CD-RW Audio Problem

[MBrannon]

Allright, I have an Imation 4x4x20 CD-RW drive, I've made all my discs using Memorex 650mb cds.. now, the problem.. I used to be able to make Audio cd's that were flawless, but lately, the audio has been scratchy on my 'test' cd player, my portable player, it used to play discs correctly as I mentioned before, even with ESP.. now ESP causes the player to act like the disc is a very scratched to where it can't even read it, and without it the sound is scratchy, what is wrong?

[MBrannon]

Adaptec Easy CD Creator 3.5c.. I tried Nero also, same problem.

[Bleeding Edge]

Are you saying the recorded audio cd-r plays okay with the Imation CD-RW but not the portable? Am I understanding you correctly?

By the way, what is ESP?

Anyhow, since you make no mention of any software changes or anything along those lines, and this suddenly started...and since this is happening with seperate recording soft, and if the actually recorded CD-R is bad, it really sounds like a hardware problem. I've heard of software that has been unlocked with pirated "unlock codes" burning bad CDs but this isn't the case here.

However, there are still some things you may want to try.
Like:
If this is a SCSI drive, update the SCSI card's drivers.
Update the the firmware on the CD-RW.
Update/patch the CD soft.
Or
Completely uninstall both EasyCD and Nero, then reinstall one of them and try burning an audio CD. ...By the way, can you recall if you installed both of them at one time? If not, it could be that one or the other was working fine until the second soft was installed. An incompatability issue?

The last thing I can think to mention, might be to defragment your drives to insure there is one large contiguous space for the audio image to temporary reside on. Check to see if there is at least 730MB of free space available for this purpose. After that, try burning a CD.

I guess this leads to another question, have you changed the recording method and/or any of the recording options? Burning audio CDs directly from reader to recorder doesn’t always produce the best result (depending on your hardware). Using EasyCD and creating an image to the hard drive first is usually the best method.

Also, don't have background apps running.

~edit
You might want to use a CD-RW disc while trying to resolve this, as not to waste bunch of CD-Rs. You won't be able to check it on the portable player tho'.


[This message has been edited by Bleeding Edge (edited 11-03-1999).]

[madmike]

Have you got a bad batch of blank CD'S?. This has happened to me a couple of times, try a CD from another batch, or try writing at single speed (just as a test).

madmike

[Bleeding Edge]

Good one MadMike. Thanx for the backup. /forum/smile.gif

[Bleeding Edge]

You still having this problem?

What software you using?

[MBrannon]

I burned @ 1x, no problems with ESP (Electronic Skip Protection) but there are still little pops and stuff.. they are in the same position every time, so they are physically on the disc.

[Bleeding Edge]

MBrannon. We try our best to help. Please consider following the suggestions above.

Poor DAE of your reader/recorder will always result in pops, clicks, etc. The drive cannot successfully perform the extraction at the set speed. Lowering the read speed can help but sometimes the speed needs to be dropped below the write speed. With jitter correction on, the speed drops even more because it has to constantly reread each segment of data. They way around this is mentioned in the reply above. Write the image to disk first.

Back to the suggestions. They are there to help resolve your problem and/or isolate the problem to your reader/writer hardware.



[This message has been edited by Bleeding Edge (edited 11-04-1999).]

[MBrannon]

All disks WERE copied to the hd first

[Bleeding Edge]

I hesitate to say that I can't be of much more help in this matter.

I don't know whether or not you tried uninstalling then reinstalling just one of the recording software; defragmented the drive, so the audio image can reside on a contiguous space; updated drivers, bios' and firmware;
which recording method and software settings your using. Whether you checked the cables or what all you did or didn't do.

I'm out of suggestions. I'm sorry I wasn't of any help. Perhaps someone else might be.

[MBrannon]

Sorry, i know i got mad.. anyway, it was fixed by using Imation discs (the reflectivity difference is higher on those things!) they work, it doesn't explain why I went through 20 good memorex discs and 20 bad.. aww well.. imation works great

[MBrannon]

Sorry, i know i got mad.. anyway, it was fixed by using Imation discs (the reflectivity difference is higher on those things!) they work, it doesn't explain why I went through 20 good memorex discs and 20 bad.. aww well.. imation works great

[Bleeding Edge]

Out of curiosity MBrannon, was the second twenty from the same package or a different pack -were they exactly the same?

I usually use TDK’s for handouts, or the small 3” CD-Rs when I can get a hold of them. For personal use, however, I use Mitsumi and Ricoh’s Platinum discs.

I use Adaptec 4.0 software for CD audio recording and simple data backups and copies. For more involved data backups, I use GoldenHawk’s CDRwin. Nero is good for this too, along with a couple of others.

[MBrannon]

I'va always used the 10 pack (Gold colored box) available at best buy.. glad I found out I can't use them w/ my drive before i bought the 100 packs..