The problem is the drive's access time verses the read speed. Take a look at this to start with:
most 16x and higher drives are "constant angular velocity" (CAV) drives, instead of "constant linear velocity" (CLV).
CAV starts out about "half speed" and then speeds up to faster speeds as the write moves from the inside of the disk to the outside. So a 24x might only start at 8, 10 or 12x. A 32x might start out at 12, 14 or 16x. A 48x might start out at 16, 20 or 24x, etc...
The fastest CLV drive I ever had was a Lite-On 16x. It whipped my CAV drive TDK 24x at writing Yellow Book, sub-5 minutes to almost 6 minutes.
http://www.matrixlist.com/pipermail/pc_support/2002-November/002408.htmlSo, along with the CAV/CLV speed issue confusing matters, you have the fact that the drive is going to wait to read any data until it has fully speed up to its appropriate revolution veliocity for that area of the disc.
In a nutshell, your drive takes so long to read data as it is so fast. As the read speed increases, the read access times decrease.
Damien
