The TrueX drives were built to spin at less than half the velocity of a 56 speed drive, which is quite impressive considering their capabilities. As I expected, they really did live up to the hype when it comes to performance.

For hard data, we'll continue using some of the Nero software suite I have from back in the day. Specifically, Nero CD-DVD Speed, which performs an array of enlightening tests to show us the transfer rate, seek times, CPU usage, and more. I let it go repeatedly on both drives and once I got some reliable results, I had it generate this handy list of stats.

Let's look at the transfer rate first, or the effective speed rating which each drive could pull off. This is where the 56 speed drive really shines, with an average of about 36x, even though it's rated to go as high as 56x. The truth is, CD-ROMs are typically limited by their speed rating on the box, and this drive doesn't stray far from that standard.

As you can see in the graph, the yellow line stays flat because it's a CAV, or constant angular velocity drive, while the green line for transfer rate increases as it moves across the disc. This is because on traditional drives like this, the closer the laser is to the inner portion of the CD, the lower the attainable data rate.

Now let's compare that to the True-X drive by comparison. Not only is the average transfer rate far higher at 65x, but it also bumps right up against its claimed maximum of 72 speed! And the graph looks entirely different, with the green line reaching higher speeds faster, and the yellow line decreasing as the drive reaches maximum transfer rate.

Due to the True-X system and the fact that this is not a CAV but is actually a P-CAV, or partial constant angular velocity drive, those seven beams can read much more of the inner and outer sections of the disc at once. And the closer it comes to the end of the disc, the slower the disc spins, resulting in fewer revolutions per minute but increased data transfer speeds.

In short, this thing is awesome! The results continue to impress when it comes to burst rate, showing the maximum burst offile transfer speed at 1784 kilobytes per second on the 56 speed drive, while the 72 speed attains a whopping 9184 kilobytes per second. When it's hitting on all cylinders so to speak, this True-X drive is over five times faster than the next-fastest CD-ROM drives.

That is ridiculous, talk about living up to the hype. Intriguingly though when it comes to things like seek time, CPU usage, and spin up and spin down stats, the 56 speed drive is overall a bit quicker and more efficient. Not by much, it's certainly nothing I'd notice in normal everyday usage, but there it is.

It's worth pointing out that the 56 speed drive I'm using is actually a few years newer than the Kenwood, made in 2002, so perhaps its own internal processing is a little better. Oh and I also wanted to test its ability to rip audio CDs to MP3s, although since now I know it has the latest firmware I expect it'll do just fine.

And sure enough it does, ripping to 320kbps files with ease at around 3 megabytes per second. Finally, there's the CD-RW situation, and well even with the new firmware it still wasn't able to read my rewritable discs. Granted, this isn't terribly uncommon for drives from 1999 or thereabouts.

Even the 56 speed drive had problems although it did get there eventually, more than the TrueX could say. Still, that's a small price to pay for such an objectively faster drive like this, and I'm half-tempted to keep it in this PC all the time. I don't know how reliable it is with continued usage, I've only used this one for about a dozen hours.

And as I mentioned earlier I had to go through a couple of these to get one that worked. But when it is working, it's just amazing in every way! Well okay, maybe not that way, but everything else. What a beast. And if you enjoyed this look at this fantastically quick CD-ROM drive then perhaps you'd like to look at some of my other stuff, which cover topics as diverse as quicker things and slower things.

