I have made some compilation CDs using a Philips CDR 796 standalone audio CD recorder. This is a deck with two drives that looks like a hi-fi unit and will only record on "digital audio" or "music" blank CDRs. (The 796 may be a later, or European, version of the Philips CDR 765 sold in the US).

Basically the machine can copy tracks, or whole CDs, directly from the original CD to a blank CDR, without converting to other formats in between.

Most of my copies/compilations work fine. But on one or two, some tracks sound peculiar. It isn't the first few, or last few, tracks: on one compilation, I recorded 19 tracks, and tracks 3, 13 and 19 are problematic.

The problem is hard to describe. As well as the music, there is a distorted tapping/vibrating - almost a stuttering noise. I don't think it is "clipping" of the loud peaks: the level is set automatically and doesn't reach the red zone, and the stuttering is constant tempo throughout the track, whether the music is loud or soft, vocal or instrumental. Yet adjacent tracks, copied off the same original CD, play flawlessly. I haven't got anything which will show the waveform - and I wouldn't know how to read such a display anyway.

The noise/distortion is the same whatever drive (PC, regular hifi deck, car CD player) I play the disks in.

Has anyone got any ideas what the problem might be, how it occurs, and how I can prevent it?

br1anstorm

What blank CD media are you using?
There is a wide range of quality in blank CDs on the market - you could try using a different brand such as Verbatim etc.

I have used various makes of blank CDR. The particular disk on which I've noticed this problem is a 'TDK CD-RXG Audio' 80 mins. A couple of other recordings I made the same evening on blank TDK CDRs of the same spec and batch (I got a pack of 10) seem fine. I've also used 'JVC CD-R for Audio 80', and they are fine too.

Surely if the problem is compatibility, or some characteristic of the disk, then the peculiar noise would show up consistently on all tracks - or perhaps just at the beginning or the end? The strange thing is that the 19 tracks on this CDR were copied off two original CDs, and only one track off the first, and two off the second, are affected. The other tracks - off the same original CDs - are fine!

I'm baffled!

br1anstorm

O that's really a strange problem.