Problem with burning CD-R's

I'm pretty new at burning discs on my computer. I recently attempted to make a compilation CD but many tracks had clicks right at the beginning. The software I used was Roxio Easy CD creator and I used Maxell Pro CD-R's.

Does anyond know why this would happen and what I could do to fix it?

Thanks.

 

copy the tracks to your hard drive first, burn them disc at once at the slowest speed.

 

Thanks, I'll try that.

 

In addition to copying the tracks to your HD before burning, you may want to turn off other memory-consuming applications when you burn a CD.

 

Other possible causes:
- Lotsa non-audio information in the header. Some apps can't distinguish between this and the audio, so it tries to read the file details as audio.

- If you're doing a non-stop mix, the tracks must begin and end on "frame boundaries" -- i.e. 1/75th of a second.

I thought EZCD Creator was very forgiving of these things (Nero isn't!), but I could be mistaken.

 

The problem is not during recording, but in the RIPPING stage.

SVL is correct. Some CD-ROMS are not very good at digital audio extraction, or DAE.

But I also disagree with Bradley's suggestion that you should use the slowest speed. Most blanks made today are optimized for faster burn speeds and have increased jitter and error rates at slower speeds, usually less than half of their rated speed. But, since most burner/computer configurations will not allow the maximun burn speeds, it is a good idea to burn music at half of the burner's real world burn speed. Some burners automatically set the optimum burn speed. I never reccommend using any burn-proof technology when making a music CD-R.

When copying or burning any CD, you should never do other tasks while it's burning. You should also turn off any anti-virus software and other unneeded background programs that hog CPU power and memory. Also, one should defragment the hard drive before any music work. This will prevent the heads from having to jump back and forth across the HD to access blocks.

John, if you are copying the tracks to the hard drive first, what are you using to rip your CD tracks into the computer with, the built-it CD rom, or the burner?

 

Thanks for all your suggestions. I haven't tried putting the music on the hard drive first yet.
I had made a couple of compilation CD's earlier and they sounded fine. It was only with this last batch of CD's that this occurred.
Anyway, I'll try your suggestions.

 

If you aren't putting the songs on the hard drive first, your are also not making fully compatable red-book CDs! I'll bet you'd also like to get rid of that two-second gap between the songs, huh?

Also, some CDs are indeed more difficult to rip, like many made by WEA (Rhino in particular). Some members will tell you to try EAC (Exact Audio Copy). Actually, I have had no problems ripping with Cool Edit Pro 2.1, Sound Forge 6.0, Nero 5.5, or CD Creator 5.

The key thing is to DEFRAGMENT YOUR DRIVE before ripping, downloading, or working with music files. It is a very good idea to keep your music on a seperate physical drive, or logical drive, if you have one. If you bought a recent PC, it probably doesn't have a second, logical drive. You would have to create one. BTW, by a "logical" drive, I mean a partittion.

 

Grant,

why is this?

 

I can't speak for Grant but I've found that "burn proof" is not "fool proof."

I had one bad burn with it (lost 2 seconds in the middle of a song). That's when I stopped using it.

mud-

 

After my EAC died, I started to use HP's recordnow.
Yuck!!! Will have to rebuild the machine as I believe I must have damaged drivers.
This could be it too. Jeff
Those clicks are sometimes an artifact of making mp3s. You aren't burning from these are you?

 

How come?

 

I'm sure Grant will chime in momentarily ... but I'll say that I've never had a problem with the burn-proof feature, though I also don't think I've ever triggered it during a burn.

 

It's not a bad feature, and it works, but the process produces errors because the laser must be turned off during the recording until the buffer can refill. Red-book standards require that a compliant CD be recorded in one long spiral with NO breaks. A high number of block-error rates can cause playback errors in some players. I'm not sure of the number, but once the allocated number is surpassed, the disc is no longer compliant.

 

I always burn my CDs at 2x. Any faster than that and I start to encounter errors and a drop in resolution. The information is not encoded as accurately at 4x, 8x, etc. and if you go to 1x, the laser sits too long on any given area and can cause digital blurring. The faster speeds really only work for verifiable data CDs and non-essential audio CDs.

 

The thing is that according to Sanyo block-errors are reduced using the process. Also, just because you employ it, doesn't mean you actually have used it when writing a disc. It only comes into to play if you've had a buffer underrun.

 

mud, explain this burn-proof to me please. I have EAC and it seems incorporated into it, unless there is a way not to use it that I'm not aware of. I've been using it for over a year with no problems that I'm aware of.

