CDR audio help needed

[Hogan11]

Here's the situation:

When I play a burned cdr and listen to it on my stereo system, the first few tracks are near perfect. Then this scratchy sound creeps in and becomes intolerable towards the end of the cdr. On some cdr's this happens all the time and on others, it only happens intermittingly.

I try them on the PC and they all play perfectly.

There is never a problem with a silver cd or a cdrw, just the cdr's. I frequently clean both the cd's and the players, so I don't think that is the issue.....but I'm really at a loss here with this.

Anyone got any advice on how to handle or remedy this problem?

[Pezman]

What program you using to burn your cd-r's?

Two thoughts come to mind. 1. You're burning the cds at too fast (ie 52x or 48x)
I recommend burning cd's at between 24x-40x oversampling. Any faster and you could be getting artifacting on the discs.
2. Your burner could be to blame. When you are writing the discs, are you multi-sessioning the discs? Sometimes if you have a 650mb disc and you only put 500 mb on it, the program doesn't finalize the disc (*which means no further writing is allowed). You should always finalize a cd-r as open session discs tend to have problems with non-cpu readers.

Lastly, it could be the media you are burning with. What brand name are you using? Is it a quality brand? Is it specific to music cd-r's? Those would be the first things I would diagnose. Good luck!

[Hogan11]

The burner I have is a Phillips CDR770 Audio CD Recorder, the other player is a SONY 5 CD Carosel...the problem I noted above has just started to become frequent. I have had friends download stuff and burn it for me on their PC's and that also has been a hit or miss affair.

I've have had the same setup since 2000...the CDR's always played fine until just recently...now in the SONY (and the Phillips if it even recognizes the CD that is...I've been getting a "No Disc" thing from that) I get the problem stated above and it appears to be increasing through the CDR portion of my collection.....

This has me concerned. Could it be that the laser is going in both players? The reason I say that is that the Phillips unit is known for being iffy with consumer feedback (although it has worked fine for me until this) and the SONY is about 11 years old, but other than this , appears to be in full working order.

CDR's I usually use are from Memorex although I have used Fujifilm's & TDK's with good results. I have used Maxell's in the past as well, but have had less success with them.

Originally Posted by Pezman

What program you using to burn your cd-r's?

Two thoughts come to mind. 1. You're burning the cds at too fast (ie 52x or 48x)
I recommend burning cd's at between 24x-40x oversampling. Any faster and you could be getting artifacting on the discs.
2. Your burner could be to blame. When you are writing the discs, are you multi-sessioning the discs? Sometimes if you have a 650mb disc and you only put 500 mb on it, the program doesn't finalize the disc (*which means no further writing is allowed). You should always finalize a cd-r as open session discs tend to have problems with non-cpu readers.

I have no idea how to adjust the burning speed on the audio recorder...I don't think that is possible...but I'll check into it...I really don't think that would be the problem here because the problem I'm talking about only appeared recently...the same cdr's that are giving me problems now played fine for years.

I always finalize the cdr's, they won't play in the other players without doing so..but are you telling me that if I don't fill out the CD then that could be the problem here?

[alkemical]

get kazaa and DL nero v4 - in your properties you can lower the burn speed - depending on age of CD player i'd even burn down to a SLOW session of 16x or less

[Hogan11]

Originally Posted by amesj523

get kazaa and DL nero v4 - in your properties you can lower the burn speed - depending on age of CD player i'd even burn down to a SLOW session of 16x or less

Ok...but I'm not burning the cd's on the PC, I'm burning them on the stereo Phillips burner...mainly because the stuff I'm burning is from my vinyl collection, really rare stuff I'm sure is not anywhere available on the web.

[BizzyBone7]

i dont know if someone said this, but that has happened to me, and its usually cuz i have too many windows open while burning especially explorer or AOL or a big program like that, try closing them and then burn. not saying its gonna work but it has worked for me

Originally Posted by RHogan

Ok...but I'm not burning the cd's on the PC,

then disregard the comment i had

[Hogan11]

Bump

[Pezman]

K snowman, here's a bit of info from eopinions...

http://www.epinions.com/484080_Phili...splay_~reviews

"For the better part of a year I enjoyed the 765 and it did an OK job recordings cds. Philips made it easy for the consumer by allowing the user to drop in the media and source and press two buttons to begin recording. The drawbacks come when you want to do anything else with the recorder.

