What's wrong with my CD-RW? 2 problems

[greenlion]

Problem 1
I recently installed a Cendyne (says Verbatim on the drive door) Lightning 32x12x40 CDRW drive in my computer. It will burn discs, but it won't read them. WHen I put a music cd in, the sound kind of "jumps" or skips, and it makes some horrible echoing sound in whatever software player I'm using at the time. It usually crashes the program and I have to close it using the Ctrl-Alt-Del method. I set it up exactly according to the manual, and installed the appropriate drivers from the included CD-Rom. I don't know how to fix this. I'll post my system info later.

Problem 2
Whenever I burn a cd in said CD-RW drive, the cd never burns on the speed I set it to. My DVD drive won't read cd's faster than 16x, so I set the CDRW to record at 16 or 12x, but when I hit copy, the actual speed varies and always hovers between 5 and 7x. This does this when I'm copying a disc or burning a disc from files on the HD. How can I get it to burn at it's potential speed?

My System
Dell P-4 @ 2.4 Ghz
384 Mb RAM
Sound Blaster Live sound card
Lite-On DVD-Rom drive

DVD drive is set as master, CDRW is set as slave.
I don't know what else I can tell you right now, but I can answer any questions if anyone has any.

Thanks!

 

[Hawkeye1068]

Can we assume you have finalized the cd, so the drive closes the cd for any additional use? I had this problem with mine where the cd was no readable until I "finalized" the burn. Hope that helps. On the other, you might make sure you have a sound connection for the drives, try disconnecting the dvd and see if you can make this drive the master. Just some thoughts.

 

[greenlion]

Yes, I've finalized the CD. It also doesn't work with regular music cd's, or software CD's. I haven't tried switching the CDRW to master yet. I may try that in the morning.

 

[JohnWill]

If you're using digital audio from the CD, make sure audio cable is in place and uncheck the digital audio selection. I've seen this be a problem on several systems. You might also change the DMA setting for the drive to see if this changes anything.

On the burning issue, while 16x is the "maximum" speed, that's not reality, and what you're seeing is normal.

 

[greenlion]

Originally posted by johnwill:
If you're using digital audio from the CD, make sure audio cable is in place and uncheck the digital audio selection. I've seen this be a problem on several systems. You might also change the DMA setting for the drive to see if this changes anything.

On the burning issue, while 16x is the "maximum" speed, that's not reality, and what you're seeing is normal.

Where is the Digital Audio Selection?

Thanks.

 

[slipe]

There is no relation between the speed of your reader and the speed you can record at. The recorder makes the same dots and lands with the same spacing regardless of the speed you record at. The reader has no idea what speed the disc was burned at.

A modern 32X burner should burn to appropriate media successfully at 32X. Your DVD has one of the best digital audio extraction speeds available, so you should be able to both copy and record from the HD at 32X. If you finally sort this out to where you can record from the HD at 32X but not copy on the fly at that speed, you might have a bus problem. To fix that you would move the DVD to slave on the primary and leave the burner by itself as master on the secondary. Don’t mess with that until you sort out why you can’t burn from the HD at 32X.

The Lite-On 16X DVD works as a CD-ROM at 48X.

Most burners analyze the CDs to determine what speed they can be recorded at. You can usually turn off the feature but you take a chance of getting a bad recording. 5 – 7X is an odd speed for it to choose though. Most burners will revert to one of the standard speed settings like 4, 8, 16, 32 etc. Does it actually say it is burning at 5X or are you deducing that by the time it takes?

Try some different blank media. Confirm you aren’t recording to RW.

Did you add a second audio cable for the burner? What was the designation of the pins on the sound card you plugged it into?

 

[greenlion]

Originally posted by slipe:

A modern 32X burner should burn to appropriate media successfully at 32X. Your DVD has one of the best digital audio extraction speeds available, so you should be able to both copy and record from the HD at 32X. If you finally sort this out to where you can record from the HD at 32X but not copy on the fly at that speed, you might have a bus problem. To fix that you would move the DVD to slave on the primary and leave the burner by itself as master on the secondary. Don’t mess with that until you sort out why you can’t burn from the HD at 32X.

.....Does it actually say it is burning at 5X or are you deducing that by the time it takes?


Did you add a second audio cable for the burner? What was the designation of the pins on the sound card you plugged it into?

Thanks for the reply.

The drive doesn't burn at 32x even from the HD. It stays around 5-7x.

