Music CD-R burning problems (1 Viewer)

[Todd Stout]

Hello all,

I have recently been having problems burning music CD-R's. The last several that I have burned have been skipping. I have tested some of them in both my truck's CD player and a home unit and they are skipping in the same manner in both. It's like the laser is having a hard time seeing the disc because they skip forward in increments of a few seconds. Also, each of these discs never seem to skip when I first put them in or in the same place every time.

This all started happening about the same time that I opened a new spindle of CD-R's (80 minute Memorex) so I thought that I may have gotten a bad batch. I bought a spindle of 80 minute TDK CD-R's and thought the problem was solved but one of the TDK dics is skipping in my truck's CD player now.

I just recently upgraded this PC to Windows XP from ME so I'm wondering if that may be the problem? I am using Easy CD Creater 5 Platinum and I have applied the patch that makes it compatible with XP.

The PC is a Dell Dimension 8100 (1.8ghz P4) that was purchased last August so I am hoping that the CD-RW drive isn't failing already. I'm not sure what brand it is but I do know it was not very expensive.

Do you guys have any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[Salvador]

first of all, easy CD creator has known issues with windowsXP. I know there was a nasty bug that caused XP to crash all the time, but if you downloaded the new patch you should be fine. With that said, easy CD is not the best cd burning software out there. Have you ever tried burning audio cd's using other programs??? Let me suggest getting nero from www.ahead.de Not only does it allow you to burn audio cd's but it also all almost every other cd-r archiving functionality out there.
First things first, what brand of cd burner do you have??? Hopefully it's not one of those generic crapos that have been popping up as of late. Second, where do you get the songs you burn on your audio discs? Mp3's from the net? Direct rip from your own cd's?
The most probable cause that i could think of for your cd's skipping is using poor cdr media. You mentioned that you used memorex cd's, these aren't too bad (not as bad as maxell anyway) but i suggest getting better brands like Kodak (if you could still find any), TDK, or Taiyo yuden. You mentioned that the TDK cd's skipped when you were driving your truck, well how long is the anti-skipping buffer of your cd player in your truck? It might be skipping just because of the simple fact that the buffer just ran out because of the vibration and not because of the cd itself.

 

[Todd Stout]

I have only been using Easy CD Creater 5 Platinum lately. I initially was using the CD burning utility in Music Match but discovered Easy CD Creater worked a lot better. Maybe I should try new software... Easy CD Creater was working just fine under Windows ME though.

As for the brand of the CD-RW drive... I think it may may be an el-cheapo no name brand that Dell threw in here. Under the device properties, the drive is listed as LG CD-RW CED-8080B so I guess that means it's generic.

The songs all come from my own CD's. I use Music Match to rip tracks from my CD's as uncompressed WAV files. I then take the WAV files into Sound Forge 5.0 and run the Steinberg Loudness Maximizer DirectX plug-in on them to increase and/or equalize the volume levels. Once that is done, I open up Easy CD Creator and add the tracks and arrange the order and then burn the CD.

As for the media, I went through 50 Memorex CD-R's and never had any probelems. the problems seemed to start when I opened the second spindle of 50. Unfortunately, that was about the same time that I installed XP on this PC so I'm having a hard time isolating the cause.

The stereo in my truck is the stock AM/FM/CD/cassette head unit that came with it. The truck is a 2001 Toyota Tacoma 4x4 and I believe the unit was actually made by Fujitsu. I'm not sure if it even has a memory buffer. That stereo hasn't had any problems playing my CD-R's until now though and I'm definately not experiencing the type of skipping you get from hitting bumps in the road. I have a feeling that the stereo isn't the culprit since both Memorex and TDK media is skipping in it. The other unit I have been playing them in is a 15 year old Fisher CD changer at home (it's handy since it's next to the PC).

Do you think maybe this generic CD-RW drive could be failing or maybe starting to move out of alignment? I have probably burned 100+ CD's since last August but I wouldn't think that's an excessive number. I think the drive is still under the Dell warranty so maybe I should contact them about the matter.

 

[Todd Stout]

Last night I went to the Roxio Web site and found that there is a patch for Windows XP and an upgrade from 5.0 to 5.02d so I applied both of those patches to Easy CD Creator. I also ran the Windows updater and found there was a patch for Window XP users that are having problems losing data while burning CD's, making mp3 CD's that portable players are having problems reading, and making CD's that XP can read but Win95 and 98 have problems reading. I applied that patch as well but I'm not sure if that's my problem or not.
Here's the XP patch info:
Compact Disc Recorded in Windows XP Is Missing Files or Folders, or Is Unreadable (Q309691)
I haven't had a chance to test these updates yet but maybe this'll help my situation. I'll have to burn a CD or two this evening and give them a spin.

