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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 119 responses total. |
ea
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response 68 of 119:
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Jun 29 13:47 UTC 2001 |
The rumors about Easy CD Creator 5 causing problems with Win2K systems?
They're all true. I made the mistake of installing it on my Win2K
system, and promptly discovered that it made the boot-up time go from 2
minutes to a somewhat frozen state (I later found out that if I had
waited longer (I waited 10 minutes) it would have eventually booted). I
found a website that said the way to fix this was to remove a certain
.sys file by booting from the Windows cd and using "repair console
mode". I removed the file, rebooted, and had to go to work. When I
came back, the computer was sitting at it's logon screen, so I thought
everything was working. Wrong. My cd drives (both the regular cd
drive, and the burner) did not work at all. I am still working to see
if I can fix the problem.
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krj
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response 69 of 119:
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Aug 13 22:04 UTC 2001 |
Well, here's an odd one. One of the CDs I made in a session yesterday
starts clicking and popping on the last two tracks, beginning maybe
40 minutes into the disc. The clicks just sort of fade in; at first
I thought they were the clicking of accordion keys.
Curiously, I also had a failure previously recording the same source
CD: the write process blew up with an error message reporting
"failure to read TOC." (Why did the *write* process fail to *read*
the TOC?) The second burn produced no error messages but I do have
these annoying clicks.
This was a 4x burn using the same TDK media I have been using
all along.
I suppose I'll try again at 1x tonight, maybe on a different brand of
CDR blank.
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krj
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response 70 of 119:
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Aug 14 03:49 UTC 2001 |
Boom! I took another run at the source disc described in resp:68.
Yesterday, try #1 failed while writing the TOC. Try #2 produced a
disc with clickity-pops in the last two tracks.
Tonight, on try #3, EZ CD Creator crashed while writing the TOC.
The CD writer stopped and started several times on the Imation blank
-- first one of those I've tried -- and then *splat*.
Cool, I haven't crashed EZ CD before.
I think I've got a early copy-protected CD from back in 1995. :)
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krj
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response 71 of 119:
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Aug 14 04:34 UTC 2001 |
Looks like the Imation discs are a problem all by themselves with
my Iomega USB writer. The drive just refused to recognize a second
Iomega blank, with a completely separate source disc; just kept spinning
and stopping, with the message "Please insert a blank disc" on the
screen. I took out the Imation blank and put in a TDK blank, and
we were off and burning.
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micklpkl
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response 72 of 119:
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Aug 15 05:43 UTC 2001 |
Wow ... I'm certainly glad that I don't have this much trouble making audio
CDs. Since you mentioned your problem in party, I began to wonder what is the
cause of these "clickity-pops" --- I have made a couple of these myself.
There's some good information in the CDR FAQ in a couple of places:
http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq03.html#S3-3 (How do I get rid of hisses and
clicks on audio CDs?) and http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq04.html#S4-47 (Audio
discs have crackling sounds on the last few tracks)
In particular, I found the entire concept of seek sector or "jitter" errors
very illuminating. I had always thought that "bits are bits" until I read a
little more about digital audio extraction. Even two consecutive extractions
of a track from CD can differ in the resulting .wav file, apparently.
http://www.treworgy.com/cdr/test.html#dae
My suggestions?
If you have access to a regular CD-ROM, use it to extract the audio from CD.
Listen to the resulting files before burning.
Use another, more full-featured program to extract the audio. Exact Audio Copy
looks good to try.
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scott
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response 73 of 119:
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Aug 15 12:33 UTC 2001 |
I've had very little problem with Imation media, myself.
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scott
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response 74 of 119:
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Aug 23 01:56 UTC 2001 |
Now linked to the restarted music conf. Oddly enough, pretty much all the
technology discussed is still relevant, even though it's almost a year later.
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krj
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response 75 of 119:
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Aug 23 02:13 UTC 2001 |
Now linked twice to the restarted music conference! :)
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scott
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response 76 of 119:
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Aug 23 02:17 UTC 2001 |
Oops.
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scott
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response 77 of 119:
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Aug 23 02:18 UTC 2001 |
OK, done. Sorry about that...
