I'm getting a very annoying static or scratchy type noise when I burn cds. It doesn't seem to matter what brand of cdr I use. I running Windows ME with amd 1000 256 mg ram. I have a ricoh burner. To burn I have used nero 5.5, exact audio copy, dbpoweramp writer, you name it. The one that works the best seems to be dbpoweramp writer.

The weird thing is that so far the noise only manifests itself on wav files not mp3 or wma. Work that out! I'm wondering if anyone else has had a similar problem and if you can offer any possible solutions. It is not the media and I'm pretty sure it is not the burner. Thanks if you have any ideas.

Yours in readiness to revert to analogue tapes.

Via chipset bug + big files = data corruption ?

You have to test if the noise is recorded in the disc.
It's very easy. Rip the noisy tracks with your best drive. If the ripped WAVs have that noise, then it means that there has been data corruption.

If the noise is not there, then it's a playback issue: your players can't read the disc properly, because the writing quality (and/or reading quality) is not good enough. Try different media (you've done it) and/or different speeds.

What chipset do you have?

You must compare the burned wavs with the originals in EAC (tools/compare wavs), because the playback itself can be noisy.

thanks to both of you for the input - I'll check both those options out. I have heard a few other people complain about this problem. When I play the burned cdr and listen to it via headphones on my stereo system the first few tracks are near perfect. Then the scratchy sound creeps in and becomes intolerable towards the end of the cdr. Thanks again for your help - if I work out what it is I'll share it with you.

Do you mean that you can play it correctly in your CD-ROM or CD-RW drive?
If there's a drive that can play the disc well, then it's playback issue.
Your stereo system can't play CDR discs well (if you have tried a lot of different CDR brands).

Anyway, it doesn't make sense that you don't have problems when the source is MP3, so there's something more. Use your computer to play and to rip to WAV, like Pio said.

thanks minix. I'll certainly try what Pio suggested. The problem exists even when I play the tracks on my pc. I feel it's a software problem. Or, do you know if computers can pick up electrical interference from other sources when burning?

OK. Then the noise is burned in the disc.

Not a software problem probably (if you want to try the best audio burning software: Feurio), but a hardware/drivers problem.

What chipset do you have?

It's probably a Via chipset (KT266 or older) and your source drive (hard disk I guess) and target drive (Ricoh) are in different IDE controllers ("helped" by a Sound Blaster Live).

Via 686B southbridge has a bug which causes data corruption when large transfer are made between drives in separate IDE controllers.

Put your source and target drive in the same IDE controller and check what happens.

Disable DMA (only to see if this solves the problem)

Update BIOS.

Try Via Latency Patch:
http://www.georgebreese.com/net/soft...014_readme.htm

Don't do more than 1 of these things at the same time. Burn test discs between every change to know if something fixed the problem.

Edit:
What model of Ricoh do you have?
MP7040 and 7060 (and 7040 morphed to 7060 more) are known to produce low quality discs at "high speeds" (6x and even 4x), but even then, data shouldn't been changed (data corruption).

thanks again minix that's excellent information. I appreciate you taking the time to help. The ricoh I have is the MP7083A. I'll try all of your suggestions separately to see if it fixes the problem. You also guessed right about the via chipset. Sound card is aureal vortex. Cheers!

About the WAV/MP3 issue....the same type of CDDA information gets sent through the IDE bus no matter what the source files are, so my guess would be that the burning program has a problem handling WAV files (maybe due to their massiveness?); however, you have tried many different programs so this exhausts my suggestion. I'm not an expert at low-level filesystem stuff, but is it possible for the system itself to have problems feeding WAV files out quick enough? Well, no, it wouldn't be sending out WAVs at burn time, it would be sending out an image of the compilation (assuming you're not doing it "on the fly"). Therefore, there shouldn't be a difference between WAV and MP3. Anybody wanna try to use my 2 cents in solving the problem since I accomplished nothing? Hehe

~synERR

thanks synERR, I was thinking along the same lines as you in terms of maybe my pc or burner couldn't handle the wav files. However, I have no technical knowledge with which to support this claim. I guess the thing that annoys me is that although my burner is a couple of years old I really haven't used it all that much. And when you spend a lot of time burning (I always burn at slow speeds 2x or 4x) and then you end up with a coaster - well you might as well by two store copies of the cd in the first place, one for the home and one for the auto. Maybe the creative nomad zen nx is the way to go.

While I'm on a roll, and might have the attention of a few people who really know their onions, I'd like to change the subject slightly. Has anybody had any experience with audio recording via their pc? I'm thinking of setting up a modest home studio to record keyboards, voice maybe guitar. Given that I'm having difficulty burning a cd I'm wondering if stand alone set up sans pc is a better option than a whizz bang sound card, break out box and all the trimmings. If anyone has had any experience with this kind of thing and can spare the time to jot it down I'd love to hear it. Thanks again fo the input.

