cdr problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter brokenwindow
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brokenwindow

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Whenever I try to record my songs to a cdr, I get some crackle in the audio. I have a Phillips 400 cdr and use various types of cd's, but they all crackle.

I have tried at my fastest speed, down to the slowest(1x) and the slowest produces fewer crackles, but their still there.

It does this with any kind of audio. My stuff or pro stuff.

When I burn data cd's..everything is fine..I don't have any errors reading them.

Is my laser in the burner just going bad? I cleaned the lense and no change..

Any help would be appreciated..
 
LOL ROFL!!! I know!!!!! I've spend hours trying to edit them out!!

Question - if you play a normal CD through your burner, does it crackle? Or just when you record on a CDR?

If it does it only when you record, load up a good soundfile from a CD (record it on 2 tracks). Do NOT push the volume, leave it at least 6 dB below, so if there is a system induced pop, you hear it immediately. If possible with your burner, put the burner in record mode, pauzed, and listen for pops / clicks like that.
Tell me that one first.

Another question - do you go into your burner digital? or analogue?
 
I can read audio cd's fine without crackle in my burner. It's just when I burn. I can't put the burner in record mode and listen to it.

About a month ago, the burning on the cdr's starting getting a little lighter. Then a week later, I wasted 3 cd's trying to burn some stuff. The program said it burned ok, but when I looked at the cd, I could barely see the burn. My puter wouldn't read it...neither of my cd drives. I cleaned the lense and switched brands and it started working again.(data) A week ago is the first time I started burning audio stuff again and the crackels start. I do get a decent audio burn sometimes...maybe 1 out of 10.

I've burned data and they work fine. Both audio and data cd's look light now. Maybe all of them are bad but the data ones are less sensitive? :confused:

Do you mean the cd I sent you has a bunch of crackles?
Damn...I listened carefully to that one in headphones and thought it sounded pretty good. I burned it at 1x speed.


Thanks Sjoko2....
 
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Yes there were a whole bunch of them, in strange places.
I was just writing you a letter.
A lot of them were "overs", where the digital signal had been a bit to loud in recording.
Some were, I think, caused by cut-and-paste? Did you do that with the loop for "monkeys"? (and I ain't no monkey! ;)

*grin* I spend about 4 hours editing the clicks out, they are gone. But in monkeys you can still hear the seam, and there is no way I can get to that, its imbedded in the sound itself. Don't worry, I hear every friggin thing to the point of annoyance, if you play it on a normal system you won't hear it. (LOL perhaps you didn't hear it before either).

What did you use when tracking / mixing? headphones?
 
Shit, forgot to tell you, its done :)
I'll put it in the post Monday.
 
Damn....sorry bout the clips..

If your talking about the clips in the loop in the beginning of Monkeys before everything kicks in. That is how the loops was off the cd. no cut and paste...just loops looped im acid. I tried to fix it too.

I used my monitors, and head phones.

See ya in a week and thanks for the help..

Can't wait to hear the cd...
 
hey Broken - Is this CDR unit internal or external? A classic cause of noise like you describe is when you have an internal IDE CDR unit and there is noise on the IDE channel. The best way to test for this is put the CDR on its own IDE channel, or at least on a different one than the hard drive you are playing back from.
 
Thanks for the tip RW I don't really know to much about computers, just sound. So I know externals, not internals :)
 
Thanks RWhite.


My burner is an internal. I wouldn't of thought about noise cuz the crackles have just started recently and I've had the excact same configuration(IDE channels) for longer than that.

I'll give it a shot and let you know the results..

Thanks again...

Hey Sjoko..hopefully your new toy can help in fixing my sonic mess on the cd...:p
 
RWhite - "A classic cause of noise like you describe is when you have an internal IDE CDR unit and there is noise on the IDE channel."

What's an IDE channel? Anything like IRQ?

Anyway, it might be a classic cause, but the problem's common. I have the same thing - data burns are fine, audio CDRs with static sometimes. I want to know if it's the burner or circuit noise generated by all the stuff going on in my computer. By way of example, here's a small digression: if I'm wearing my headphones and click on record in my tracking software, I can hear a small whine that increases in pitch (the computer's hard disk?) - somehow, the circuitry's picking up on it - the soundcard, I reckon. Computers are noisy buggers.

But it's really annoying to pay $200 for a burner and find out that $200 isn't enough to get the job done right. There should have been a warning printed on the box: "Warning! Don't expect this equipment to actually do what you're buying it for."
 
Virtually all PCs have IDE controllers built on the motherboard. There are typically two, called the primary and secondary controller. More can be added using PCI cards. Each controller can controll two devices, a Master and a Slave device.

There are two issues which can cause noise when doing a CDR burn using an internal IDE burner. The first, quite simply, is if you have an older IDE unit. The first few generations of drives were quite noisy when creating audio CDs, so much so that some publications like PC Magazine just advised people to buy only SCSI drives.

The newer IDE CD-ROM drives are much better and far less likely to introduce noise of their own. And in terms of raw transfer rate the new IDE hard drives are as fast as much more expensive SCSI drives. However, one area where IDE technology is much worse than SCSI is when a controller has to handle both Reads and Writes at the same time (this is why SCSI Raid systems are used in File Servers, never IDE). If the controller your CDR writer is attached to is the same one controlling your source (hard drive or CD-ROM), then you can sometimes pick up noise or distortion.

The setup I use on my DAW is designed to avoid this:

Primary IDE controller
Master device - system hard drive containing the OS (Windows) and programms)
Secondary device - CDR recorder

Secondary IDE Controller
Master device - large, fast, data hard drive containing all my audio data
Secondary device - CD-ROM or DVD drive

By arranging things this way when I am copying either data from my hard disk or duping another CD, each IDE controller is doing only read or writing - not trying to do both.

Another good reason to arrange things like this is it allows you backup an image of your system drive to your data drive using a program like Ghost or drive image. Then you can write the backup out to CD-ROMs. That way if your system drive dies you can pop in a new one, boot up from a floppy disk, and restore your system from your backup cds in minutes.

Anyway let me know if that helps.... Good luck
 
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