-On SOHW-1213S. To voice my final verdict, however, I will use the CD CATS SA3 system first.

Burn quality of the Lite-On SOHW-1213S drive at 48x speed:
scaled-down and full-size (0.87MB) image

When the written disc is being read at 4x speed (the speed the CD CATS SA3 system works at) the BLER parameter differs somewhat from what we saw above using the Plextor PX-712A drive at 24x speed. There are significant C1 error peaks at the beginning and end of the disc, which result from “fuzziness” of pits and lands and their partial overlapping. The higher the speed, the more difficult it is for the drive to identify them. The total of errors of both first and second encoders is very small, though. There is a single surge of E32 errors, but it must be due to a defect of the medium itself because the BERL parameter is above the norm in this spot, too.

Now let’s discuss the symmetry parameter, which is the analog of the Beta parameter as measured with the help of the PX-712A. The results we got above are fully confirmed: starting from the 60‑th minute, symmetry is out of the acceptable range. This corresponds to the moment the Beta/Jitter graph goes above the 0.00 point. Jitter is normal; its fluctuations are negligible and far from the maximum allowable values. There are only minor jitter peaks for lands. The Land Histogram shows overlaps for lengths of up to 8T inclusive. The overlap area is rather large for small-size sequences (3T-5T), which indicates that the drive has problems creating small-length pits.

The Reflection parameter is below the norm – yet another DVD-burner shows the common problem of this category of devices.

Burn quality of the Lite-On SOHW-1213S drive at 24x speed
scaled-down and full-size (0.54MB) image

It’s overall similar to what I have had when reading the disc in the Plextor PX-712A. The BLER is somewhat smaller; there are no E22 errors; the BERL parameter is normal across the entire surface of the disc. Symmetry (i.e. Beta) is within the acceptable range. Jitter is acceptable, too, both for pits and lands. The histograms confirm that as there are no overlapping areas in them. So, as I have said above, the burn quality improves as we drop the burn speed from 48x to 24x. The only problem with 24x is the reflection coefficient, but we have to put up with it when it comes to DVD-burners. I haven’t yet met a device that would have this parameter within the norm.

Burn quality of the Lite-On SOHW-1213S drive at 16x speed
scaled-down and full-size (0.67MB) image

The BLER has become smaller yet, although the reduction of C1 errors is small compared to 24x. There are still E22 errors on the written disc. The BERL is within the norm across the entire CD-R. Surprisingly, the land jitter has become bigger at the reduced burn speed! It is slightly above the norm almost for any pit length. Accordingly, there are minor overlaps in the Land Histogram for small-length pits. Yet another curious thing – symmetry (beta) becomes the maximum possible starting from the 60-th minute, like with 48x speed burning. From there on, it is slightly above the norm.

Summarizing the results of the Lite-On SOHW1213S with CD media, I would like to stress the following facts. Successfully handling CD discs overall, the Lite-On had the best results when writing at 24x speed. At the maximum burn speed, there are problems with land lengths and a deviation of symmetry out of the acceptable range. 16x burn speed also produced some strange results: the same symmetry-related problems, although less evident than at 48x speed, and the same problems with land lengths. So, the total result is somewhere between “satisfying” at the maximum to “good” at 24x speed. Considering the strengthening trend to eliminate CD-R support in DVD-burners (this can be assumed from the total indifference of the optics manufacturers to the problems of their devices with CD-R discs), the results of the SOHW-1213S can be considered acceptable. At least, against its competitors.

Now, let’s turn to another media type – we’ll do some reading and writing with rewritable CD media.