I do in fact have a little home studio, I have a mixer (4 mic/2 stereo line) plugged into my sound card's line in (Turtle Beach Santa Cruz). Some of the people I've seen trying to record with their computer don't know too much about what they're doing and to successfully practice the trade you need to take a lot of time out playing around with things, reading articles online (I frequently search Google when I need something) and of course, RTFM (read the manual) of the program you are using. It takes a lot of tweaking with volumes and such to get the leves set with no clipping. I strongly suggest you get at least a small mixer (mine was only $99) with an adequate level meter because I don't know what I would do without those indicator lights telling me how much I'm driving the sound card's inputs. After some careful testing, I came to the conclusion that my card starts to distort when put more than +6db into it (no matter where the volume sliders in the software mixer are set to) because that's all that the circuitry can handle. See, if I just had a keyboard plugged into the sound card, I would never know how loud the signal is (this is all before the A/D (analog to digital) converter mind you). Now I can watch the lights on the mixer to make sure I don't drive it harder than +6db.

Now comes the setup phase of the process (after the A/D converter). Digital level meters (such as in your recording program) always go up to 0db and only operate in the negative range. Thus, a signal of +4db going into the line in really gets saved as -2db (2 less than the top of the scale in both places). UNLESS--you have the software mixer's Recording Level set to something other than the middle (where it keeps things even). This is where heavy testing comes in. What I did was get out my test tones CD (came with my Behringer mixer), run a tone from a CD player into the mixer, adjusted the mixer's volume knob so I was sending +6db into the sound card, and then watched the software's "VU Meter". I then proceded to adjust the Recording Level control of the line in until that VU Meter reached 0. That should be about it, but remember some of these numbers i gave you only apply to my sound card.

Now we're ready to record. Just plug your microphone (I recommend the Shure SM-58 if you don't already have one) into the mixer, as well as any keyboards, guitars, etc. With guitars you have a few options.
1. Go from the guitar to any effects pedals (optional of course) to the mixer's mic input (a guitar's signal is about the level of a mic).
2. Go from the guitar to any effects pedals to the amp and then go from the amp's Line Out of Headphones Out directly to the mixer's line input (but be very careful how loud your signal is coming out of the amp).
3. Have it all set up with the amp and then just place a mic in front of the amp.
Number 1 gets you the least noise, number 2 lets you use any effects your amp might offer, and number 3 is if your amp (or its speaker) really has a distinct sound that you can only keep by doing it like this. Now get every channel's volume set right (so the mixer's volume meter regularly peaks around maybe 0db, and rarely gets close to +4 or +6 (this will keep clipping to a minimum while still driving it enough that no audio quality is lost). Now you can click "record" in your program and give it a try!

One major problem with recording to a computer is that you (in most cases) only have 2 channels to work with (the Left and Right of the line in). If all you're doing is guitar and vocals, this is fine, just pan the vocals to one side (on the mixer) and the guitar to the other side. This lets each thing be recorded independently so they can be mixed together later (you will need to be fluent with your recording software to do this). But if you have more than that, it's basicaly a guessing game at how loud certain things should be. When I ordered my computer (from Dell) I selected the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz because I'd heard good things about it, but it came with a surprise that I never would've expected. It had 2 line-ins that could be recorded totally independent of one another! Actually, the second input is what they call a "Versa-Jack" because, through the software, you can map it to do a few different things (secondary input being one of them). Then in my recording program (I like n-Track Studio) I just select both devices (regular input and "secondary" input) and I now have a total of 4 independent tracks to work with (L, R, L, R) so the volume levels of each of them can be adjusted after recording it, as well applying any effects to them (independently of course), as well as the L/R balance of each them in the final mixdown! This can also be acomplished by simply adding another sound card(s) to your system, although you could potentially run into sync problems. To find out more about all this, search around the internet, audio forums, etc. That's how I did it!

I hope this gives you a good head start on your home studio, but as I said, read up on it whenever you can. Knowledge is everything.

~synERR

Just a litte typo that might need to be corrected
Line Out *or* Headphones Out
Didn't want ya to get confused there lol.

Oh yeah, forgot about the stand-alone setup. I've never really used one of those but it seems like a better solution in that you have X many tracks to work with (4, 8, 16, etc) instead of just the 2 you get from your sound card. That's all I really know.

~synERR

Well I asked the right person for help didn't I? Thanks heaps minix - one page I'll definitely have to print. Yeah, I know it's up to me to do the hard yakka to learn from scratch but it's an enormous leg up to get some tips from people currently using the gear. Thanks again. I think I'll probably get the sound card installed with the pc rather than tackle it myself - mainly because I reckon if your spending good money on a sound card the vendor should take responsibility for making sure it works. I'll definitely get a mixer - I'd like it to be as hands on outside the pc as possible.

oops, sorry synERR, thanked the wrong person didn't I. Anyway cheers to all who helped.