cd burning issues

[Marcial]

hopefully someone can help me out here...

when I play the cd\'s i burn in my car or home stereo, they all have a tendency to crackle (very loud & annoying)... particularly when the band is playing very loud.  but, when I listen to the files from my computer, they sound great.  

could it be that I have a shitty cd burner?  any ideas?

[Spacey]

I experience the same thing at times. I know that I have an old CD Player in my car, I also have a decent home stereo. I began to believe that it was the program that I use for burning CD\'s if not the burner alone.
I can\'t really answer your question since I experience the same things from time to time.

[mvallo]

so let me get a better understanding

did you check the md5 before burnng from harddrive
are the cracklesand pops in the same spot on the cd
do the crackles and pops appear at low volumes or just high volumes

possible solutions
1. lower the volume
2. check your flac/md5s
3. use a different CDR brand

extreme solution
1. new burner
2. new cd player, speakers, amplifiers, etc.

[boombox]

Another possible reason is that you have burned the discs at too high a speed. Conventional wisdom from other traders I\'ve dealt with seems to suggest no faster than 4x. And yes, it can make a difference. I used to burn at 12 x, but only use 4x for audio now.

Also, don\'t do ANYTHING on your machine while you are burning audio CDs - even more than one or two BTs can mess things up as the software takes up memory.

Also the point about different brand can be important - try to use silver-backed discs, especially when playing discs in portable/car CD players. Or even change the software. Try a disc using a different burning software - BurnAtOnce is a nice, small, no frills audio/data program which rarely fouls up.

[Spacey]

I will look into all this advice to see if the solution is any of them. I rarely experience a problem but it does happen from time to time. Thanks again for the advice.

[Marcial]

so let me get a better understanding

did you check the md5 before burnng from harddrive
are the cracklesand pops in the same spot on the cd
do the crackles and pops appear at low volumes or just high volumes

possible solutions
1. lower the volume
2. check your flac/md5s
3. use a different CDR brand

extreme solution
1. new burner
2. new cd player, speakers, amplifiers, etc.

what would I check?

the crackle and pops are throughout the cd when the band is loud (it happens on heavy drum & bass notes and especially when the vocals are loud.)

it doesn\'t matter what volume you play it at.... you can hear the crackles all the time.

i will try to lower the burnspeed & see if that helps.

[ChrisF]

what would I check?

if the flac files sound good what happens when you play the audio cds burned from the flacs in the computer? are they distorted?

i wouldnt worry about fast burning speeds. buffer underrun protection usually takes care of any problems. I burn everything at maximum speed all the time. it sounds more like a bad cd player/cable/eq setting rather than a bad disc, but if it sounds distorted and sounds the same in all cd players then it must be some kind of a flac conversion problem.

[Marcial]

it sounds fine when I play it on the computer.... that\'s why I\'m assuming the problem is with the burner.

[ChrisF]

play the burned disc on the computer and compare to the flac files. that way you will know once and for all.

[mvallo]

it sounds fine when I play it on the computer.... that\'s why I\'m assuming the problem is with the burner.

Since we seem pretty confident that its not corupted files.

Play a cd in your car, when it crackels rewind the cd and play it back. Is the crackel in the same spot? or is it only random at loud section?

It could be your home/car cd player is having a hardtime reading the disks at or near at 0db. it could be caused by incompatable media or the lazer is not burning at the correct power levels, update the burners bios and cd burning software

how old is your burner?

[Marcial]

Chris... I understand now what you are asking... I will try to play the cd through the computer to see what happens... usually, I just play the wav files from my hard drive.

Matt, the cracking seems to be at the same point all the time... it\'s like when the levels are maxed out or something.... on a song like Ep 1 or Uncle Freddie (relatively soft & quiet), it sounds fine with little to no cracking... but on a song like Drunk Monk or LDZ it crackles all over the place.

My burner is probably about a year and a half old... it\'s the one that came w/ my computer... I think it\'s called "Sonic Record Now"

[boombox]

I don\'t know what software you use, but is there a "Normalize" button. Make sure it\'s not checked. Just a thought.