 

[Salvador]

let me know what happens. I personally use EXact Audio Copy to rip songs from my CD's and use Nero to burn em. No problems at all. BTW, i use princo and kodak golds.

 

[Mohsen Sadeghi]

let me know what happens. I personally use EXact Audio Copy to rip songs from my CD's and use Nero to burn em. No problems at all. BTW, i use princo and kodak golds.

Salvador,

Sorry if it is off topic but I have to ask this: what is the advantage of ripping to WAV (which i assume you do) and burning back? I use Easy CD and copy a track directly from the source to target CD. Does it cuase a loss in quality?

Mohsen

 

[Todd Stout]

I didn't have a chance to burn any new CD's last night but I did burn one Sunday after applying the XP patch and 5.02d upgrade to Easy CD Creater (but before applying the patch that Microsoft has for XP).

I listened to about the first 8 tracks of 18 and I've had no skipping problems as of yet. That CD was burned from the same project that I made two CD's from in the past few days that skipped (in different places) in both my truck and the geriatric Fisher CD changer that I have near the PC. I'll have to burn a couple of test CD's this evening if I have the time and listen to them.

Just as a additional piece of information, the CD's that have been skipping in the audio CD players seem to play just fine in the PC's at home and at work (a Windows 2000 machine).

 

[greg jones]

Another thing to keep in mind when burning audio cds is what your recording speed is. I've tried several different manufacturers of drives and software and if I burn an audio cd (either from an MP3 or from a WAV) any faster than 2x speed, I get skipping and "blips". I've heard several reasons for this occuring, but won't bother you with the details. The little extra time it takes to burn at the slower speed is well worth the cost of having a few dozen shiny coasters laying around.

 

[Todd Stout]

I was actually getting consistant results burning audio CD's at 4X speed (8X used to always make coasters with data and audio). I never had any of them skip until recently though. Right after I upgraded to XP and applied just the XP patch to Easy CD Creator, I tried a burning a few at 8X and thought I was succesful. When they started skipping on me, I went back to 4X speed and tried again but still had the skipping problem. I'll keep burning speed in mind though.

 

[Salvador]

Salvador,
Sorry if it is off topic but I have to ask this: what is the advantage of ripping to WAV (which i assume you do) and burning back? I use Easy CD and copy a track directly from the source to target CD. Does it cuase a loss in quality?
Mohsen

In terms of quality, there is no advantage in ripping songs to wav format in your computer. More often than not quality even goes down with ripped songs since not all drives can copy songs bit by bit and there are the occasional 'pops' that occur on badly ripped wav files. Most often than not, ripping cd's is only for convenience purposes. Someone probably wants to custom make his/her cd or probably archive the songs in his computer.
As i have said before EasyCD creator isn't the best software aroud for ripping cd's. From my experience, i used EasyCD creater with my Acer 40x drive and random clicks and pops would show up in about every couple of cd's that i rip. I eliminated this by using my Plextor drive as the source but i wasn't comfortable with matching good hardware with bad software. With Exact Audio Copy (www.eac.de) i was able to use m Acer drive (although a bit slower than my plex) to successfully rip wav files without any clicks or pops.
If you also want a good mp3 encoder/decoder use lame 3.89 or 3.92 (i can't remember the latest version but its either one). Downloading RazorLame as a front-end would probably make life easier too since makes a windows shell for Lame so that you won't have to use it through DOS.
hope this helps

 

[Jeff Braddock]

I second what Salvador said, use Nero. It is just a great program. Not only does it run tons faster (at least on my machine) than Easy CD, but in the newest version (the newest that I know of at least) it has Burn-Proof as part of the program. This is great for us that don't have SCSI drives and the like. Thanks to the new version, I can burn CD's at 12x whereas I was only able to get 6x or 8x before. And no more coasters because of underburn!

 

[Todd Stout]

Apparently applying the patches to Easy CD Creator and WinXP did not fix the problem. I was listening to a CD-R in my truck last night that I had burned after applying the patches and it starting jumping forward/skipping at about track 5 or 6. This is really frustrating.

I assume that my problem lies with either Easy CD Creator not getting along well with XP or I'm starting to have problems with the CD-RW drive itself. I'm leaning towards the problem with Easy CD/XP since this all started after upgrading to XP a few weeks ago.

I think I may need to look into buying another product such as Nero sometime soon.

 

[Darren Lewis]

I've left ECDC behind and moved over to Nero 5. Not looked back since, and no coasters either. Runs perfectly on my Windows 2000 dual-CPU machine.