I don't know man, I just cover hardware and software and stuff. It's what I do here on LGR, new videos every week. And as always, thank you very much for watching!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enGreetings and welcome to an LGR thing!And well, let's just go ahead and get thisout of here...This thing is the Kenwood 72x True-X CD-ROM drive introduced in October of 1999 for aprice of $129.95, at least here in the UnitedStates in its initial launch window.And it doesn't look like anything terriblyspecial externally here.I mean effectively it is just a compact discread-only memory drive, used for reading andinstalling software on a PC like any otherCD drive back then.But this model right here, the UCR-421, standsalone in the pantheon of CD-ROM drives, withKenwood claiming it to be“the fastest drive on Earth!”And yes, that is the same Kenwood that isprobably more known for their home and caraudio equipment, but obviously they have dabbledin PC stuff as well.And they started selling these True-X drivesin 1998 with the Multi-Beam 40x CD-ROM, butthe 72x was the one that received the mostattention being that it was the fastest CD-ROMthat Kenwood had made and it's the fastestCD-ROM period.I've only come across two after looking forabout eight years.Not only are these getting very hard to findat all, but it can be rather tough to findone working, at least in my experience.But when they are functioning correctly Kenwoodclaimed that you would get a blazing fasttransfer rate of 6.75 to 10.8 megabytes persecond across the entire disc.And it did this while only spinning, and thisis key, around 2700 to 5100 RPM.Unlike the next fastest drives back then,the so-called 56x “Max” drives that rotatedat over 11,000 RPM.This was pretty impressive stuff, not onlybecause it would be quieter than 56 speeddrives, but spinning CDs for too fast fortoo long can result in... well no more CD.NowKenwood accomplished this speed by readingseven tracks of data in parallel which iswhere Zen Research’sTrue-X Technology came into play.So let's up the nerdiness level shall we?Because True-X still used a single laser beaminside the drive to pull this off, but insteadof shining directly onto the CD, it’s focusedthrough a diffraction grating that splitsthe laser into seven beams.The beams are then narrowed through a collimatorlens and then focused through an objectivelens to read the pits and lands on the discitself.These then reflect back through those samelenses, bounce off a beam splitter, and arefocused through another lens into a multi-beamdetector array.The signals are then processed through a RISC-basedASIC chipset that processes everything beforesending it off to the CPU of your PC, eliminatingadditional processing overhead.The UCR-421 received plenty of positive reviewson launch, earning the PC Stats Editors ChoiceAward and a 10 out of 10 on the Hot HardwareHeat Meter, calling it “absolutely flawless.”But ever since then I've read differing opinionsfrom users saying it wasn't quite all that,with owners of the device saying that it actuallydidn't read much faster than competing CD-ROMs,that it couldn't read burned CDs, that I hadproblems ripping audio CDs to MP3s, and wasabsurdly loud at full speed and vibrated non-stop.And also that it had problems streaming fullmotion video from certain games like Diablo II.So I want to test every single one of thosethings and see how it is in my experience.But before we get this installed into a Windows98 PC let's go ahead and take a brief lookat the hardware specifics itself and somedocumentation.And it's nothing terribly special but I feellike it! So, yeah.From right to left here we have an eject button,a nice little LED for indicating things with an LED.We have a volume wheel here for the analogaudio from CDs as well as a headphone out.You know, typical stuff that you would seeon a CD-ROM drive of the time period.A four pin molex connector for power, theIDE connection, and then we have the jumpersover here for cable select stuff.And then some audio interfaces.We'll be using this 4-pin one for analog audioso if we want to we can read analog audioand get Redbook audio off CD-ROMs.And we also got some documentation.I never had the box for this, I've never actuallyseen the box for this.But one of the units that I got did indeedcome with some docs.So let's check this out.We have a quick install guide here, whichis pretty quick: step 1, step 2.That's it!You just -- ya plug it in, daggone it.And that is what you do because it's effectivelyjust a CD-ROM.Same goes for the manual, there's nothingterribly interesting in here.It's just like, you know, “thanks for buyingour crap.Here’s some very basic stuff about verybasichigh-level information on CD-ROMs, and what to do.And there's no special software required tooperate your 72 speed True-X CD-ROM drive!”Of course not! That's just standard Windows stuff.You plug it in, things work.Unless they don't. But they probably will work, so yeah.Let's go ahead and get this installed intoa Windows 98 PC.Let’s get the Lazy Green Giant opened upand ready for some blazing fast True-X goodness.Just slides into into the second slot down,screws in tightly, and we get the requisitecables connected and that’s that.Looks like it could do with a little Retrobrightnow that it’s up against this other CD drive,but whatever, yellow or not it’s ready togo.Oh and remember that 56 speed “max” driveI mentioned earlier?I just so happen to have one of those installedas well, so we’ll be able to directly comparethe Kenwood to one of the next-fastest CD-ROMsavailable.And yeah, in terms of setup that’s all wereally need to do here, Windows 98 SE willtake care of the rest.Once again there are no drivers or software,so we’re ready to begin testing.And while I will be showing doing a properbenchmark in a bit, let’s just do a real-worldkinda test with Diablo II here.First I’m gonna see how the 56 speed drivefares in terms of performing a standard singleplayer installation, which consists of 650megabytes from the first disc.And on the traditional 