Question for Liteon 52246 Owners

[skeezix]

About a year or so ago I burned a lot of CDs from MP3 files so I could play them in my non-MP3 player. Then I got side-tracked before I could play them. Now that I have more time, I'm listening to them and most seem to have the same problem:

About 50 to 60 minutes in, a repetitive click occurs, sometimes so loud (or long?) that it renders the CD useless. The click sounds more like a "chick-chick-chick" occurring a bit over 3 times a second.

These were burned on my 52246S, all at either 48 or 52X. No buffer underruns, no other apps running, modem turned off, disks defragmented, etc. System is a Dell 8200 (1.8GHz P4, 512MB RAM, with GBs and GBs of free, defragmented disk space). Media is either Verbatim or Imation, supposedly certified at 52X.

Has anybody else experienced this? Several people have told me 52X is stretching it for burning music CDs, and that may have caused the problem. Any thoughts on this??

[Justin42]

Yep, more than likely it's the burn. When you burn, the speed increases as you get to the outer edges, so 50-60 minutes in was when you were hitting full 48/52X speed.

Unfortunately, there may not be much you can do. The best thing to try would be to re-rip the disc and re-burn at 24X or slower. (I try to keep audio no faster than 16X to ensure a smooth burn-- most burners don't do speed 'jumps' and such at 16x)

You may also find they play better in other players that are better readers, but in general, slow is good.

[SkaarjMaster]

Also, (and this may have been said already either in this thread or others) if you rip some problem files from a CD and want to re-rip it you need to burn at 8X if possible for the best possibility of playback in any player. Some burners may not want to burn at 8X though; in this case, 16X should be fine.

[skeezix]

I hope nobody takes this as my being argumentative because it is not how I mean it. I've been involved in the computer peripheral industry (tape and disk) since the late 60s, and I guess I just can't get rid of this urge to understand what is taking place when problems show up...

I assume the following four items to be correct:

1) I believe (but I don't know for sure) that if I burn a CD "DAO", the computer feeds an uninterrupted data stream from the HD to the CD burner, sorta like a direct memory access.

2) The burning utility (MMJB+) buffer content indicator is always full except at the last part of the burn when most of the data (WAV in my case) has been burned. At that time, the buffer content decrease until all data has been written.

3) The CD speed is constant throughout the burn indicating the data stream is never interrupted, merely slowed down to compensate for the increasing linear velocity of the "track" at the outer part of the media.

4) The "chick-chick-chick" noise represents a loss of signal (i.e. a gap in the data) during play and each gap occurs once per revolution of the media.

Fact: The noise created by the gap starts off as a very short and almost inaudible "tick", but increases in strength and apparent duration until at the "end" of the media it completely shuts down the audio and sometimes causes track lock to be broken as the laser approaches the outer edge of the media.

To me it appears that the gaps are caused by dropouts in the data stream during recording but I'll be doggoned if I can figure out why. If this is a problem inherent in the Musicmatch software, I'd expect it would be widely known by this time. Or???

[SkaarjMaster]

That sounds right, but did you try reburning any of the CDs at the slower burn speed and then see how they played?

[Justin42]

Your points are mostly correct, except they don't take into account the buffer-underrun protection technologies in place in modern high speed drives. DAO does indeed burn the full disc "at once" but CAN stop and reposition the laser in the case of a buffer underrun.

Additionally, many faster burning speeds 'jump' as they go. So your disc burns at 16x for a while, has to stop burning and speed up, then starts burning at to 24x, then 32x, then 48x, etc. Some drives do this linearly and some don't. It's the different between CAV and CLV and I always forget which is which.

The clicks you are hearing are when the CD player cannot correct the errors on the disc for whatever reason (poor quality burn, etc) and that is the best it can do. Faster burns tend to be harder for CD readers to read (sloppier definition of the pits/lands in the burned area I guess) The clicks aren't loss of signal on burning, it's the reader having issues reading the data that is there. (I.e., it's not a recording of a 'click' noise, or blank space, it's the error correction unable to do its job)

So, 1 and 2 are pretty much right, but 3 and 4 aren't.

Try burning slower and it will most likely fix the problem. It's also very possible that if you try a different CD player (which for whatever reason is a better reader) it might play fine.

[MediumRare]

You might also try converting your MP3 files to WAV form prior to burning them. If you convert them on the fly, your system may be lagging behind the required transfer rate.