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mcnally
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response 78 of 119:
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Aug 24 08:35 UTC 2001 |
Is anyone particularly happy with Easy CD Creator? I'm rarely happy
with the CDs I've produced since I switched away from my older CD-RW
drive to a newer combo drive (CD-RW & DVD-ROM)
I can't decide whether the problems I've been having burning CDs
have been a result of (a) the CD-RW drive I'm using, (b) the Adaptec
software, or (c) Windows 2000. Actually, I suspect it's some sort of
complicated interaction, as the results don't improve a great deal when
I switch to another CD-RW drive and the performance using the Adaptec
software was similarly crappy under Windows 98 (using either the old
or the new drive..) At the same time, though, so many people are using
Easy CD Creator that I have a hard time believing it could be solely
responsible for all of the trouble I've been having.
I'm going to move one of the CD-RW drives to my old Pentium system,
which has Win95 installed, just to see whether the same drive's performance
is notably different under a different OS. I'd planned to give the old
computer away, but guess I'll be keeping it until I get the situation
completely worked out.
Does anyone want to offer advice on a foolproof software and hardware
combo, assuming there is such a thing? I'm getting so tired of burning
CDs with clicks and pops that I'm willing to more or less junk what I've
got now and start over. I'll throw a reasonable money at this problem
to make it go away if I can count on ending up with a system that flawlessly
duplicates audio CDs while my machine is running Windows 2000.
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scott
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response 79 of 119:
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Aug 24 12:12 UTC 2001 |
Win95? Didn't you buy USB drives, and if so do you have the Win95 with the
USB backport?
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mcnally
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response 80 of 119:
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Aug 26 23:29 UTC 2001 |
No, Ken's the one with a USB CD-RW drive. I won't even trust USB mice,
after having innumerable USB peripheral problems at work.
My first CD-R drive was SCSI, but SCSI's just too expensive for me these
days. My other drives have all been EIDE.
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rcurl
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response 81 of 119:
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Aug 27 01:14 UTC 2001 |
Why don't you use the old SCSI?
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scott
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response 82 of 119:
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Aug 27 02:26 UTC 2001 |
Oops, sorry about that, Mike.
I've had pretty solid success using Linux (Caldera 2.4 and now Red Hat 7.1)
and the most popular CD programs (X-CD-Roast, cdrecord, and cdrdao). The
latest X-CD-Roast is pretty good, although if I do anything more than once
it's easier to write a script for cdrecord.
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mcnally
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response 83 of 119:
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Aug 27 05:18 UTC 2001 |
re #81: the original SCSI Ricoh CD-R drive I have is a single-speed drive.
backing up a CD thus takes 40-70 minutes just to write the disc, during
which time overtaxing the computer can cause an underflow in the CD-R
drive's buffer, which is quite small compared to those found on current
models..
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rcurl
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response 84 of 119:
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Aug 27 15:56 UTC 2001 |
That answers my question, but I didn't know that a SCSI drive is more
expensive than a USB drive. (I have some interest in this as I have
been backing-up my computer on CR-R with Retrospect Express, which adjusts
its own write speed, and only doing a little direct archiving with Toast
on a USB CD-R, where I have to simulate the burn first to be sure I
wont get an overflow.)
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mcnally
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response 85 of 119:
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Aug 27 18:34 UTC 2001 |
SCSI peripherals are quite expensive these days, at least compared to
(more or less) equivalent products that use a different interface.
USB drives cost more than EIDE, it's true, but the price difference is
largely accounted for by the fact that the external USB devices need a
case (and power supply? I doubt they run off the power supplied by the
bus); otherwise the USB interface adds only $10-20 to the cost.
The least expensive SCSI drives I've found around here would cost at
least $250, which is double to triple the cost of a same-speed EIDE drive..
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rcurl
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response 86 of 119:
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Aug 27 18:45 UTC 2001 |
It's true you can't get external SCSI devices for Macs anymore - have
to opt for USB or firewire. Except I found a PCI board for my G4 that
supports both SCSI and Serial - apparently it is quite popular for
Apple users' legacy devices.
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tpryan
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response 87 of 119:
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Nov 2 18:35 UTC 2001 |
Well, since August I've been learning and using my new
PC and the CD burning software.
The Sony Vaio computer came with Prassi Primo 2.0, made
by Veritas Software as the CD burner. The CD burner is a
Pioneer that will burn up to 8x.
I installed EZ CD Creator, as that is what other people
have, and if I am to learn from them, It is something they know.
Found out that version 4 does not know about my CD burner (it's
to new), so I have version 5 installed.
The PC also came with Sonic Foundry Sound Forge XP 4.5 as
an editor (not the complete version, it only gives me 24 or so
free conversions to .mp3). A rather good editor. Shape fades
as one likes. Process selected or overal volume adjustments.