 

This is from whatis.com :
BURN-Proof (Buffer Under Run Error Proof) is a technology developed by Sanyo that allows compact disc (CD) recording to automatically stop in the event of an unplanned interruption and then to resume recording. BURN-Proof is a registered trademark of Sanyo.

When a CD is burned (recorded), the data must usually be written onto the CD without any interruption. If an interruption, such as the opening of a new application, does occur, a Buffer Under Run error occurs and the burn is unsuccessful. BURN-Proof technology located on firmware inside the CD-R or CD-RW drive monitors the recording process. If the drive detects a Buffer Under Run error, it suspends recording. When the problem is resolved, the CD-R or CD-RW drive restarts recording data from where it stopped.

BURN-Proof technology is used with CD drive speeds 12X and higher because Buffer Under Run errors occur more often with faster drives. Many CD recording application vendors provide BURN-Proof support with their software.
===============================
This is from ME :
In effect BURN-Proof makes an imperfect copy of a disc (i.e. has small gaps where writing stopped and started again that should not be audible because error correction will make any adjustments necessary when listening to the burned CD-R. I haven't used this (I don't have a CD-R writer that supports it), but I think I would be reluctant to enable it if I did.
More information at the official web site BURN-PROOF.COM or you can Google "Burn Proof" and read to your hearts content....

 

Please explain this, Grant. Although I'm leery of burning directly from CD to CD, I have done it occasionally with apparent success -- in this case copying an entire CD of my own. I don't have a burn-proof burner, and there were no gaps inserted between songs. Since the laser wasn't turned off, what's not to make it compliant? (Actually isn't that "orange book" for CD-R's anyway?)

And since I have your attention, what do you think of Cool Edit Pro's CD-ripping utility?

 

That may have been true of older blanks.

Again, today's blanks are optimized to be used at faster speeds. Those ratings on the package should be heeded!

Audiodrome, you may have an older burner, one at least two years old. Many newer burners today won't even burn at 2x! My wife's Plextor won't. In fact, her Plextor does it's optimal calibration at 4x, and the drive usually settles on 8x as a good balance between speed and blank optimization. My Yamaha F1, even though it is installed on my slow-ass computer, usually picks 8x with most blanks rated at 44x. It picks 4x for those Fuji music blanks. I have seen this behavior in many people's computers with various burners that are at most a couple of years old.

Now, if the burner is not rated very high, you will probably have some problems at anything much higher than 2x.

Now, if you burn a disc rated at, say, 32x, and use 1x, you indeed to risk higher errors because of the laser grazing on one spot too long. This causes dye splatter because the dye is set to burn properly at higher speeds.

If a person insists on burning CD-R at a low speed, better to look for blanks rated 12x or 16x. If you want to burn faster, use a more current speed rated blank. Don't push your burner to the point to where you will have to use that burn-proof feature when doing music.

 

This all correct.

 

Well, first, if you copy a whole CD, there's is no issue to worry about. But, if you do track by track, the laser must be turned off and on, and blank sectors will be recorded between the tracks, hence the two-second gap! This falls outside of the red-book standard, yes, red book standard. You would be ill-advised to make a master suitable for mastering this way. Many plants would either reject such a master, or make you sign a waiver, rendering them blameless if your product turns out bad, or won't play in all players. Some older players, and a few newer ones cannot negotiate CD-Rs made TAO.

The standard for TAO falls under the Orange book standard.

 

I have never had any problems using "CD Copy" in Nero. In fact, sometimes it's necessary (live or crossfaded CDs), unless you want to spend needless hours redoing all of the crossfades manually. When this does need to be done, Adaptec Jam works great because you can preview the crossfades before burning to make sure there are no glitches. Speaking of Macs and PCs, why do you suppose I have had an almost neglible failure rate ripping (0%) with Toast and encoding (.00001%) with Jam on my Mac, but more like a 5% failure rate on my PC using Nero. Is it because Toast/Jam is a better program than Nero or is it because Macs are better than PCs or are there too many variables to make those assumptions?

 

Correct, and an important point.

With regard to burning speeds, I've routinely burned Sony and Fuji blanks at 40x-48x with no ill effects that I can hear. Maybe I need to do more careful A/B comparisons, but like Grant I have read that higher speeds can actually yield better copies in terms of lowering jitter and BER.

 

I'm not so sure that discs rated at high recording speeds don't do well at 4X. Look at cdrinfo.com's study on jitter. They used media rated at 48X and still found 4X to be optimal in terms of jitter results (with a plextor).

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Specific.asp?ArticleHeadline=Jitter+Tests&index=0