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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 119 responses total. |
mcnally
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response 13 of 119:
| 
Jan 6 03:50 UTC 2001 |
re #11: I don't know either answer, actually, I just have a strong
suspicion that there's a difference..
Someone who's a recording enthusiast or professional would be in a
much better position to answer..
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scott
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response 14 of 119:
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Jan 6 15:14 UTC 2001 |
From what little I know, I'll say this:
Pretty much any 16 bit sound card will do OK recordings. Hey, it *is* 16 bits
after all. Where you have losses of sound quality is in the oft-neglected
analog-to-digital conversion and especially in the analog input design. I'm
not sure even the Soundblaster Live will do that great a job, being more ofa
gaming card than a pro audio card.
Companies that make serious audio cards include Yamaha, Echo
(www.echoaudio.com), and probably others I'm too lazy to research. You might
check out musician sites such as http://www.harmonycentral.com or
http://www.sonicstate.com for reviews and such.
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raven
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response 15 of 119:
|
Mar 19 01:25 UTC 2001 |
I'm helping a friend set up a digital recording studio. Proffesional
quality 24 bit sound cards start at aruond 400 dollars and go up from
there, they also include things you probably don't need like 8 channels
of digital sound out etc. Any standard 16 bit consumer card should do
fine for burning cds unless you are a real audiophile. My understnading
is that 24 bits is only neccesarry if you are mixing multitrack sound
it compensate for degredation in the mixing process, though obviously
I dodn't know all the details as to why that happens.
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scott
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response 16 of 119:
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Mar 19 01:57 UTC 2001 |
The extra bits (typically 20 or 24) are to compensate for accumulated math
rounding errors from digital processing.
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raven
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response 17 of 119:
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Apr 23 20:58 UTC 2001 |
re #16 Ah that makes sense, thanks. BTW I just got a cd-r 12X 10X 32X
an off brand but I figured out it's Ricoh hardware. I really like it,
but so far haven't had any luck getting it running under Linux (Mandrake
7.1) all the kernel modules seem to load OK but then I get a directory
permission error even though I'm logged in as root. it works fine as a player
underLinux and fine as a cd-r under windoze.
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scott
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response 18 of 119:
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May 25 18:54 UTC 2001 |
I'm going to have to renege on my "cheap sound cards are OK" assertion. I
finally figured out mine is rather weak on the bass when recording the line
in. I don't have exact numbers, but playing around with a test CD both on
the line in and from directly ripped tracks showed the bass clearly weaker
even at 63Hz. Bleah. I'll have to look for a somewhat better card before
I can do any more vinyl-CD conversions from my rare LPs.
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krj
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response 19 of 119:
|
May 25 20:08 UTC 2001 |
I was looking for an "external sound card" type of device which
might allow me to make good LP recordings into the laptop via
the USB port. The only product I find on the web is the Roland UA30 USB
Audio Canvas Interface, for about $250. I'm not going to do
anything about this until I get some experience with the USB
CD burner I got, the Iomega Predator.
Other than that, I found some reviews of high-end sound cards at:
http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/compare/index.htm
After reading reviews, I have this fantasy of building a PC for audio
use around an Event Darla soundcard, or maybe a Gina.
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scott
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response 20 of 119:
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May 25 20:11 UTC 2001 |
I was poking around that site a bit today. Unfortunatly, no Linux support
for the Event brand cards. I really don't want to have to use Windows for
this stuff. Maybe one of those $100 Soundblaster Live! cards would do OK.
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krj
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response 21 of 119:
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May 28 06:06 UTC 2001 |
OK! Tonight we finally opened the Iomega external USB cd burner I bought
in early March. The first attempt at making a CD seems to have worked
flawlessly; I'm halfway through the playback of it now.
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ashke
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response 22 of 119:
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May 28 08:09 UTC 2001 |
<does that "about-frickin-time" dance for Ken>
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krj
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response 23 of 119:
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May 28 17:42 UTC 2001 |
And, my third attempt to make a disc produced a coaster. :P How often
should I expect this process to fail?
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krj
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response 24 of 119:
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May 28 19:26 UTC 2001 |
(and my fourth attempt... "Track Writer Error, Wait Failed." This one
came close to the end of the disc; the previous failure happened on the
first or second track.)
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ashke
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response 25 of 119:
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May 28 19:28 UTC 2001 |
it depends, how fast are you writing, and buy cds in BULK
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scott
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response 26 of 119:
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May 28 20:02 UTC 2001 |
Try a slower write speed to start with, and avoid multi-tasking while burning.
Once you get things working correctly it should be pretty much error free.
I doubt you'll get a reliable full write speed using USB, though. And what
version of Windows?
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krj
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response 27 of 119:
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May 28 22:09 UTC 2001 |
Sigh. Disc #2, although the program claimed to have written it successfully,
also failed. So the score is: one good disc, followed by three failures.
The sucessful disc was built on the assumption that the disc would only
be 74 minutes long, although I have 80 minute media. I thought I had
successfully converted Easy CD Creator to figure time on 80 minutes,
but I guess that should be an area to look at. Everything so far has
been written at 4x; I'll try dropping back to 2x. The media have all been
700mb/80min TDK discs; I have some Imation discs I suppose I could try.