G

[Wesociety]

Where did the MP3 files come from?
The RIAA often loads purposefully damaged MP3 files onto File Sharing networks and Bit Torrent trackers in order to frustrate file sharers.

These files can have the clicking sound or other distortions that you're mentioning.

Another item to consider that could ultimately cause audio disturbances during a burn is maxed out system resources. If you're running some other CPU or memory intensive apps during a burn, it could jack up the data transfer or write process.

[skeezix]

SkaarjMaster, Justin 42, and RediumRare,

Thanks a lot for your replies, I really appreciate them.

A CD with clicks plays the same on a Phillips, a Sony, a high-end Alpine, and the drive that burned the CD - the same clicks are audible on all, although most noticeable on the Phillips (ca. 2000).

About my system resources - my Dell 2.0GHz P4 came with WinXP, a Liteon 24X burner, and 512MB RAM. Sort of minimal for WinXP, which I believe can take half that RAM easily.

On my DTP system at work, funny things would happen when Photoshop, CorelDraw, and my layout program (plus the mandatory Lotus Notes) were all open at the same time. Increasing the RAM to 1 GB fixed all that.

On my home system (same configuration) and looking back 4 years, it could very well be that my problem began after I replaced the 24X burner with a Liteon 52X. I know that for a time everything was going well, probably because of the 24X burn speed.

Also on my home system, I began having system slowdowns as I increased the load more and more. Last week I installed more RAM, bring the total to 1.5 GB. Perhaps this will help.

I do recall reburning one CD that was especially bad, and I used a different program to do the burn. IIRC, I was a little worried during the burn because it seemed to take quite a bit longer than I was used to, but the result was - no more clicks. This, using the Liteon 52X.

So, my plan is to grab one of the particularly nasty CDs and run 4 tests:

1. Reburn with no changes

2. Reburn using the alternate burning program if I can find it, that is

3. Reburn at 32X (24X if this burn is also bad)

4. Convert to WAV first, then burn at max speed.

BTW, the MP3s came from various groups within alt.binaries.sounds.mp3, and I've found no problems with the MP3 files.

I may just start burning the MP3 files to CD, as all my players have MP3 capabilities. Probably the easiest thing to do. Except I just gotta know what would fix the click problem.

Thanks again to you and the others who have helped me.

[Justin42]

I really think burn speed has more to do with this than anything. Burning the WAVs at full speed will more than likely result in the same issues. Especially with questionable media. Verbatim SHOULD be better than Imation (which in my experience is utter garbage) but still, it's a crapshoot the faster you go.

I never burn audio CDs faster than 16x and never have issues. You might be able to tweak it higher, but is the 30-60 seconds you save worth having to listen to the whole CD to test for problems and then reburn again slower?

I'd find the fastest speed you have no issues, and then go one notch slower, just to give you some quality headroom to compensate for variable quality in CDRs.

Good luck-- this really is an art and not a science, so exploring to find what works best for you is really the only way to figure it out!

[MediumRare]

Burning the WAVs at full speed will more than likely result in the same issues.

I'm not so sure about that- I've burned a fair number of discs at 48x with my LTR48246S (which is the same hardware) and haven't had any issues that weren't media-related. I use primarily Verbatim Inkjet printables (Super Azo, made in India these days). They're not as good as the older Metal Azo's were, but are still very reliable. Mind you, I generally do use lower speeds, though, but good media is very important!

G

[SkaarjMaster]

Where did the MP3 files come from?
The RIAA often loads purposefully damaged MP3 files onto File Sharing networks and Bit Torrent trackers in order to frustrate file sharers.
These files can have the clicking sound or other distortions that you're mentioning.

Thanks RIAA!
I usually listen carefully to anything right before I burn it just because of this.

[skeezix]

Follow-up to this thread:

After reading the replies I received, I spent quite a bit of time testing media, doing burns, using Kprobe2 and the Nero testware. Unfortunately, all preceding comments regarding burn speeds were found to be true i.e. 52X capabilities does not mean that a burn will be good at 52X.

I found that my "clicking" problems correspond to a multitude of C2 errors at and beyond the 50-minute position. The slower the read, the fewer the C2 errors, but they were "there" nonetheless.

I appreciate all the help those who responded to my questions gave me, and by following their advice I am once again able to burn music CDs that play back without problems.

The Skeezix