Please Help: Weird quality problem with iHAS 324 A

Hi all. I've recently picked up a LiteOn iHAS324 A, put the latest firmware on it, and generally I've been pretty pleased. The first image is the sort of thing it produces on an Intenso disc in about five and a half minutes.

However, the second attachment shows what it does with a standard CMC MAG M01. Pretty unbelievably awful in the first half though it seems to verify and play on standalones okay.

The last picture is a CMG MAG M01 from the same batch that was written with a Benq 1650 and read back on the LiteOn. A heck of a lot better than the CMC MAG M01 written on the LiteOn.

How can such a newer and supposedly better drive make such a bad quality disk? It seems to burning too fast or at too much laser power. The disk still seems to work, but obviously with this level of error, I fear that it's life will be pretty poor. Or is this some kind of non-error? Are modern drives so good that they can live with this level of error in return for a faster burn speed?

I don't see how LiteOn can strive to do such a good burn on the Intenso disc, and then it be acceptable to do such a bad burn on the CMC MAG M01. Any ideas what is going on and if it's fixable? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

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Last edited by Gaius Baltar; 02-11-2009 at 00:49.

This is the same type of CMC MAG M01 disc with hypertuning and online hypertuning forced on - it's even worse on the iHAS 324 A:

CMC is not that good a media IMHO.

No it's not, it's pretty average media indeed. Unfortunately, it's often what you get out of the box even from well known retail packs such as Datawrite, Verbatim, etc, so I often have to deal with it.

It's easy to do a good burn on good media - it's difficult to do a good burn on poor media. Look at the difference between the Benq (which does a good burn on poor CMC MAG M01) and the LiteOn (which does a terrible burn on the same media).

I think that LiteOn has sacrificed quality for a faster burn. The Benq takes at least a minute longer to make the same burn, but the quality results are vastly better.

Personally I don't think a fast burn is any use if the quality is terrible, so is there any way of getting the LiteOn to make a better burn, even if it takes longer? I've already enabled the quality-forcing features, and the LiteOn makes an even worse burn! How can a the LiteOn be so much worse than a five year old Benq?

There's a lot of distinctly average media out there, I'm disappointed if the LiteOn cannot deal with it at least as well as the Benq.

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Last edited by Gaius Baltar; 02-11-2009 at 12:43.

This is true...

Try scanning at 8x instead of 16x.

With the Lite-On:

1. Try burning at 8x or 12x.

2. Disable FHT, but leave OHT on. FHT can often make burns worse. Only use it as a last resort.

That answer to that question is so simple and self-evident, and you already know what it is.

The LiteOn should really know what it is doing without me having to force a different speed, especially on a drive that is supposed to be able to burn well on anything. I didn't buy a 16x drive and 16x discs to have to burn at half speed. I might try it as an experiment, but it's not really a viable fix.

Besides, during that first half of the burn, it probably is running at around the 8x mark according to Nero. The second half of the disk where speeds rise above 8x is actually better.

Will OHT even work with FHT off? My understanding is that for HT only runs by default for an unknown disc, so if the disc is known, there is no HT, so OHT won't be running no matter what.


Yes, but I was really hoping that it was not the case! Especially as LiteOn bought the Benq drive operation, and certainly some of the tech and ideas have been used, it seems to me that it's just a fault in the disc strategy. I've mailed them about it in the hope it's fixed in the future.

The Benq was having issues of it's own with newer discs, and it is certainly slower. I think I may have worn out the laser diode. I have another 1650 that's only had very light use that I am tempted to put back into the machine, but to be honest I don't want to go back to having any PATA devices if I can help it.