Fixes DC bias problems on demand. It's pitch control is in
musical terms, and I played with it some--I found a formula
to make it sound like a 33&1/3rd rpm is spinning at 45 rpm;
mostly by fiddling with things until the processed track came
out at the calculated percent. I found that it does read .mpg
(MPEG *video* files) and can leave me with a .wav file--that's
what I used to take the PC recorded 'A Tribute to Heroes'
concert and used it too make an audio CD for myself out of the
songs.
In putting together my (Halloween) Creepy Collection
(see recent item), I found the first compilation disc made up
of extracted CD cuts and line-in recorded tracks had some
clicks at track change time. Is there something in that a
.wav file should really be some multiple of 1/75th of a second?
if it is to be recorded to CD that has 75 frames (or sectors)
per second? I was wondering if that lack of a totally filled
frame might be giving me an end of track click, particularly if
the missing part is about 1/150th of a second? I got the click
when I recorded using Disk-At-Once using the Prassi software, but
did not when I used the Roxio software. Could it be filling in
the missing bits for me? Again using DAO, so that I may record
with CD-Text as the drives support that. (My new CD player for
the stereo system also shows the CD-Text, as does the Roxio
portable).
I also had fun with clicks and such during the song.
On one, I found the click in the .wav file. I don't know if
it came during the digital recording from the cassette tape, in
the original material. However, using the editor, I found out
I can put up with a two-thousands of a second hole more than
I can put up with a two-thousands of a second click.
I am having fun yet?
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other
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response 88 of 119:
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Nov 3 19:03 UTC 2001 |
I'm having defective prodcut trauma with a CDRW I just received from
Formac Electronic Inc. in Berkeley, CA. They want me to bear the cost of
shipping it back to them for replacement when it arrived in damaged
condition.
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tpryan
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response 89 of 119:
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Nov 8 16:53 UTC 2001 |
I discovered that the Sony 5 CD changer I got earlier this
year is capable of playing an audio disc burnt onto a CD-RW. Great!
Now I can make a test-listen CD before a final version.
The Roxio portable player also plays CD-RW discs.
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krj
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response 90 of 119:
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Nov 13 05:08 UTC 2001 |
Either the Iomega Predator USB drive, or the USB drivers on the laptop,
have started malfunctioning badly. For a while the CD writing process
would abort somewhere in writing the first track. I was blaming
this on the Imation CD blanks I had switched to, and so I picked
up some more TDK blanks, the ones I'd used with good success.
Tonight, problems have worsened to the point that one does not even
get around to putting a blank CD into the unit.
On my first try, the CD-R drive would not recognize that it had a disk
inserted, and after a reboot the computer does not recognize that
it has the USB drive attached. I suppose we'll de-install and
reinstall the software that came with the drive and see where
we get.
I've also now got a friend who bought one of these devices, so
if he gets his up and working, then we can swap drives to
on his machine to try to rule out hardware problems.
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flem
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response 91 of 119:
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Nov 16 19:08 UTC 2001 |
Hmm, this might be a good place to ask a question that's been on my back
burner for years.
My family has this (vinyl) record that is traditionally played at Christmas
time, when decorating the tree. We've had this record for something like 30
years, and it's getting pretty gruesome. I've tried to find a newer copy of
the music, but it seems to be a doomed effort. The record company that made
it no longer exists (well, actually, a record company by the same name does
exist, but seems to be a small seattle-based company specializing in
bleeding-edge hip-hop. Probably not the same people), and no one seems to
have any secondhand copies of the record kicking around. I did run across
one reference to it, on the playlist for a late-night radio show on a Berkeley
station in 2000, which might be worth tracking down if it turns out that our
copy is too trashy to use.
What I'd like to do, obviously, is get this music to a digital form.
Ideally, I would run it through some kind of cleanup process to extract as
much as possible of the original sound.
The question then becomes, how do I go about doing this? I have no real
knowledge of these matters. Are there professional services that could do
this sort of thing for a non-astronomical price?
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micklpkl
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response 92 of 119:
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Nov 16 19:24 UTC 2001 |
You might try the following websites who will convert LPs to CD:
http://www.lp2cd.com (which appears to have been hacked at the moment,
alas) http://www.vinyl2CD.com
As far as guidelines for doing this yourself (which I have never done, nor
have I experience with the above-listed companies) you might try the following
sites:
http://www.technocopia.com/read-20000206-cdfromlp.html
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~abcomp/lp-cdr.htm#record
I'm sure there are others with more direct experience in this.
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