CD burner skipping nightmare!

R

Renegade

New member
I've got a brand new setup (Ultra PC with built in Sony CDR and CDRW, Cakewalk, Layla soundcard) and I've gone through two ten-packs+ of CD's and I haven't gotten a decent CD yet. They all skip!

I can play a CD from the CDR drive via the system's CD player and it sounds fine. The Adaptec site said to try putting it into a .wav file and then recording from there. When I do that, the .wav file skips when I preview it!

Did a scandisk, defrag, control-alt-del to get rid of other programs . . . I even disconnected the Layla box when I burned. It still skips! (The skips are never in the same places) I've already taken it back to the dealer once to have the CDRW replaced. What am I missing????!!!!
 
You need to give a little more information.

First, where did the wave file come from. If you extracted it from an audio CD (ripped it), the problem might have come about in the extraction process. Some CD players do not do audio extraction too well (although I would think your Sony burner should be able to). Does the file play ok from your hard drive? If the file skips, clicks or pops on the hard drive, then the problem is with the extraction process. The solution would be to try and rip it from a different CD player. (BTW, the fact that the CD player plays the CD with no problems, has nothing to do with its ability to extract audio files.)

Second, what are you trying to do with the wave file? Are you trying to convert it to an Audio CD, or are you just trying to copy the wave onto the CD? What software are you using (Easy CD Creator)?
 
Because I'm new at this, I'm afraid I might be talking in circles, but here goes . . .

Yes, I extracted the audio from a CD and put it in a .wav file to copy it onto a CD just as a test. The ripped file sucks severely when played from the hard drive.

I do have .wav files that I created from my own recording into Cakewalk. They sound fine played from the hard drive but, again, there are skips when I burn them to CD.

I'm using Adaptec Easy CD Creator. Either it's an oxy-moron, or I am!
 
Here's some comments and suggestions.

Believe it or not, not all CD players are created equal for extracting audio from a CD. Did you use your CD burner to do the extraction, or did you do it from a different CD-ROM? In general my guess is that the device you used is not suitable for audio extraction. That is most likely your problem with the extracted wave file (the one that doesn't even play from your hard drive). The solution is to use a different CD-ROM to do the extraction.

As for the other wave files (the ones that play ok from your hard drive), I'm not too sure what the problem is. A couple of suggestions to try. First, try burning at a slower record speed. I usually do audio files at 1X speed and I wouldn't suggest that you go any higher than 2X, even if you burner supports higher speeds.

Also, make sure the wave file is 44.1 sample rate and 16 bit - no higher, no lower.

If that doesn't work, I would try a different brand of CD. Some burners don't seem to like certain brands of CDR's for reasons unknown to me. In particular, try a different colored CDR.

Last question - the wave files that you say play ok from your hard drive - are you playing them from within Cakewalk, or are you playing them using a player (e.g. Media Player, or Winamp). Make sure they play OK through a wave player first. If you're playing them from Cakewalk the problem very well might be the sample rate when you export to .wav as mentioned above.

The bottom line is that if the wave file plays OK from your hard drive (using Media Player), it should burn OK. If it doesn't, then it certainly won't get any better when you burn it.

Good luck.
 
dachay2tnr . . . just wanted to say thanks for all the info and suggestions.

As it turned out, having exhausted all other possibilities, I took the tower back to the dealer and he discovered that it was a Digital Audio Conversion problem. He said my CD ROM was transferring data at 48 when it should have been 52.

Oh well, I learned a lot from the ordeal so all is not lost!
 
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