We're currently running the cd writer on a Windows ME (Millenium Edition)
machine, though we'll be dropping back to a Windows 98 machine eventually.
(The Windows ME machine is Leslie's travelling machine so it will be
spending the summer in Europe.) One problem seems to be getting the
screen savers to drop out -- there seem to be multiple levels of them.
I'm trying not to multitask anything while writing the CD, but getting all
the installed software to shut up is being a problem.
CompUSA has 100 650mb/74min discs for $30, without boxes. Unless there's a
cheap source for cases -- preferably the slimline ones -- this doesn't seem
to be much savings, since eventually I want them in cases.
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krj
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response 28 of 119:
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May 29 00:19 UTC 2001 |
Cutting the speed from 4x to 2x, and getting the power management screen
shutoff out of the way, has produced a second successful disc.
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scott
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response 29 of 119:
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May 29 01:29 UTC 2001 |
Check your BIOS for power saving stuff as well.
WinME? Ick. I highly recommend Linux for CD burning, although on a laptop
with a USB unit you'll probably have to wait a year for all the drivers to
be common. You might also look into other CD software; Easy CD Creator has
come under a lot of fire lately for general crappiness as well as a truly
nasty system-destroying bug in a piece of bundled software (probably you
didn't get it with the CD-burner pack edition, though).
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krj
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response 30 of 119:
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May 29 02:58 UTC 2001 |
I've heard about the Easy CD Creator system-killing bug; everything I've
read indicates that it's a Windows 2000 issue, so I'm not going to worry
about it.
I've got MusicMatch software in the bundle which came with the Iomega
CD writer, so I may eventually play with that.
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dbratman
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response 31 of 119:
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May 29 07:37 UTC 2001 |
The previous ten messages convince me, as if I didn't suspect it
already, that home CD-burning is emphatically not worth the trouble.
This prompts me to raise a vaguely related question, insofar as it
discusses disks the same size as a CD. Is it normal for a DVD player
to have trouble reading a perfectly OK DVD? I often have to put mine
in my player several times and let the machine grind away
unsuccessfully before it finally catches whatever it's trying to catch,
after which it plays fine. This happens with most of my DVDs.
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scott
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response 32 of 119:
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May 29 11:21 UTC 2001 |
Home CD burning is quite worth the trouble, although I'll admit it took some
time to figure out under Linux.
There's some little story on The Register this morning about how the Easy CD
Creator bug may indeed affect Win9x, although I didn't bother to read it. In
any case, it's not directly with the CD software but with some kind of system
recovery tool that installs from the same package if you leave the defaults
on.
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krj
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response 33 of 119:
|
May 29 18:00 UTC 2001 |
This is still with Easy CD Creator version 5, and (phew!) I'm
hopefully-safely back with version 4.02d.
David, this is fun!
There's just a learning curve involved.
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scott
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response 34 of 119:
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May 29 18:16 UTC 2001 |
(This week I'm finally going to drag my ass over to the home-movie to video
transfer place and get our old family movies done. They claim to be able to
do digital formats, in which case I should be able to just burn copies for
all the family members instead of doing crappy VCR-VCR copies. It's well
worth the effort of setting up a CD burner when you start getting into
applications like this. Then there's the 7 or so CDs worth of scanned family
slides I did...)
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krj
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response 35 of 119:
|
May 29 21:00 UTC 2001 |
News item: Gracenote, who have a database of CD titles and song tracks,
has filed a lawsuit against Roxio, the makers of Easy CD Creator.
Gracenote wanted money for all of the users of Easy CD Creator, after
building its database as an open-source style project. Gracenote is
claiming that Roxio's attempt to use a different CD database is a
copyright infringement. Probably should keep the copyright issue in
other items, but I thought I'd mention this item here since we were
discussing Easy CD Creator.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2764843,00.html
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mcnally
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response 36 of 119:
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May 29 23:39 UTC 2001 |
I've never heard of the Easy CD Creator "system killer" bug
(I seem to be growing increasingly out-of-touch..) but I've
been experiencing frequent burn problems ever since I switched
from my old machine to a newer machine into which I had installed
a faster CD-RW unit bundled with Easy CD Creator software.
My error rate has been so high with the new combination that I've
pretty much decided to remove the relatively expensive "new" burner
and switch back to my slower, but far more reliable, old one.
My suspicion is that Easy CD Creator is the problem -- it seems like
a terrible piece of software, but I'm not motivated enough to try and
debug the combination thoroughly..
I have found that with all three of the CD-R or CD-RW units I've owned
over the years that it makes a considerable difference what brand of
blanks I buy. Between Office Depot, Office Max, and Staples I can
generally find one of the office superstore chains that are selling
blanks at some preposterously low price after rebate. At the moment
I've got three or four 50-disc spindles of varying brands, none of which
cost me more than $20 after rebate, and two of which were "free" (excluding
sales tax and a stamp to mail in the rebate forms..)
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dbratman
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response 37 of 119:
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May 30 17:08 UTC 2001 |
It's not your learning curve I'm worried about so much, Ken, as the CD-
burner's learning curve.
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