In Roxio, it shows the user selected speed and the "actual speed". That actual speed value fluctuates on the fly, but it hovers around 5-7x

I added the only cable that came with the drive, an audio cable from the drive, to the "audio in" port of the sound card. I made sure to place the cable on the same way on both ends. (red to red)

P.S. I have tried two types of CD-Rs in this drive, both displayed the same results.

 

[Mavrick88]

Another thing you MIGHT want to try is to see if the store you bought it from will let you swap it out for a new one. I work in a Computer retail store and have seen drives that have been deffective right out of the box. Infact I had one and swapped it out and eveything worked great after that. You just never know!

 

[slipe]

I agree with Mavrick88. Take it back. If it will only record to high speed CDR media at 5 – 7X when recording from the hard drive something is wrong.

Neither Cendyne nor Verbatim make their own burners. The 32X Verbatim is a rebadged Lite-On. If you can pick up a Lite-On for a similar price it is a better deal. Lite-On has been terrific with firmware updates and the rebadgers release hardly any. I think there is a free firmware update for the Lite-On 32X that takes it up to 40X. Firmware updates often fix the kind of problems you are having if it isn’t just a broken burner. And Lite-On burners are cheap – you can get the new 52X online delivered for $60.

 

[JohnWill]

I see a lot of misinformation being spread here, let's clear the air.

On the digital audio issue, it depends on the O/S you're running, which I didn't see specified. For Windows 2000 or XP, it's in Device Manager under the properties of the CD drive. I'm not sure where the digital audio setting is in W98, but I'm pretty sure it's there someplace.

The DMA setting for W2K/XP is in Device Manager under the IDE channel and slot that the CD drive is connected to. The DMA setting for W98 is in the CD drive properties in Device Manager. If you aren't running DMA to the drive, you'll never hit the maximum transfer speeds quoted, however there are systems that have issues when DMA is enabled.

On the recording issue, I have to stick with my opinion that when you're doing an on-the-fly copy between CD drives, you won't get the maximum speeds. I see several folks have jumped to doing the recordings from the hard disk, but that's not the problem you described. Also, if your CD-RW drive is a 32x recorder for CD-R media, that's only on the outer tracks, it will slow to less than half of that in the inner tracks. BTW, the recording starts at the inside near the hub, so it's slowest when you are starting a recording session. The bottom line is, if you have a 32x CD-RW drive, and you select a 32x recording speed, it won't actually record the whole CD at anything close to a 32x speed, and it'll probably start at around 12x under ideal conditions.

Finally, that 16x reading is also at the outer tracks, so it'll be a lot slower when you start, since it's also starting at the inside tracks.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with your setup...

 

[greenlion]

johnwill - Sorry, I forgot to mention that I'm running WinXP Home.

I did unselect the digital audio tab and it fixed the problem when using WinAmp and MusicMatch Jukebox to play CD's, but not Windows Media Player.

I'm running Windows Media Player 8.0. I've gone through Windows audio troubleshooting, and it showed that I don't have any hardware conflicts.

So, how can I fix the problem with WMP 8.0 (my media player of choice), and get my burner to record a cd faster? Or is that a seperate thread?

 

[slipe]

If you can record to high speed CDR discs at only 5 – 7X there is something wrong. Here is the one test of the Lite-On that is the same as your burner: http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Art...ticleHeadline=32x+CD-RW+Roundup+Vol1&Series=0 You will notice they have no problem getting it to record at 32X. Several other reports gave the same results. They don’t use specialized computers.

The first suspect would be your blank CDs. What speed are they rated at? The second would be your setup of the software, but if you select 16X it should record at that speed in any situation I can think of. Confirm you are NOT formatting the CDs.

You should be able to copy a CD directly on the fly from your Lite-On DVD to the burner at 32X. This is the digital audio extraction of your DVD compared to the speed of your burner. The data extraction speed is faster than the DAE. I am assuming you have a LTD 163 which is common. The LTD 165 is faster.

<img src="http://forums.techguy.org/attachment.php?postid=685186">

I have read numerous posts from people on the burner boards recording on the fly from the Lite-On DVD at 40X without engaging burn-proof.

If you can’t get it to record at faster than 7X on 32X or higher rated CDRs then you should return it. Make sure your software is up to date first. It wouldn’t be the first time a burner came with software that wasn’t updated for it – especially with rebadged burners like yours: http://www.roxio.com/en/support/roxio_support/ecdc/ecdc_software_updatesv5.jhtml

 

[JohnWill]

Originally posted by slipe:
If you can record to high speed CDR discs at only 5 – 7X there is something wrong. Here is the one test of the Lite-On that is the same as your burner: http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Art...ticleHeadline=32x+CD-RW+Roundup+Vol1&Series=0 You will notice they have no problem getting it to record at 32X. Several other reports gave the same results. They don’t use specialized computers.