56 speed drive hereit took 2 minutes and 52 seconds to copy everythingover to the PC’s flash drive storage.A pretty typical time.I also wanna check out the FMV and a bit ofgameplay itself since reviews back then saidthat the True-X drives had trouble with DiabloII in particular and I just want to establisha baseline for how things should look here.And yep, looks and runs just fine.Alright, gonna go ahead and uninstall thegame as well as remove the temporary filesand anything leftover by the installer, thenrestart to make sure we get a cleaner test.And all right it’s time to whip out theKenwood!What was that?Uh. Alright.Hehe, so it seems this drive’s gears have gone a bit shoddy.Far as I could tell it’s just the tray mechanismitself and nothing else so it shouldn’taffect our testing, which begins with installingDiablo II again.And this time around, wow!You can immediately tell it’s going muchfaster with the same exact installation.It ended up finishing everything in 1 minute,1 secondnearly three times faster than the 56 speed drive.Now for the FMV intro cinematic and well,it works perfectly fine, no skips or pausesor broken audio or anything.Same goes for the gameplay, it’s just DiabloII and it’s awesome.On further inspection though, it appears thatmy drive actually had the latest firmwareapplied to it at some point, version 226,which Kenwood released to specifically addressthings like Diablo II playability.All right nice job Kenwood and previous ownerof this drive.Next it’s time for a simple test of soundand vibration, and once again it’s backto the 56 speed drive.Which is absolutely terrifying.Seriously, when this thing reaches full speed it’sone of the loudest, most concerning opticaldrives I’ve ever experienced.And as for the TrueX drive?Ah it’s just lovely, it’s barely any louder thanthe CPU and power supply fans of the PC itself.And really I expected as much, seeing as theTrueX drives were built to spin at less thanhalf the velocity of a 56 speed drive.Let’s get to a bit more hard data here thoughand for that we’ll continue using some ofthe Nero software suite I have from back inthe day.Specifically Nero CD-DVD Speed, which performsan array of enlightening tests to show usthe transfer rate, seek times, CPU usage andmore.I let it go repeatedly on both drives andonce I got some reliable results I had itgenerate this handy list of stats.Let’s look at the transfer rate first, orthe effectivespeed rating which each drive could pull off.This is the 56 speed drive here and as youcan see, even though it’s rated to go ashigh as 56x it never actually attained that,with an average of about 36x.And that’s typical for CD-ROMs, the speedrating on the boxis just the maximum theoretical transfer rate.And look at this graph, it shows some fascinatingstuff as well.Being that this is a CAV, or constant angularvelocity drive, the yellow line stays flat,while the green line for transfer rate increasesas it moves across the disc.That’s because on traditional drives likethis, the closer the laser is to the innerportion of the CD, the lower the attainabledata rate, since the drive has to spin fasterto process the same amount of data at theoutside sections of the disc.And now look at the True-X drive by comparison.Not only is the average transfer rate farhigher at 65x but it also bumps right up againstits claimed maximum of 72 speed!And the graph looks entirely different, withthe green line reaching higher speeds faster,and the yellow line decreasing as the drivereaches maximum transfer rate.Due to the True-X system and the fact thatthis is not a CAV but is actually a P-CAV,or partial constant angular velocity drive,those seven beams can read much more of theinner and outer sections of the disc at once.And the closer it comes to the end of thedisc, the slower the disc spins, resultingin fewer revolutions per minute but increaseddata transfer speeds.In short, this thing is awesome!The results continue to impress when it comesto burst rate, showing the maximum burst offile transfer speed at 1784 kilobytes persecond on the 56 speed drive, while the 72speed attains a whopping 9184 kilobytes persecond.When it’s hitting on all cylinders so tospeak, this True-X drive is over fives timesfaster than the next-fastest CD-ROM drives.That is ridiculous, talk about living up tothe hype.Intriguingly though when it comes to thingslike seek time, CPU usage, and spin up andspin down stats, the 56 speed drive is overalla bit quicker and more efficient.Not by much, it’s certainly nothing I’dnotice in normal everyday usage, but there it is.It’s worth pointing out the 56 speed driveI’m using is actually a few years newerthan the Kenwood, made in 2002, so perhapsits own internal processing is a little better.Oh and I also wanted to test its ability torip audio CDs to MP3s, although since nowI know it has the latest firmware I expectit’ll do just fine.And sure enough it does, ripping to 320kbpsfiles with ease at around 3 megabytes per second.Finally, there’s the CD-RW situation, andwell even with the new firmware it still wasn’table to read my rewritable discs.Granted, this isn’t terribly uncommon fordrives from 1999 or thereabouts.Even the 56 speed drive had problems althoughit did get there eventually,more than the TrueX could say.Still, that’s a small price to pay for suchan objectively faster drive like this, andI’m half-tempted to keep it in this PC allthe time.I don’t know how reliable it is with continuedusage, I’ve only used this one for about a dozen hours.And as I mentioned earlier I had to go througha couple of these to get one that worked.But when it is working, it’s just amazingin every way!Well okay, maybe not that way, but everything else! What a beast.And if you enjoyed this look at this fantasticallyquick CD-ROM drive then perhaps you'd liketo look at some of my other stuff, which coverstopics as diverse as quicker things and slower things.I don't know man, I just cover hardware andsoftware and stuff.It’s what I do here on LGR, new videos everyweek.And as always, thank you very much for watching!\n"