Hi-val Kenwood 40X True X CDROM drive
Tuesday, March 16, 1999
Introduction
The Kenwood 40X True X CDROM drive is new type of CDROM drive using a whole new technology. Instead of spinning at the reading speed and use a Constant Angular Velocity (CAV) with a single laser ray to read the data from the disk, the True X CDROM drive uses to read multiple tracks in parallel by a patented multibeam and Constant Linear Velocity (CLV) technology. Let's see together if this new technology really does a difference compared to standard CDROM drives.
Installation
The installation of this CDROM drive is goes storyless as it is not more or less complicated than to install any other CDROM drives. A floppy disk is included with the drive to allow DOS operation of this CDROM drive if required.
Tests results
All the tests were performed under Windows98 with the following system setup:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-6BXE
CPU: Intel Pentium II 350mhz
Memory: 128mb PC100 SDram (LGS)
IDE first channel Primary port: Quantum Fireball EIDE ST 3.2A
IDE second channel Secondary port: Kenwood 40X True X CDROM drive
PCI slot number 2: Gigabyte GA-630 Banshee
ISA slot number 2: Ensoniq Soundscape soundcard
ISA slot number 1: US Robotic 56k X2 modem
OS: Win98 4.10
DirectX 6
CD Winbecnh99
The CD Winbech test is a new Benchmark developped by Ziff Davis. This test is specifically dedicated to test CDROM drives performances and we are using it for the first time with the Kenwood 40X CDROM drive. Unfortunately, as we never used it before, we don't have any other test results to compare with. Note that these results can't be compared to those of the CDROM test of the Winbench98 test suite.
WinBench98 CD-ROM tests
As you can see, this CD-ROM drive is pretty fast under Win98. However, it is not the fastest CD-ROM drive I've tested to date. As a fact, the Asus CD-S400 scored 2190 on this test ! Also, note that the transfer rates when reading the internal and external trakcs of the CD are supérior to the CD-S400 drive.
CDspeed
The CDspeed Benchmark is a test based on the speed at which a CDROM drive is spinning. For this reason, this test is absolutely useless to test a CDROM drive such as the Kenwood 40X40 as this drive is spinning at a constant speed which is much lower than conventional 40X CDROM drives.
HDTach 2.00
The above test, using HDTach 2.00, has been performed with read-ahead and Window CDROM caching enabled. This way of testing has been used to show you what the Kenwood CDROM drive will give under Windows default settings. As you can see, under these circumstances, the Kenwood 40X40 is an incredibly fast drive. Note that the results displayed are the average of 3 tests ran in row.
HDTach 2.00
This time, the test using HDTach 2.00, has been performed without any read-ahead and Windows CDROM caching has been lowered to its minimal value. Note that the results displayed are the average of 3 tests ran in row.
CDDA DAE Tests results under DOS
For some reasons out of my control, it has been impossible to perform any audio extraction with CDDA under the real DOS mode using this CDROM drive no matter what I've tried...
Digital Audio Extraction under Win95
The tests conducted under Win95 have been performed with Windac 1.41 and Audiograber. Using AudioGraber 1.10 the best extraction speed I could get was 7.65X. The fastest extraction speed obtained with Windac 1.41 has been 20.1X for track 1, 20.6X for track 9 and 23.5X for track 17 using the Burst Mode. All these extractions have been performed with no errors or data corruptions at least during the tests I've conducted.
The Audio listening.
Using this CDROM drive to play audio compact disk has revealed a very pleasant audio reproduction quality. Every compact disk I threw at it played wit a good overall sound quality and I noticed no specific problem.
The strong points
The strong points of this drive are its very fast data transfer rate, it's superb audio extraction speed under Win98 and its very good audio reproduction quality.
The Weak Points.
To tell you the truth, I found no specific weakness on this CDROM drive other than the impossibility to accomplish digital audio extraction under the real DOS mode. I could access the drive, read a CDROM directory but no digital extraction has been possible.
Conclusions
The Kenwood 40X40 True X CDROM drive distributed by Hi-Val is really metting the expectancies of a very fast CDROM drive. Furthernore, the fact that this drive is not spinning as fast as conventional CDROM drive is contributing to a great point to the noise reduction of the drive when in use. I have been really pleased by the performance of this CDROM drive and compared to the much more expensive SCSI drives I sure would recommend to go for a True X CDROM drive instead of a SCSI drive especially if you do not already own a SCSI controller.
Distributed by Hi-Val Multimedia and Periperal Solutions.
| Drive Specifications |
|
| Drive Interface |
EIDE |
| Disc Loading |
Tray |
| Disc Readable Formats |
CD-ROM (Mode 1 & 2)
CD-ROM/XA (Mode 2, Form 1 & 2)
CD-R, CD-Extra (CD+)
Photo-CD (Single & Multi-Sessions)
Video CD, Karaoke CD
CD-I/MPEG, CD-WO, I-TRAX CD
|
| Disc Diameter |
12cm |
| Sustained Data Transfer Rate |
6MB/s |
| Burst Data Transfer Rate |
16.6MB/sec |
| Average Random Access |
Less than 90ms |
| Data Buffer |
2048KB |
| Eject Button |
Motorized Eject Button, Emergency Button
|
| LED |
Disc Activity |
| Headphone Jack |
Stereo 3.5mm Mini-Jack |
| Volume Control |
Wheel Knob |
| Interface Connector |
40-Pin EIDE Header |
| CD-Audio Analog Out |
Supported |
| Digital Audio Out |
Supported |
| EIDE Settings |
EIDE drives have Master/Slave Jumpers. |
|
|
| General Specifications |
|
| Installation Orientation |
Horizontal |
| Dimensions(W/H/D) |
5.9"x1.7"x7.9" |
| Weight |
3.5lbs |
| Power Supply |
DC+5V ,1.2A ,1.5A peak
DC+12V, 0.5A, 1.5A peak |
|
|
| Reliability |
|
| MTBF |
100,000 Power On Hours at 25% duty cycle |
| Warranty |
One Year Warranty |
|
|
| System Requirements |
|
| Minimum |
IBM PC 486/66 or higher Pentium class recommended
Open half-height 5.25"
Windows 95 or higher
16MB RAM required
3.5" floppy drive |
|