The Lite-On burned the 24x CD-RW quite fast, losing only 12 seconds to the Plextor PX-712A. There is only one faster drive then them – the TDK 880N can burn discs in 3 minutes 38 seconds at 24x speed. The rest of the devices I’ve tested earlier all took more than 4 minutes to burn the disc. I was also surprised at the Lite-On SOHW-1213S’s willingness to work with a medium which it didn’t support, according to its spec. It did burn it, although at 16x speed only. The time of burning matched the burn speed used. Of course, the capability to process 32x CD-RW media is an advantage of the Lite-On drive, but I should confess that, for example, the Pioneer DRV-108 can write the same disc at 24x rather than at 16x. So, the Lite-On is good in this respect, but not the best.

The graphs of burning CD-RW discs at 24x speed and at 16x speed
(the latter used with a 32x medium)

The specified burn algorithms do comply with the real burn process; the graphs are smooth, without any fluctuations. Comparing the 24x burn of the PX-712A and the Lite-On, the former uses the P-CAV mode and reaches the maximum speed at the 5-th minute, while the Lite-On uses Z-CLV and reaches 24x speed at the 13-th minute only. This explains the difference in the total burn time between the two devices.

C1/C2 Errors (left) and Beta/Jitter of the 24x CD-RW written at 16x
by the Lite-On SOHW-1213S drive

The disc was written very well: there are no C1 errors at all, while C2 errors, although numerous, are grouped in one small disc area. Beta/Jitter parameters are within the norm, too. Jitter is deviating but slightly, while beta is almost a perfect horizontal graph. This ideal situation doesn’t last for long, though. As soon as the drive reaches the area with a surge of C2 errors, the Beta/Jitter test is interrupted. The error code seems to tell that this is a media error, i.e. a defect of the medium surface. This also suggests that the surge of C2 errors may be due to the defect of the disc rather than due to any fault of the recording device. Let’s see how this affects the process of reading the written disc.

Notwithstanding the surge of C2 errors, the disc is being read without any problems: no slumps, no fluctuations – the graph is clear and well-shaped. Thus, I can say this drive burns CD-RW discs very well at 24x speed. Let’s now examine the 32x disc written at 16x.

C1/C2 Errors (left) and Beta/Jitter of the 32x CD-RW written at 16x
by the Lite-On SOHW-1213S drive

This is how the graphs of the 24x CD-RW would look if it were not for the corrupt zone with a high C2 error count. This time the BLER parameter is normal – that’s very good for rewritable media, by the way. Beta and Jitter are normal, too. Their fluctuations are negligible. Below is the read graph for this medium.

There are no problems at reading, which is another indication of the high burn quality. Overall, the SOHW-1213S boasts a very high CD-RW burn quality. Minor problems with 24x speed must have been due to a defect of the disc itself.

Reading a Damaged CD-ROM

The last CD-related section of this review is about error correction mechanisms – how well the drive is reading damaged CD media.

The SOHW-1213S reads the test disc through in 3 minutes 44 seconds, which is an excellent performance. Lite-On’s drives have always been most efficient and fast with practically unreadable media – sometimes at a tradeoff of quality. This time the drive committed only three errors (three unread data blocks). Considering the bad quality of the test disc, this is a good result, although there are DVD drives capable of reading it without a single error. So, the SOHW-1213S passes this test, but without honors.

DVD Reading

Graphs of reading molded DVD-ROM media
(a single-layer disc is on the left and a dual-layer one is on the right)

The SOHW-1213S has read a single-layer disc without any problems, producing a smooth graph and reaching a maximum speed of 12x. I want to remind you that the Plextor PX-712A has some problems at the end of the test disc – the Lite-On has none. The dual-layer disc provoked no problems, either. There are no speed drops as the drive switches from one layer to another or when it’s reading the second layer. Comparing the Lite-On to the Plextor PX-712A, the Plextor is noticeably faster (by five minutes and something), but this is due to the maximum read speeds of the drives with this type of media (12x for the Plextor and 8x for the Lite-On).

Thus, the Lite-On SOHW-1213S processes molded DVD media – both single- and dual-layer – very successfully, although not at a highest speed. Now let’s try to feed it a dual-layer DVD+R disc.

