Why does it seem like CD-ROM device speeds have kind of topped out for the last year or so?

fkloster

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 1999
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Is it just me or has CD-ROM technology hit a temporary ceiling. Boy I would have thought that we would all be sporting 120x Ultra160 CD readers with 16meg buffers by now. I mean, not counting that terrible Zen technology implementation by Kenwood with their 72X parts, why can't we see better readers than Plextor's 40X UW?
 

fkloster

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 1999
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6 minutes? Think about it! With processor speeds going through the roof, why not CD-ROM speeds?
 

TheBigZ

Senior member
May 25, 2000
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Oddly enough, was just talkin about this yesterday with some friends. None of them agree with me (per usual), but I think we've about seen the end of the cd/r/w technology line. UNTIL... we have consumer level dvd cdr/w drives.

I base that on a couple things, but one main thing sticks out. The burnproof 12/10/32 technology is pretty new, yet in the last week we've seen units come out from secondary manufacturers at near "dumping stock" prices. I do think we'll see some more drives come out with some value added bells & whistles (how about a cdrw that uses a dimm slot for buffer?), but I think we're about at the limit of burn & read speeds (mostly burn) that consumers will shell out for. IE: I don't see myself spending any money to upgrade my Plex 12/10/32... what do I care if they come out with a drive that shaves 2 mins off my 5 min burn time when I have burnproof??

Between us... I think the drive manufacturers agree with me. That's why we got burnproof now. I think most of us know that we could have had burnproof back at 8x drives if they'd have wanted to give it to us then. But that would have distrupted their marketing plan for the following 2 years.

I'm ready for dvd cdr/w.
 

Oyeve

Lifer
Oct 18, 1999
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I think there is a physical limitation as to how a cd can be read reliably. Remember, the faster the spin, the more likely you can get a read error. CDs are not perfectly round or have even amounts of material spread throughout the disk (more plastic on any given side) and this may throw off the reader. More weight on one side on a really fast cdrom drive can throw it way out of whack.
 

AndyHui

Administrator Emeritus<br>Elite Member<br>AT FAQ M
Oct 9, 1999
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I guess it's pretty difficult to keep CDROMs spinning stably at such high speeds. There is a practical limit to how fast you can spin it without it trying to shake itself or tear itself to pieces. There are noise, heat and vibration considerations too.

And what about CDR/Ws? You need special media to handle those sorts of speeds....12x, 10 rewrite requires special media....I guess the dye sublimation layers can't hold properly if the burn isn't applied for a sufficient amount of time. Things may improve, although I don't see the need to shave another minute off a 5-6 minute burn on a 12x.
 

JJordan

Golden Member
Dec 27, 1999
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I think it is becuase the EPA has implemented NOISE LIMITATIONS around the country !
 

Vinny N

Platinum Member
Feb 13, 2000
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Yeah that's an interesting point...
You'd also think that cd-rom drives would be super efficient by now, that a 12x reader would actually read a whole cd in exactly 6 minutes...
Cd recorders are super efficient, 12x actually means 72/12 minutes...

I don't really care though, I still wonder why solid state drives haven't been making headway into mainstream...
We rely on hard drives so much...why aren't they being worked on...
 

The Sauce

Diamond Member
Oct 31, 1999
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Are you guys nuts??? 6 minutes? People spend hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars to trim seconds off of application processing and boot speeds (e.g. SCSI RAID systems, SMP systems). If there was a 16x-DVD/150x-CD drive out there, you guys would be falling over each other to get one at $300 a pop.
 

Oyeve

Lifer
Oct 18, 1999
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I'm still wondering why MD technology never took off in the computer world. Theoretically, you can get the same capacity as a cdrom but in a much smaller, more durable package. I saw a MD camcorder once but that was it. You would think MD would be a natural being it can hold so much data. I mean, the stupid zip drive maxes out at 250 megs and is twice the size of a MD but everyone has one. MD also costs less than zip disks. I blame the American consumer (as I always do :) ). I think if more people took the time to research the technology then we would have better products out there. As an example, Beta-max Vs. VHS. Beta is STILL technologically better than VHS and its been dead for years! You know what killed betamax? Thats right. The american consumer. We beleive in quantity WAY over quality. We got 1 1/2 hour more of inferior video quality with VHS so we were swayed that way.
 

Kulgan

Member
May 9, 2000
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Aren't MDs a compressed format though? I think they only hold somewhere between 100-200mb of uncompressed storage.
 

BoberFett

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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I think part of the problem is MD = Sony. It's a propietary format, last time I checked. Sony loves it's propietary formats. They don't like competition.

