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Laptop CD drive vibrations (1 Viewer)

MarkHastings

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I have a Dell Inspiron laptop and sometimes, when I am ripping a CD, the drive makes a really loud buzzing noise and the laptop vibrates.

ACcording to Dell support, this is somewhat common due to silkscreening and unbalanced discs, but most of my issues are with store bought CD's, so I can definitely rules out cheap blanks media.

I can live with it as long as this isn't really hurting anything. I do notice that if I push in the left side of the CD tray, the noise quiets down a bit, so it's definitely the tray that's rattling.

I also notice that if I just play the CD, there is no vibrations. I am guessing the vibrations are coming from the speed of the ripping. I would try to rip at lower speeds, but I don't see any options for that in iTunes.

Maybe I'll try another Ripper and see if I can control the speed.
 

MarkHastings

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Update: when I rip CD's, iTunes shows between 8x - 9x speed.

I tried turning on error correction and that slowed the ripping down to about 5x, but the drive still vibrated.

I just tried using Sonics MP3 app (which was built into the CD burning app on my computer), but it's a LE copy and I'd have to upgrade to get MP3 ripping functionality.

Any suggestions on a decent CD ripper (WAV or MP3) that you can control the ripping speed? obviously a Free one...I do recall a good app that I used to use, but I forget what it was called. :frowning: Something like CDrip??
 

Bryan X

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Mark,

I know with iTunes and I think Windows Media Player you can check a box to listen to the song while it's being ripped/imported. That would effectively reduce the ripping speed to 1x, right?
 

MarkHastings

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I just tried, and it was as I suspected. All it does is, if you're ripping an entire CD, after the first song is finished, iTunes starts playing it (from the ripped file on your hard drive) as it moves on to track 2 of the CD.
 

Rommel_L

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Apr 25, 2000
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The vibrations are normal. To be sure, double-check the screws that hold the cd drive are tight...
 

MarkHastings

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While I realize that vibrations are part of laptop CD drive, this noise is really loud. I can't imagine it's normal, but if it is, that's fine (I don't use the drive that often).

I took a video of it...you can hear the noise as the CD spins up (as it starts to rip), then you can see how it stops when I touch the side of the drive. It seems like the plastic covering is what's vibrating and making the noise.

Anyways, is this normal? CD Vibrations: Video (click on the image below)
[url=http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b223/DarthMarklar/th_CD-Vibration.jpg] [/url]
 

Rommel_L

Second Unit
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That is fine...

iTunes is fine for ripping CDs to AAC but if you're ripping to MP3s the best way is using either Exact Audio Copy or CDex (as someone has mentioned) with the LAME encoder...
 

Dennis*G

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My laptop makes the same noise on cd-rom spinup and even my desktop makes it on occasion. Just the one drawback of these newer faster drives.

Now if it makes that noise constantly (more then 10 seconds) then I think you may have a small problem as something isnt secure enough and that much vibration continully may cause problems.
 

Kimmo Jaskari

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Nero has software that will force the drive to rotate more slowly. The problem is with all these 52x drives... the disks spin at such rates that the drives heat up and there is tons of noise.

I believe the name of the application is Nero Drivespeed or CD-Speed. Google it.

I personally use a program called DVD Idle which makes movie viewing on the laptop a lot more comfortable. It caches the DVD on-the-fly as you watch and thus allows the DVD drive to spin down for long stretches of time as the movie plays from memory. The problem with movies on the laptop is the same as when ripping, lots of noise and vibration from the drive otherwise.

Here is an interesting link discussing when Mythbusters tested the whole exploding-cd-in-50-speed-drives and I even found video from the episode on Youtube.
 

MarkHastings

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Jan 27, 2003
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Kimmo, thanks for that DriveSpeed link. When I set the speed to 16x, the vibration noise was cut in half, and when I set it to 6x, you couldn't even hear the CD spinning. I actually thought something was wrong with the app :laugh:, but it was definitely ripping the CD VERY quietly.

:emoji_thumbsup:
 

Kimmo Jaskari

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It's just the CD's, they weren't originally made to spin at 20k+ RPMs and they wobble and heat up and make lots of noise when forced to do so. Forget using glue-on labels on a disc you want to use in a 52x drive, for instance, it should sound pretty nasty.

Drivespeed is a great app if maximum speed is less important than keeping the noise and wear-and-tear down.
 

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