Never heard of LiteOn? They are currently the second largest manufacturer of CD drives in the world. Very soon, they should pass Phillips as the numero uno. So they decided to market their own drives, in addition to putting them in many other brand names.

They really did this burner right: quiet, with zone-CLV speed control (this is why it isn't the fastest—it starts burning at 6x and gradually increases speed as it moves further out on the disc); VAS vibration absorber system to reduce vibration and noise during read and write; SMART-BURN to avoid buffer underruns, and automatically adjust writing strategy for various media burning conditions; SMART-X to support high speed digital audio extraction (DAE) and VCD data extraction. Overburn? You bet. It's even supposed to read 99-minute CDs. It supports the little 3" discs, and all flavors of Windows and OS/2 Warp (though some folks are having strange problems with WinXP). If that's not enough, it supports fixed and variable packet writing, track-at-once, session-at-once, disc-at-once, and raw mode. With CloneCD and CDMate software, you can make an archive copy of almost any of your CDs.

So if it's so good, why is it so reasonable? The LiteOn 32x and portable 24X using USB2 interface are already on the way. When these folks decided to be the leader, they didn't fool around.

So how does this puppy perform? The hard core testers, CD Freaks, CDRW Central and Tom's Hardware rate the LiteOn 24x at about the middle of the pack of new 20-24x burners in overall speed, but near the head of the class in overall capabilities and accuracy. Not too shabby for under $90.

I'm not sure speed has any meaning anymore. I still burn at 12x. Sure I can set up for a 24x burn, but with SMART-BURN starting and stopping the burn, it still takes nearly the same amount of time—about six minutes. Only now, burning coasters is just a bad memory. Most of the burning software I use hasn't caught up to 24x yet anyway.

So if you have a really fast rig, you can burn an 80-minute music CD at 24x in about four minutes, or a slower rig can do a 12x burn in about six minutes. For both, you will still spend over 30 minutes running filters, normalizing and preparing the music tracks for recording from the hard drive.

After you install it, make sure it has the latest firmware installed and download the latest upgrade of Nero. LiteOn bundles Nero5.5 software with this drive. Let's see: Nero costs $65, and the drive and software bundle costs $89 — that means the drive cost $24? It boggles the mind! Yes, my wife does our taxes. Why do you ask?

Planning to transfer some LP records to CD? I recommend you visit CD Page. Clive has posted some advice on "Transferring LPs to CDR." This article really goes into detail and raises some interesting points. As Martha would say, it's a good thing — so check it out.

If you use Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe or 5 Platinum, I still consider Bob Starrett's "Recording from LP or cassette tape to CD using CD Spin Doctor" in two parts, to be the definitive analog recording guide. It's available at Roxio, along with support, a newsletter, and archives. Also, "Turn your LPs into MP3s and CDs" on ZD Net even has pictures. Since they reorganize their stuff all the time, best to search by title for the article. Also, look in their "help and how-to" section for some other good stuff. I use Feurio or Dart4 to create and clean up the WAV files on the hard disk and record to CD.

The Nero and CDSpeed2000 folks have released another great free utility for all burner users. The Nero Info Tool will give you scads of info about the CD-ROM, Recorder, and DVD drive in your computer. It will also give you details of the disc in your CD-RW drive. Download it at Ahead even if you don't use Nero. Checkout CDSpeed and CDDriveSpeed while you are there or at CD Speed2000.

You knew when Plextor (the 800-pound gorilla of burners) and Oak Technology (they wrote the CD-R/RW drivers most of us use in Windows) got their heads together, something extraordinary would come out of it. SimpliCD recording software is supposed to allow "CD burning with one-touch ease to easily create CD's without learning complicated software or arcane formatting techniques."

By embedding a user interface in Windows, it allows the user to burn CDs from the Windows desktop, or Windows Media Player, or to drag-and-drop files to a burner through Windows Explorer.

Plextor plans to bundle SimpliCD with their new line of USB2 CD-RW drives (8x8x24U and 24xl0x40U). Sounds like a winning combination to me — simple USB setup and one-touch CD creation.

Speaking of burners, have I got a shopping Web site for you. OfficeDepot with one of their companies, Computers 4 Sure, has opened Tech Depot with prices so low I couldn't believe it. A 16x TDK was $80 with BURNProof after rebate. A 16x Plextor with BURNProof was $110 after rebate. The 24x Plextor (the best) was $149 after rebate. And they have a full line of geek toys. Most shopping bots don't list it. You have to check this place out.

Roxio, ever eager to spend that pocketful of coin they took from us for that Creator 5 Platinum upgrade fiasco, is buying MGI Software. Pity, I really like PhotoSuite and VideoWave. Roxio is currently working with Pressplay so we can pay to download music from the Web and burn it to CD.

By the way, what do you think of Roxio's changed newsletter? Appears to me they ran off the tech-oriented folks who built the best and most helpful burner newsletter, and replaced them with hungry marketing types. I guess when you're losing your grip on sixty percent of the burner software market (I read over 100 million worldwide), you have to get rid of those nerdy types that care about burner users and hire a bunch of marketing and acquisition specialists.

After 2 years, Roxio has finally followed Nero's example by offering a demo of their basic Easy CD Creator 5.

If you are into checking who manufactured the blank CDs you acquired, using Feurio Write or CDRidentifier to read the ATIP with your burner, the program will list the name of the manufacturer, but will only give you a type number for the dye used.

Why do you need to know what dye was used? Debate continues to rage, since the beginning of burners, that the dye used directly contributes to the quality of the disc, particularly how long the dye on the burned CD will last when exposed to ultraviolet light, humidity, and heat. The CATS test rig can accelerate testing of blank and burned discs to simulate the aging process.

The jury is still out on any form of quality standard for all blank CD discs. Most of us settle for a disc that is compatible with our burner and most of our CD players. Let's see, compatible (it's works fine now) versus quality (how accurately the data was copied and how long the data will remain useable).

The disc makers are saying their data grade (most expensive) discs can or should last 100 years plus if handled and stored properly. Anyway, where are you going to find a CD player in 30 years?

And the debate rages on about the type of dye. So if you want to know, by name, what type of dye was used in your blank disc, surf over to CD Media World, go way down the left column to "CD-R Dye Info," click on it and the article has a table with all the ten known dye types. You can also read more than you ever wanted to know about the different dye types.

While we are reading the pre-groove or ATIP, we might as well take a peek at what your burner can determine about the disc.

Who cares? Some of the new high speed burners are checking the certified burn speed of the disc to set the laser calibration at the start of every burn. My new burner will read the ATIP and adjust the maximum burn speed (no matter what I set) to perform a successful burn. The only way I know it's doing its own thing is because the burn time is different. Smart-Burn is a great buffer underrun technology. I don't have any experience with BURN-Proof yet.

Every CD-R and CD-RW has the following information encoded in the pre-groove (the guide for the burning laser pressed into the CD during manufacture) or ATIP (actual time in pre-groove). Only the burner can read this to allow recording. A CD-ROM does not need this information to read/play the CD. The Orange Book (a booklet of technical requirements denoted by the color of the booklet's cover) requires this information:

• The capacity of the disc
• The manufacturer of the disc
• The dye formulation type used in the dye layer of the disc
• The type of disc (i.e. CD-R or RW, audio or data, etc.)
• The certified writing speed
• Suggested recording algorithm
• Absolute time from the start of the disc
• Last possible address where data can be written (total recording space)
• Last possible address to start the last lead out

Dale Swofford is a member of the Alamo PC Organization. This article is reprinted from their magazine, PC Alamode.