For the longest time, I had an old Philips 2X SCSI CD-R. I still have it, in fact. It will throw out a coaster about 1 out of 25 burns. The faceplate broke off, but it still works fine. I upgraded last year to a Matshita 4X SCSI CD-R that a friend of mine no longer needed. I was in CD-R heaven with 4X burns. At least, until I got to play with the Plextor 8X CD-R we had at work. I yearned for an 8X burner, but it was not to be.

The gods smiled on me this week and I received an early Christmas gift of the world's first 16X CD-R. When I received it, I was a little skeptical about the fact that it's IDE: I'm normally a SCSI Slut: For years, I refused to have ANY IDE in my system at all. But a Western Digital 30GB IDE drive infiltrated my system so I'd have room for DV editing. A Maxtor 60GB drive that is full of impossible-to-get warez followed. At this point, I had two IDE HD's in addition to my SCSI Cheetah's. Then, worse came to worse: My beloved Plextor UltraPlex 40X CD-ROM drive died. I cursed the sky. I ran it over with my Corvette. (It suffered practically no damage.) While living in Las Vegas has some great advantages, one big disadvantage is that there aren't any stores that would have a Plextor Ultraplex drive. So, since I needed a replacement drive NOW, I bought the next best thing: A Kenwood 72X CD-ROM. While it works, I prefer my old Plextor. But, I digress..

Up until this point, I still had SCSI where it counted: my CD-R. I remember the coasters spit out by 1st gen IDE CD-R's, and it was with a little hesitation that I popped this 16X IDE CD-RW into my system. Would IDE CD-R's be able to deliver? Would it spit out coasters at 16X?

Yamaha equipped this drive with a whopping 8MB of cache, which forms the centerpiece of Yamaha's "Waste-Proof Write Strategy™" I'm usually wary of marketing phrases, but when they're backed up by an 8MB buffer, that's a different story. In addition to the "WPWS", here are the rest of the technical specs:

16X Write
10X ReWrite
40X Read
40X Audio Rip

Those are some pretty hefty specs to live up to. How does it fare?

16X Write:

I only had a few 16X-capable CD-R's. This drive wrote to them at 16X with no problems. The 12X CD-R's also worked properly at 12-X. PC Club has a special right now of 100 16X 80-minute CD-R's for $20, which I will pick up soon. If the drive creates any coasters at 16X, I'll let you know. It created one 16X coaster on a 12X media, but that isn't its fault.

10X ReWrite:

I'm not really a big fan of ReWriteable CD's, since they're over a buck a piece, and I can get 100 CD-R's for $20. Nevertheless, CD-RW has its place, and being able to rewrite at 10X is nice. This worked without a problem.

40X Read:

To verify read speed, I used CD WinBench 99 from ZD Labs. For a comparison, the sample Memorex 40X CD-ROM drive ripped off a score of 1350 (Thousand Bytes/sec) My Kenwood 72X pulled 1800, and the Yamaha LightSpeed pulled 1470, which makes it a hair faster than 40X. 14.7 MB/sec is damned good for a CD-ROM, and amazing for a CD-RW drive.

40X Audio Rip:

I've yet to see a drive that would rip audio at the claimed speed. Such is the case for the Yamaha. Using Audio Catalyst, I wasn't able to get more than 15X rip speeds. Yamaha has a special "FastAudioRip" program available for free download that was written by Ahead Software, the makers of Nero Burning Rom. Using this software, I got 16X. I don't know what manufacturers do to get their 30-40X rip speeds: Even my mighty Plextor UltraPlex would barely break 20, and it's supposed to be the best around.

The Yamaha LightSpeed lives up to all of its hype, except for the audio extraction. However, 15-16X audio extraction is nothing to sneeze at.

Bundle:

Included with the LightSpeed drive is a pretty decent bundle. The first thing that caught my eye was the Neato CD-Labeler kit. A very nice touch, and one that many buyers will appreciate. Also included is the latest version of Adaptec Easy CD Creator, Adaptec DirectCD, and Adaptec Toast. All of these programs are CD-R software, with Toast being for the Mac. Beyond those programs, Adobe PhotoDeluxe and MusicMatch Jukebox were also included. While I don't use either of these, there are those people who do, and their inclusion is nice.

No coasters?

I was pretty hell-bent on stressing this drive. So, I unzipped (2) 500+MB files, decoded MP3 to WAV, played Delta Force Land Warrior, and burned a CD at 12X. Several times. Without any coasters. The only coaster I had was when I tried to write at 16X on a 12X CD. I can't fault Yamaha for that: They state you must use 16X CD's to burn at 16X speed. All in all, I'm very happy with this drive. Being able to decode 80 minutes of MP3's to WAV and burn them on a CD in less than 10 minutes is great. Duping disks has never been easier. As good as the IDE LightSpeed is, I'd love to look at their SCSI model. (Hint, Hint, Yamaha.)

Overall Rating:

4.5/5. This drive would get a solid 5/5 if it actually ripped audio at 40x, or if they changed the audio rating to 16X. Although I received this as a gift, I'd buy it with my own money.

J.C. Lane (Granite)

2CPU.com gives this CDRW drive a 4.5/5 CPU's