That’s good. The maximum read speed is 8x, like with molded dual-layer media, and the graphs are smooth enough, save for a slight speed drop on the transition to another layer.

DVD Burn Quality

Verbatim DataLifePlus (Mitsubishi Chemical) media were used for this test. First let’s see what time it takes to burn a DVD disc.

The Lite-On is slightly – by 10 seconds – faster than the Plextor with DVD-R discs, working at 4x speed. When they both work at 8x, the gap becomes much wider – about 2 minutes. The SOHW-1213S is also faster than the Plextor PX-712A working with DVD+R media. The drives are similarly fast with rewritable media (both –RW and +RW) at their maximum as well as 4x burn speeds.

Before evaluating the DVD burn quality, I’d like to note that 12x blanks are rather rare in the market, so you may want to burn 8x media at 12x speed, if the drive permits.

The burn process finished without problems, slumps or failures, and the graph is smooth and clear. The quality of the written disc is high. There is neither PI nor PO error peaks. The level of PI errors never exceeds 20-23, while the maximum PO peak is only 2-3 errors. The graph of reading the written disc – smooth, without jaggies – confirms the high burn quality.

The drive is using the Z-CLV algorithm starting from 8x speed. I can’t call it optimal from the point of view of speed, especially at high speeds (when the burning is accomplished in two or three stages). P-CAV would be preferable, I guess. As for the burn process itself, there were no problems. The drive achieved 8x speed at 0.6GB and never slowed down thereafter. The quality of the written disc is excellent, too. The PI/PO error levels have become lower than at 4x, although slightly so. There are no peaks. The best confirmation to this fact is the clear and smooth graph of reading the disc written at 8x.

The use of the Z-CLV mode with three zones ensured a certain speed gain as we switch from 8x to 12x. The difference is slightly over one minute. The burn process went smoothly, like at 8x speed, but the burn quality has degenerated considerably compared to lower speeds, although is still in the acceptable “readable” limits. The PO error level hasn’t changed practically, but the PI error level is high as soon as the drive starts working at 12x. The graph of reading the written DVD provokes even more questions. The zones written at 4x and 12x (!) are read normally, while the 8x zone poised some reading problems. First, there’s a significant speed drop and, second, there’s “beating” of speed in this zone at reading. Overall, considering the Z-CLV burn mode and a consequential minor time gain from 12x speed (while the quality is much lower), I think it is better to burn discs at 8x and lower speeds with the Lite-On SOHW-1213S drive. The results for 4x and 8x speeds are just excellent.

Again, the burn process went smoothly. The quality of the written blank is somewhat worse than with the DVD+R disc written at the same speed, but is anyway high enough. The PI error level is in the norm, but higher than with the 4x DVD+R. The PO errors are few, and PO error blocks don’t occur frequently. The disc was read without any problems, too, but at a smaller speed than the DVD+R medium.

This is different from what we saw with the 8x DVD+R disc. The Z-CLV burn algorithm is used in both cases, but it consists of two stages for DVD+R and writing starts from 6x, while for DVD-R we have three stages and writing starts from 4x. This explains the difference (53 seconds) in time it took to burn DVD-R and DVD+R discs at 8x speed. The difference is no big deal, but the use of one more stage in Z-CLV also affects the quality of the resulting disc. Some drives falter at those spots where the zone changes and greatly reduce their reading speed.

The quality of the disc can be called good, but not excellent. The PI error level is low (but higher than with analogous DVD+R discs), and the level of PO errors grows up at the end of the disc, at 8x speed. Of course, 7-8 is far from the limit (32), but worse than 2 as we had above. The graph of reading the resulting DVD is stable.

The overall quality of burning DVD-R discs is lower than that of the DVD+R discs, and the quality degenerates more as you switch to 8x speed. Moreover, the additional stage that appears when you burn 8x DVD-Rs at 8x speed worries me, too.