I have to point out that you're showing the results of a 52x drive, not a 32x drive. Also, note that the average speed is considerably less, since it starts out much slower.

 

[JohnWill]

Originally posted by greenlion:
johnwill - Sorry, I forgot to mention that I'm running WinXP Home.

I did unselect the digital audio tab and it fixed the problem when using WinAmp and MusicMatch Jukebox to play CD's, but not Windows Media Player.

That's what I would have expected, I've seen several systems where digital audio was a problem. Did you check on the DMA setting while you were looking at configurations?

So, how can I fix the problem with WMP 8.0 (my media player of choice), and get my burner to record a cd faster? Or is that a seperate thread?

I'm not sure how to fix WMP 8.0, I don't use it, I prefer Winamp for my music needs. Other than changing the DMA settings, I don't know what else to suggest.

 

[slipe]

”I have to point out that you're showing the results of a 52x drive, not a 32x drive.”

The only results I posted were for greenlion’s 32X burner and for his 16X Lite-On DVD player. The link is to the write up for the 32X Lite-On burner. I think his Verbatim is a Lite-On because someone on another board had a 32X Verbatim and the identification on the back started with “LTR”, which is a Lite-On burner identification. The 48X Verbatim is made by A-Open, so the Lite-On identification is not 100%.

I probably did not explain myself well.

The graph for the LTD163 (probably his DVD player) is his digital audio extraction (DAE) speed for reading an audio CD. I didn’t bother including the data graph as it is higher (as with most readers) at 39X average. There is also a LTD165 out which is a tad faster, but the 163 is the most common.

The graph under the reader capability is the speeds his burner can generate recording at his maximum of 32X. Comparing the two graphs it is easy to see that there is no point during an on-the-fly recording that his reader can’t keep up with the burner set for 32X. I know that the LTD163 will support a 40X burn speed as well from numerous people on the burner boards that use it. So there should be no problem recording at 32X directly from his DVD player.

Even if you consider the possibility of a bus restriction with both devices on the same IDE channel, there is no reason he should not be able to record at 32X from the hard drive. There are at least a half dozen good reviews of the Lite-On LTR-32123S and nobody had any problems getting it to burn at 32X. There are also numerous people who bought the burner who record just fine at 32X.

There are three reasons I can think of that might cause the problem:

The setup is wrong in the software. Since he has tried both copy and data write with the speed set I don’t think that is possible. If you choose copy from the opening wizard there aren’t many choices: source and destination, whether you want to record via the hard drive and speed. It is simple and not easy to set the speed wrong. Even if you choose data from the opening wizard it is hard to miss the speed setting even with all of the options available. In any case there would not be a setting corresponding to 5 – 7X. If he were formatting the CDRs there is no speed setting for packet writing. I don’t think there is a setting problem.

Bad media. The Lite-On scans the media. If it determines it is good or can’t figure out whether it is good it just records at the set speed with no variation. But if it scans the media and determines it is bad it records at a variable speed based on how fast it determines the media can accept the recording. Since he is getting a variable recording speed the burner is obviously in this mode. It is unlikely that two brands of media would give the same crappy 5 – 7X recording speed unless they were both old leftover slow speed CDs that someone gave him. If he recently bought the blank CDRs it is unlikely that two different brands would be the same.

Burner problems. The burner could be OK but have software or hardware incompatibility problems. Firmware updates usually fix this sort of thing. Rebadgers like Cendyne and Verbatim are poor with firmware updates. Liteon probably has a dozen firmware updates for that burner out by now to address various incompatibility problems. I have read that one of the firmware updates raises that burner to 40X recording. Rebadged burners will not usually take firmware updates from the original manufacturer. The 8X SCSI and 12X IDE Plextors were sold cheap by Iomega. Everyone flashed them with Plextor firmware to make them show up in the computer as a Plextor and have full Plextor capabilities. The manufacturers learned to put an identification module in the burners to keep people from doing that. Cendyne has a firmware update for that burner – nothing on the Verbatim site. http://www.cendyne.com/download_list.asp?Download_category=Firmware I would update the firmware and update EZCD from the previous link. If it still doesn’t record properly I would take it back.

There is a little utility available to get Liteon rebadged burners to accept Liteon firmware: http://www.mand.tmfweb.nl/flashfix.htm You might try that before you take it back, but make sure there is a “LTR” somewhere on the back. Sometimes rebadgers use different manufacturers for the same burner.