CD inconsistencies

Caruso wrote on 2/5/2002, 8:55 PM

I burned an 80-minute CD using Vegas. To my surprise, when I played it in my car yesterday morning, there were snaps, pops, and skips at a point 48 minutes into the CD.

I had burned at 8x, the top speed on my HP external burner. I came right home last evening and burned another CD, this time at 4x. This morning, the skips were earlier in the program . . . I ejected, rejected (nah, not rejected, just PO'd).

Tonight, as I was about to coasterize these two CD's, it dawned on me to try them in my DVD/CD combo player. To my surprise, they both played through their respective defective passages just fine. I decided to try the CD player in my wife's car. Same deal. Each disc played from start to finish with no glitches.

So, my question(s): I've played many a commercially prepared CD in my car without problems, and, I'm not convinced that dirt on my laser lense could be the problem (although I'm willing to try cleaning it if someone convinces me that it can, indeed, get dirty and that cleaning kits will actually clean the thing). Could it be that there is some slight peculiarity with the CD player in my car that makes it act up at certain points when playing home made CDs?

Thanks in advance for any pointers.

Caruso

Comments

a_v wrote on 2/5/2002, 11:52 PM

ive noticed that some cd players are not good at playing cd-r or even worse at playing cd-rw. A side from that, this sort of thing is quite a can of worms really. You might want to think about the disks your using first i.e. cd brand, dye color, before you damm the player.
also, have you burned a cd with a different program and see if you still get the same results?

just my 2 cents

Caruso wrote on 2/6/2002, 12:57 AM

Haven't tried a different program lately. When I first bought my current computer, it came with a cute little program called CEQuadrant. I say cute because the interface was all colored balls that rolled around into and out of sockets to indicate switch activation . . . . instead of meters, there were "tubes" into which "fluid" would flow to indicate progress and buffer levels and such.

It was fun to watch, but did a terrible job on my machine at burning CD's. What I noticed about them, though, is that they wouldn't play properly in any machine, no matter what burn speed I used in creating the discs.

I own CDCreator 5 Platinum, and, last time I checked, it seemed to do an ok job, but I don't care for that program at all, and don't have it loaded. Guess I'll have to dig it out and give it a try.

Thanks for your response.

Caruso

earthrisers wrote on 2/6/2002, 10:48 AM

This past Christmas, my little band produced a CD that we sold as a fund-raiser at our church. Out of about 60 folks who bought them, three or four reported problems playing them in a particular player they owned -- but like you, they said the CD played fine in their "other" player. (We replaced the CDs in question, but the situation didn't change; and the ones that didn't play in some folks' players worked find in all my players at home & in-car.)

So anyway... I suspect your (and my) problem isn't with Vegas' CD-burning capabilities. Something more to do with the vagaries of CD-R's and the inability of some players to handle them properly.

discode wrote on 2/6/2002, 11:34 AM

There are several possible things that could be causing the problems with clicks and pops that it would be very difficult to speculate where your problems are coming from. I would start by making sure you have the latest firmware update for your CD burner. Also I would reccomend that you always use a brand of media that is specified by the manufacturer to work well with your drive. Beyond that here is a link that should offer some further solutions. http://www.cdrfaq.org/ This link has proven to be a very good resource for troubleshooting problems in the past. It may very well help with yours.

Chienworks wrote on 2/6/2002, 2:46 PM

I've found lots of playback problems mount up when using faster burn speeds. I now regularly burn all my audio CDs that go to other people at 4x even though my burner's top speed is 16x. I've seen someone else in the Sound Forge forum recommend 1x for audio CDs, but i haven't had to go that far. Since i switched to 4x i've had no troubles with any of the audio CDs i produce playing anywhere.

Caruso wrote on 2/7/2002, 2:55 AM

I've really never been that interested in CD Players so, other than knowing that a laser reads the disc, couldn't tell you much about their mechanics. What really baffles me is that, armed with the assurance that there was nothing inherently wrong with my newly burned CD's, I took them along with me yesterday to play in my car. I fugured, what the hay, those skips and pops won't bother me half so much now that I know they don't represent actual burning flaws, but are the result of some quirck in my player. To my surprise, each of these discs (one 80-minute and two 74 minute jobs) played from start to finish without a single burp.

Makes no sense to me, but I'm pleasantly surprised.

Caruso

me_arnold wrote on 3/22/2002, 9:13 PM

I've had(have) a similar problem. My CD will burn properly BUT when I try to play the CD in my computer I'll get skips. I put it in my car or boom box and it plays fine.

Does this sound like I need an updated driver for my CD burner? I have HP CD-writer 9500 series. Windows 2K is my OS. I have 768 MB of RAM and a 1.4 Gig AMD Tbird. I just built the machine and it is solid.

I try to play regular CDs sometimes in the computer with this CD player and it will distort and sound awful.

Are there any settings I should be looking at?

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks,
Craig

me_arnold wrote on 3/22/2002, 9:32 PM

I just started searching around for answers on the web. I came here first, went to HP's site, and then went to M-audio.com.

I heard the same stories basically as mine from SF's forums.

I was told to buy a high speed DAE drive if I'm going to burn audio from HP.

I was told to increase my "DMA Buffer Size" from M-audio.com.

The increase in the Buffer worked! I have a Delta 10/10. Very sweet! I'm stoked once again.

% ^ )

Caruso wrote on 3/25/2002, 4:11 AM

I am still not convinced that the problem lies in my computer system at all. I played the "problem" CD's in my wife's car today, and they played fine. Play these CD's on my Sony CD players (one of those "portables' from the early '80's), it plays fine, in my DVD player, fine, my Philips CD recorder, fine, my car, sometimes yes, sometimes . . . can't use that word here.

I am recutting the Beethoven symphonies to present as a gift to my son (on the occasion of his graduation recital at Juilliard this week . . . oh, the joy$ of a child'$ graduation). I've used the newest incarnation of Nero this time to burn the disks. I want to see if that makes a difference (I doubt it, frankly).

Caruso