 

[Todd Stout]

Just out of curiousity, can the content I'm burning have any bearing on my CD-R's skipping? I've noticed that one of the two CD-R's that I've burned seems to be fine while the oher has skipped consistantly on each copy that I've burned.

Could the files have gotten corrupted wile I was ripping them into uncompressed WAV files? I upgraded to Music Match Jukebox Premium (version 7.00.0149) right after I upgraded this PC to WinXP since the version that came with this PC didn't seem to be working any longer.

I doubt this is the problem but I thought I'd ask anyway.

 

[Salvador]

An easy way to find out is to listen to the source wav files that were corrupted on the disc. If the copy of he wav file in your computer shows the same defects as the one in your burned CD, then you ripped it wrong. If not then somewhere along the burning process, something went wrong.

If i didn't emphasize it enough, i strongly suggest you use Nero to burn your music cd's.

 

[Todd Stout]

The WAV files that I have sound fine in most instances but there were a couple that had clicking noises in them. I looked into Music Match a little further and found a setting for using error correction during the ripping process. It slows the process down but seems to have fixed the problem.

I downloaded a Nero demo (I think it's version 5.5.7.8) on Sunday and finally got around to trying it out last night. I burned two CD-R's using the WAV files that were already sitting on my hard drive in the same order that I previously had arranged with Easy CD Creator 5.02d. So far so good.

I have listened to the first 5 tracks of my latest compilation and it hasn't skipped at all yet. That same compilation had started skipping toward the end of the first track when it was burned with Easy CD Creator and continued throughout the disc.

Looks like the culprit just may be Easy CD Creator 5.02d not getting along well with Windows XP. From reading though the forums at Roxio.com I see that Easy CD Creator 5.1 is actually out on store shelves now.

If Nero is actually working for me, looks like I'm going to be purchasing that soon.

I do have one question about Nero though. It appears to write CD Text information in a different manner than Easy CD Creator. Music Match can read CD Text from my Easy CD discs but not my Nero discs. For some reason, the player in Easy CD can read the CD Text from Nero discs just fine so I know it's being included.

Thanks for the Nero recommendation. I like it so far.

 

[Eric Stuckey]

I did not see it mentioned here, but I use the MUSICMATCH that came loaded on my new Dell Dimension 4400, And it burn's fine. I only wish it dint take so long to burn. I'v always read that the slower the speed the better so I have it set to 8X , I dont want to take a chance on anything higher , ie, skipping errer's ect.But anyway the Music match seems good, I like the look of the windows media player that came with the new XP,but musicmatch is just easyer for me.

 

[LCSeminole]

I've been burning disc's for several months now with my Yamaha 20x10x40 (2200EZ) at 16x and 20x using the ROXIO 5.02d version, and havent had so much as a blip on any CD-R. My OS is Windows ME. Ripping with ROXIO is just as flawless. If it matters I'm using an AMD 1.3 266 mhz bus chip on an MSI PRO 266 MB with 320 megabytes of DDR Ram. Right now I'm burning on Verbatim DataLifePlus 24x CD-R's.

 

[Todd Stout]

Eric,

I was using the Music Match 6 software that came preloaded on this Dell Dimension 8100 at first as well. I couldn't get more than about 60-65 minutes to burn on a 74 minute CD-R. I switched over to the Easy CD Creater that was installed on the machine (4.02?) and was able to burn right up to the 74 minute mark without any problems. I still use Music Match to rip my WAV and MP3 files and to play MP3's and CD's. I recently downloaded version 7 and paid the $20 to upgrade to the premium edition. I should try burning in Music Match again to test out the new version's capabilities.

Laurence,

I was having no problems at all with Easy CD Creator 5.02d Platinum while I was running Windows ME. It wasn't until I upgraded to XP a few weeks ago that it started giving me problems. I applied the various patches to both Easy Cd Creator and Windows XP and still get CD's that skip. Maybe the new version 5.1 that I hear has been released now addresses the compatibility issues with XP?

I'll do some further burning and listening with the Nero demo software that I downloaded and get back to everyone with the results. So far, so good...

 

[Todd Stout]

Just an update:

I bought Nero Burning Rom 5.5 last Friday (actually I'm running the 5.5.7.8 version that I downloaded with the serial number from the copy I bought). I'll have to say that I like the program a lot. I've bruned 5 or 6 audio CD-R discs and so far, none of them skip. I also like the jewel case/label designer that's built in as well. They look a little more professional than the Easy CD Creator designs.

Roxio has released a version 5.1 patch for Easy CD Creator Platinum. I dowloaded it and attempted to apply it but the installation process keeps failing. I even unistalled and reinstalled Easy CD Creator and ran just the 5.1 patch and that didn't work. I finally gave up on the patch and just reinstalled the 5.02d patch for now.