Edit: Also, since you brought up Beta, Beta = Sony also whereas VHS = open standard.
 

Oyeve

Lifer
Oct 18, 1999
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Not entirely true Boberfett, My first beta was a sanyo, my second was an NEC my last was a sony. But you are correct in the Sony=proprietary. When they let others make beta products, the damage was already done.
 

(M)

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
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Oyeve,
American consumers like free competition and (for the most part) don't care what quality they have to sacrifice to obtain a low price. Yes, VHS sucked, but most consumers could not tell the difference. I did not even own a VCR until 1987 when I could get one for under $200. I was in college and thats all I could afford. By that time, Sony thought Betamax could survive on the high-end of the market and had priced themselves out of competition. End of story.

Most ZIP drive buffs migrated into that technology from tape drives - thus it was a big improvement. MD's were not even widely available in the US (for audio) until a couple of years ago (nothing like in the Far East). I have never seen a data-MD product available in the US - and if they are, Sony has not marketed them sufficiently. CDR's are now dirt cheap, Sony has carved themselves another niche with MD. End of story.

I am not disagreeing with you about the functional benefits of MD technology (for data and music). I almost bought one a few years ago (for $500); then I saw a CDRW drive for $300. I didn't have a MD player in my car, I had no choice but to go CDR.

(M)
 

kami

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
17,627
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A 48x CD-Rom is already spinning at 10,000 RPM...CD's aren't perfect and neither is the current laser technology used to read them. I doubt CD's will get much faster...we need a new standard.
 

Phane

Junior Member
Jan 2, 2001
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The phyiscal limitation is currently the spin speed. We have CD-ROM's that are rated 50x max that sound like a jet airplane on takeoff when they spin up, and that just plain gets rediculous. The next problem in line is (or will be) bottleneck bus speeds. Sure, 66mb/s is fast, but cd-roms are already catching up to that point. For people with scsi systems, I'm not sure about bus speed so I'll drop that their.

The only drives that will break (and are breaking) the big speed gap reliably are the Kenwood True X drives. They do it by using a beam splitter so the laser reads multiple parts of the cd at once, giving a more constant read speed at far lower RPM's.
 

MetalCat

Member
Dec 27, 2000
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data band with from the medium, there is a drive that uses seven lasers as it is to compensate for the read rates. Stuff CD's stick it all on DVD any way, as for the DVD writers it will all come down to sensiable prices.
 

erub

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2000
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Oyeve
Actually what killed Beta was Sony refusing to licsense it to porn providers. A lot of tapes VHS tapes only stored 2 hrs of data, remember SP, and LP was 4 hrs, SLP was 6 hrs. My grandmother still has a VHS recorder that allows you to differentiate between the 3.
 

Oyeve

Lifer
Oct 18, 1999
22,006
864
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Yeah but sony broke down eventually (I still have prerecorded BETA porn :) ) It became more of a capacity over quality in the end.
 

pm

Elite Member Mobile Devices
Jan 25, 2000
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Spin rates and the physical media are the current limitations. ~60x is about as fast as CDROMs will get without getting multiple beams. At that point you need to redesign the thing.

One thing that I've noticed and that no one else has mentioned is that seek times have been steadily improving as well: they are now dropping below 65ms. Compared to going from 1X to 56X, a 3X improvement in seek time from the original CDROM's to the latest is not that impressive, but it's worth mentioning.
 

Madcowz

Platinum Member
Jul 23, 2000
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Oyeve: MD's haven't caught on mainly b/c they are strickly controlled by Sony, they have limited capacity, and the media (MD discs) is SLOW as a mofo... woa that rhymed :). The capacity of an MD is 140MB's I believe. They state 74 minutes of music which is about how much CD's carry but in a compressed format thanks to the ATRAC of MD recorders which is simliar to mp3 encoding but in specially 192kbps format. They do have 80 minute MD's which have a little higher capacity (obviously), and Data MD discs which can hold even more, but it's still not near the capacity of a CD which is about 700MB's.... Even 700MB's now a days is considered tiny for external storage now with bigger programs and video CD's especially. I myself am waiting for a standard DVD-RW to come out that is afforable, but until then I will stick with 1.44MB floppies :)
 

Floydian

Senior member
Dec 13, 1999
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Sony wanted to split the MD format into Data and Audio to prevent any attempts at piracy of audio through the MD (by ripping it onto a computer). Thats why there isn't interoperability (sp?) between the two. The data MD drive kind of failed, so thats why there isn't one around.
 

Viperoni

Lifer
Jan 4, 2000
11,084
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Last I heard, plextor is going into DVD drivers and the 40x will be its top o the line cdrom
*hugs 40x max :D*