The result is excellent for this type of media. The PI/PO error levels are comparable to write-once media, and that’s a real achievement. There’s just a minor increase of PI/PO errors at the end of the disc. But this never affects the reading of the written disc – there are no speed slumps or beats.

The disc burn graph speaks for itself. The level of PI errors is rather high at 4x, higher than the acceptable 280 at the first half of the disc. In fact, this result can be called normal for rewritable media, but still the quality is bad, if we compared it to the quality of the 2.4x disc and the results of the Plextor PX-712A. The PO errors are few, giving no cause to complain. The disc is read without problems.

The quality of the disc written at the lowest speed is excellent and better than with the DVD+RW written at 2.4x. The PI/PO error levels are low, only slightly increasing at the end of the disc. The burn process and the reading of the disc provoke no problems.

Like with the DVD+RW disc, the transition to 4x speed negatively affected the quality of the written medium. In fact, there few PO errors, while the PI error level comes close to 280 but never goes over the acceptable limit. But still, the burn quality is worse here, although this doesn’t affect the read process – the written disc was read without any problems.

Summarizing the rewritable media quality section, I should note that the Lite-On SOHW-1213S does burning excellently at the minimal speed. But this quality degenerates significantly as you switch to 4x. It is acceptable, though, and the discs are read without problems, but there’s still a rather high level of PI errors.

Audio Capture

The SOHW-1213S can return C2 errors, which the Plextor PX-712A can’t do. Besides that, the Lite-On can cache audio data, but this feature is of small practical use. The offset parameter is smaller with the Lite-On than with the Plextor PX-712A, but the average capturing speed is smaller, too. The drive can read the sub-channel data and Lead-in/out zones. The Lite-On read 64 sectors more than the Plextor from the Lead-In zone.

As for the time of real audio capturing, the Lite-On is faster in the Secure Mode and slower in other modes.

Lastly, one innovation: if the drive can return C2 errors, let’s try to see how well it does it. We’ll use the DAE Quality Test from the creator of the EAC program for this purpose. Using a special test disc it will allow us to evaluate the quality of returning C2 errors. Before showing you the results, here is an explanation on their meaning and associated terms:

Errors Total is the total of all erroneous reads during extraction of audio data. It includes areas of the disc where wrong reads go next to right ones.

Errors (Loudness) parameter shows the number of fast Fourier transforms. The maximal and minimal values are the difference of power between two signals. No acoustic model is applied when counting, so the numbers shown don’t necessarily result in audible errors.

Errors (Muting) is the error-masking value. When there are complex errors or error-masking (muting) technology is bad, the last sample read without errors is continued to when the next errorless sample appears. The first number is the total of mutes, followed by the average and maximum lengths of such samples, respectively.

Skips appear when there are sync failures and the drive has to reposition itself on the same or slightly different spot on the disc. Drives that don’t support Accurate Stream are prone to make sync errors.

This is about the first graph and the DAE Quality Test table. Let’s now discuss the second graph. It consists of three parts: the first (green) graph shows the total of C2 errors identified by the drive in the disc, the second (red) graph shows the number of C2 errors which are corrected in the resulting wav-file, and the third (blue) graph shows the number of C2 errors that made it into the resulting wav-file and were not identified by the drive. Ideally, the last graph should be a “zero” line.

In spite of the not very high read quality score (67.3 points out of 100), we can speak about a 100% return of C2 errors by this drive. The reason is that the unnoticed C2 errors fall on the areas with the lost sync (two skips when reading).

Conclusion

Like many products from Lite-On, this drive left a nice general impression: no leaders in any class, they usually show good, sometimes average, and rarely excellent results. The SOHW-1213 is a workhorse that provides an opportunity to estimate the quality of the written discs and has good technical parameters, although in an unassuming design. The pros and cons of this model are listed below:

LiteOn SOHW-1213S Dual DVD±RW Recorder Review