Big Trouble Burning Music CDs

  • Thread starter Thread starter muzikman7
  • Start date Start date
M

muzikman7

New member
Hi, my name's Israel. I came out with my own music album last year and I've been selling copies. I did the entire thing myself and i used equipment I own. I have a Dell Dimension 8400 computer that's already had the CPU, motherboard, and DVD burner replaced on it. I use a Lexicon Omega sound card to record with and I use a Cakewalk program called Pro Tracks. Here's baisically the big problem I've been having for months: The CDs I'm burning now have a "crackling" sound in the songs. All of the CDs I've burned previously accidentaly had a corrupt file on it (I accidentally saved the song as 24bit), but I fixed that by resaving my music into new WAV files. Well, the crackling sound is still there. I even took one of the original "good" copies of the album, and I found out that it too had that slighty crackling sound in the recording of some of the songs. Sometimes when I burn it, certain songs will have this crackling sounds. Others times, other songs will have it. I know it's not my burner because I saved my files to an external harddrive, brought it to another computer and that CD had the same problems (unless BOTH burners have problems...). For my computer I used to use the software Sonic RecordNow to burn my songs, and the first 100 CDs burning on that program sounded good (I think). But then, the qaulity started going bad, and I realized that you can't select the burn speed on SonicRecordNow. So I went ahead and bought Nero Ultra Premium Edition 8, and the slowest speed I can burn CDs at is 4x (which i've heard is ok). But even so with the new saved WAV files, there is still that crackling sound. Do you guys have any idea what could be causing this crackling sound in my music? Thanks a lot.
 
Sonic RecordNow is not what I'd choose to burn red book audio. I only use it for data discs. But you can select the burn speed.

The best CD burning program I've ever used is CD Architect.

As for the crackling sound - how did you master your audio? Did you try to punch it for maximum loudness? You might have constant clipping in the audio.
 
It's probably something in the mixing or mastering stage that is the problem. Some clipping or something like that. Maybe a mic problem and compression/limiting made it more apparent? A bad cord in your signal path maybe? That would go all the way back to tracking.

There are other possibilities.
 
When I looked at one of the recordings on ProTracks, I saw that there was no clipping where that crackling sound is on the CD. When I listened to all of the WAV files on the computer, they all were perfect with no crackling sound...I noticed though that I've been importing all my music into 16bit RIFF WAV files. ProTracks allows me to export audio as RIFF WAV, Broadcast WAV, WMA or mP3. It's only when I burn to CD that the problems (crackling sound) occur. Any ideas?
 
Do you have some sort of processing going within the burning program?
 
Also make sure the "Normalize" block isn't checked within the track properties screen in your burn program. This could be pushing the level too close to "0" causing pops/cracks at peaks.
 
DigitalDon said:
Also make sure the "Normalize" block isn't checked within the track properties screen in your burn program. This could be pushing the level too close to "0" causing pops/cracks at peaks.
Click to expand...

Normalize seems like it's a great feature, but can alter your mix.
If you are satisfied with your mix for each individual song, then WHY normalize ?
You might have a perfect mix, only to have normalize do something funky.

Normalize is great for audio, such as public speaking, where speaker may move around and not be the same levels throughout a track.
 
Standard 1st question: Are your files 16bit/44.1kHz wavs before you burn them???

If not, your burner software will be trying to convert them on-the-fly, generally causing problems....
 
TimOBrien said:
Standard 1st question: Are your files 16bit/44.1kHz wavs before you burn them???

If not, your burner software will be trying to convert them on-the-fly, generally causing problems....
Click to expand...
Not true w/ CD Architect. I generally burn CDs directly from 24-bit files and have never had a problem.
 
Could also be bad dithering. Try using wavelab, it has a redbook check list
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top