This unit makes many things possible, but not without drawbacks. Mixed compilations require many more steps and recording from an analog source can be nightmarish. I purchased this unit because I wanted a standalone CD recorder with optical inputs for my home studio. It worked well for a while, but then everything it recorded started skipping and failing. I broke more than a few ruined CDRs from the frustration.

The unit was under warranty, so I called the number and got a list of service professionals in my area. Every single business I called was reluctant to service my recorder. The people at philips have done very little to remedy the situation.

This may be the way with new technologies. Perhaps it is difficult to find qualified service professionals for the latest and greatest. This is not my main concern. I am disturbed that Philips has not done anything to help despite my warranty. Buyer take caution."

"If you were to bring home the Philips CDR765BK, you would definitely be happy with its ability to record a complete CD in half the time of the original. Many people who purchase CDRs, however, also want to make compilation discs with various artists. This function is where this particular model falls short. It is possible to create a disc like this using one of two ways with this recorder. For a digital recording, you would have to program the CDR separately for each individual track that you want to record, and then dubb them one at a time. To fill up a 74 minute CD can take the better part of a day. The second way to do this function is to connect an external CD changer to the CDR using analog audio cables. To do this almost defeats the purpose of buying a CDR. If you want analog quality, then get a tape deck. Doing this will also give you at least a five second gap between each song while the CD changer moves to the next song or disc. The best way to create a compilation disc would be to connect a CD changer with either an optical or digital coax cable, for a complete digital transfer of information and virtually no sound degradation. But this is where you face the problem. The digital sync on this model cuts off about the first two to three seconds of each song. I first thought that maybe I was using a defective model, but after carefully reading the manual I found that this is how the unit was designed. It is not meant for this type of transfer. If you are considering buying a CDR, I would recommend you to look at the Harmon Kardon dual deck model CDR2. It sells for the same as the Phillips suggested retail price, and is a much better bang for your buck. It can dubb cds twice as fast as the Phillips, has no problem with digital synchronization from an external cd changer. It also has a much better DAC if you are planning to transfer any of your old LP's or cassettes onto cd."

[alkemical]

hogan - so when you burn a disc on this console burner - it gets all crazy? But only crazy on certain players? And only started doing this?

[Hogan11]

Originally Posted by amesj523

hogan - so when you burn a disc on this console burner - it gets all crazy? But only crazy on certain players? And only started doing this?

No.

Almost all of the CDR's played fine in both players...occasionally you'd get one with the noise, but not very often. Beginning in the middle of last week, CDR's that played fine before now all of a sudden have the surface noise in my SONY Carousel and aren't even recognized in the Phillips...they all play fine on the PC however.

Seeing that the SONY carousel is 11 years old and gets a lot of use (like that comes as a surprise to anyone ) and the Phillips has always had questionable consumer feedback (though I really never had a problem till now with it) I'm believing it's a playback issue and that the laser may going in the SONY while I'm at the point in ownership where most experienced problems with the Phillips (thanks for the info Pez...I'd rep ya for it but I have to spread some around yet).

So, what I'm thinking of doing is scraping both players for a CDR/CDRW 5 disc changer player, the SONY gets very high consumer marks after checking into it..of course I'll be sure it plays my media before an actual purchase (after further investigation, the CDR's acting up are all Memorex 80 minute ones...unfortunately, the majority of my CDR collection...the Fuji ones play fine still while Maxell was always a hit or miss venture).

[alkemical]

sounds like you solved it then - to me i've seen cd players just flake out then die, sounds like yours is doing the same -

Hogan, now that you got a PC - i hope you won't use a console burner - i'm sure we could help you run a reciever into your soundcard and then find something to capture it

[Hogan11]

Originally Posted by amesj523

sounds like you solved it then - to me i've seen cd players just flake out then die, sounds like yours is doing the same -

Hogan, now that you got a PC - i hope you won't use a console burner - i'm sure we could help you run a reciever into your soundcard and then find something to capture it

Well, yeah....coming up with the extra cash may be a short term problem though....it's odd that both are going at the same time ...sometimes I really lament the passing of the cassette.

I've had others try to get me to go with burning from the PC...but I'm just not into file sharing so I get others to do that for me in exchange for other recordings that I may have.

