Popping noise when playing CD's on Masterlink?

B

bigbear

New member
I just got my new Alesis Masterlink! I've read great reviews, so I'm really excited about getting down and dirty with this little unit. I was playing some commercial CD's through the unit last night, sounded great, but then I notticed a popping noise on one track about 15 seconds into the song. I went back and replayed the offending section, and sure enough it popped every time. So, I tried playing the same track on several of my home units and got no pop.

Is it possible that the masterlink is so sensitive that it's picking up a flaw in the original recording that normal players just can't pick up?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
I've never ever experienced that kind of problem....

Make sure you download the latest software version from the Alesis site...... even recently shipped units don't necessarily have the latest rev!

Do a track copy from the CD to the Masterlink's HD and see if the copy does it too..... it does sound like a flawed CD though...

The Masterlink's drive can be sensitive -- it can be picky about certain computer-burned CDs (which are questionable already sometimes -- depending on the client's burner quality - which tends to vary quite a bit...........)

Bruce
 
I've had similar issues on one or two commercial disks. I believe that the Masterlink has very little error correction for CD playback, and I believe that it is done that way by design.

Normal CD players do _significant_ amounts of error correction, and interpolate across errors so that you can't really hear them. But you have to remember that the Masterlink is intended for *mastering*. For that function, you want to _know_ if your media has a flaw. It'd be a damned shame to finish a project, and send it off to the pressing house with a big hairy dropout or two in it- because your final checkout machine error-corrected it and didn't let you know it was there.

The Masterlink's cd player is indeed bitchy. If the disk is the least bit marginal, it will click, pop, and/or refuse to play it. However, that's really a good thing, if you think about what the machine was designed to do. For simple casual CD-playing, it's really not the best tool for the job.
 
Yeah ,I agree the Masterlink isn`t very forgiving....
But a hell of a great thing to own!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Amund
 
I have noticed that tracks that I have edited with Sound Forge result in having a pop added to the beginning of each track when played back on the Masterlink. I have dealt with it by using the Masterlink to crop off the pop. Maybe the original you are speaking of was edited in Sound Forge. I have not tried to see if the pop shows up on a regular CD player. If I get around to it, I'll write a followup post here. Al
 
I notice Sound Forge seems to add DC offset every time some processing is applied to a track.... this could potentially be responsible for the artifacts....

Anyone else notice this about the DC offset? (meaning, you can open a file, check for DC offset, it gives a message saying there is no significant offset... so you apply a process to the track - say limiting - then check for DC offset again.... sure enough, every time.........)

Bad processing algorithms in Sound Forge?

:confused:
 
While were on the subject of the masterlink

While were on the subject of the masterlink, I was just curious if there is a way to burn a cd without finalizing it. Sometimes I will have a file in a playlist that I want to put on cd to check out on different players but its a real waste to use a whole cd for one track. With my other burner in my comp I can go back and add other tracks later on but its not a CD-RW. Im thinking maybe I missed this part in my manual?
And for what its worth ,I havent ran across the popping problem and I play alot of commercial cds through my masterlink.
 
No -- the whole point is that it burns RedBook Audio..... (except for the track codes...) It is NOT the same as a computer CD burner... nor was it intended to be........!

If you want to burn unfinalized discs, buy a burner for your computer!

;)
 
Thanks

Thanks Blue Bear, I have two burners for my computer but my recording stuff is not tied in with my computer yet. I was just making sure I didn't overlook that part.
 
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