Hey Ames...weren't you the one advocating Death Cab For Cutie to me?? I've been given a couple of songs from the new one "Transatlantic" I believe the title is....very cool stuff, I'm looking forward to getting the disc now.

[alkemical]

That could work too man, it's all in how you do it - i have a burner, with a reciever hooked into my soundcard, so i can work anyway i want -

Yes, i've been pimping death cab for cutie!

PS - i got Black Rebel Motorcycle club - at first 3x i listened i didn't like it - then i realized - wow this is cool - took me some time to absorb it. I'm not a guy who usually picks something up once and likes it right-away - except for that catchy hey-ya song by outkast

[Hogan11]

Here's an update for ya all.....after days of problems, everything is playing fine today.

Weird..

[alkemical]

full moon....

[Hogan11]

Originally Posted by amesj523

full moon....

...or an 11 to 13 year old CD player whose laser is just starting to run out of gas maybe??

[alkemical]

john ashcroft attacking your burnt discs

[Rigs11]

Originally Posted by amesj523

john ashcroft attacking your burnt discs

If you're using a console recorder instead of a pc it might be that the discs you're burning may have copy protection . With a pc you can get software to crack pretty much any copy protection program, with a console burner not sure. I've run accross some files on the internet that do what you describe. Just a thought.

[No1BroncoFan]

RHogan,

I was thinking "hardware trouble" until I heard one word: Memorex.

While it may well still be a hardware problem, I'll bet the Memorex discs are a contributing factor. I've had horrible luck with any and everything labled Memorex. They contract out everything they "make" and their quality standards are pathetic. Personally I use TDK, Imation, Ritex/RiData (who also Contract for some of the TDK and Imation discs) and occasionally Fuji. I used to get one coaster aout of every two Memorex CD-Rs. I haven't had a bad burn that can be attributed to bad media yet with the brands I just mentioned.

Ben

[Hogan11]

Originally Posted by No1BroncoFan

RHogan,

I was thinking "hardware trouble" until I heard one word: Memorex.

While it may well still be a hardware problem, I'll bet the Memorex discs are a contributing factor. I've had horrible luck with any and everything labled Memorex. They contract out everything they "make" and their quality standards are pathetic. Personally I use TDK, Imation, Ritex/RiData (who also Contract for some of the TDK and Imation discs) and occasionally Fuji. I used to get one coaster aout of every two Memorex CD-Rs. I haven't had a bad burn that can be attributed to bad media yet with the brands I just mentioned.

Ben

I have stopped using Memorex and have switched over to Fuji exclusively since they've never acted up in the players I have.
The other CDR's I have (Memorex and Maxell) seem to work on occasion...almost as if atmospheric conditions had something to do with it (I know it's not the case but I'm just equating it to something to explain why they work some days and not others). This would sove the problem normally but I have about 100 of these Memorex CDRs with stuff on them that'll never see the light of day on a silver CD.

Talked to a guy at the Stereo Shop up in the city and he tells me that soon they will come out with players/recorders that will handle everything across the board. Panasonic already has a player out there that'll play any type of CDR but nothing on the recording end of it (and I don't think much of Panasonic anyways) Alpine has developed the same thing for car stereos as well.

If I could find something that would play and record all CDRs & CDRWs, as well as handle 5 cds or more, I'd be sold on it in a heartbeat...but for now, all I can do is just wait I guess.

Thanks again to everyone for their advice and help in this matter.

[No1BroncoFan]

If you can, hold out for DVD audio recorders. 48KHz at 24 bit instead of 41KHz at 16 bit. They should also be backward compatable to CD. Or go computer based.

I still think a professional quality sound card and a good CD burner are the way to go. You can capture (record) the audio from cassette or LP at 48/20-24, do any editing/cleanup that needs to be done, downsample the audio tracks to 41/16 and burn them to CD. It'll give you quality that rivals the old Mobile Fidelity "Gold" CDs that were available in the '90's.

If I could find something that would play and record all CDRs & CDRWs, as well as handle 5 cds or more, I'd be sold on it in a heartbeat...but for now, all I can do is just wait I guess.

Have you looked into any of the Pioneer multi-disc DVD players? I've got a single disc that hasn't refused a CD-R/RW yet (not even the crappy dollar store CD's a buddy of mine uses). Hell, it even plays MP3 discs.

Ben