Crackly CDRs

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when you make cdrs are they ever crackly? why is this? none have mine have ever been, but when i ran the last lot off i noticed a couple had crackles all over them, most of them were crackle-free, but not all. and it wasn't linked to the actual cd (i'd run off 2 copies of something, one would be fine, the other not). is this down to cheap cdrs? or something else? it had never happened until i bought the last bunch of cdrs

this may have affected some of the cds i sent out a couple of weeks ago, if so, let me know, i'll send another one, because those crackles are highly irritating...

― gareth, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I've noticed that when I play back CDr's on my discman, I get alot of gaps and that, but they aren't present when I play them back on the hi-fi.

― jel --, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

When I play CD's on my record player they crackle. And then they don't play on my CD player. Help me...

― Pete, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

CDRs seem to be more sensitive and playing them on a discman or CDRom drive is more likely to reveal minor flaws than a decent hifi but some seem to have minor crackles anyway. And not always with cheap brand CDRs even.

I've had a few majorly crap ones but they were mainly from one friend who used an old burner at work which was designed for data not audio.

― Winkelmann, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You could be burning at too high a speed for that particular combination of hardware and media; while I think it's more usual to get a buffer underflow in this situation (and the burn just crashes, leaving you with a shiny coaster), you can 'successfully' complete and wind up with a disc which is very noisy - often only over the first part of the disc (rotational speed highest).

I imagine there are many tiny gaps in the data and your playback device is resorting to huge amounts of interpolation to plough through it - hence the crackles.

The reflectivity of CD-Rs is much lower than regular pressed CDs, so devices with marginal laser power (battery-powered portables, older CD players) may struggle with them. Also, if skip-protection is turned on with a modern Discman, the playing speed is higher and the machine has to work even harder at error concealment - hence drop- outs.

DVD players also struggle with CD-Rs (unless they're fitted with an extra 780nm laser), but, funnily enough, usually *can* play CD-RWs.

― Michael Jones, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

yes it was on the first part of the disk on the couple it happened with, it had gone by the time beanie sigel turned up. i had it on 4x, perhaps i shall change it to 2x (although 90% of the discs have been crackled free).

― gareth, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Michael, any clues as to what colour/brand CD-RW's work on a DVD player? I have a 2nd generation Sony (a 525) that can't play CD-R's and it annoys me so much cos it's my main CD player. I've read about the CD-RW thing before but no luck yet.

― Graham, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You may be out of luck with that Sony. CD-RWs are not supposed to be as 'invisible' to 650nm light as CD-Rs, although they have lower reflectivity (hence older CD players not dealing with them at all), so DVD players can deal with them. You may have an unfortunate combination of lower laser power and single 650nm laser which means CD-Rs and CD-RWs are not readable. There are allegedly 1st-gen DVD machines around which handle CD-RW, so I'm not sure what Sony did wrong.

Maybe the higher-speed CD-RWs (over 4x), which *are* differently constructed, offer greater reflectivity? They depends on you having access to a CD-RW drive that works with the higher-speed media.

― Michael Jones, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

my friend has been playing around with his burner cuz he was having problems with discs. he seems convinced that lowering the speed solves most problems (as you guys have said). i am surprised that its still not working at 4x though. i've yet to have any problems with mine at 16x and although with the discs i have now i can't go faster, i never had problems at 24x either. dunno.

― Ron, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Aren't CDs recorded from the inner "groove" out, so the disk speed past the laser would be greater at the end of a disk, not the beginning?

BTW, I bought a bootleg at a swap meet after playing on their portable player, but when I got it home it would not play on any of my three portable CD players, nor on two computers. They act like it's a blank disk, and I don't see any difference in reflectivity on it. Could this be a CD-RW disk? I'll try it on my DVD player tonight.

― nickn, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Aren't CDs recorded from the inner "groove" out, so the disk speed past the laser would be greater at the end of a disk, not the beginning?

At the center of the disk one revolution contains less data (because it's physically shorter), so the disk has to spin at a faster RPM to maintain the data rate, so it will vibrate more. I think. (high-speed CD-R drives (>8x) step up the data rate as they go, so the disk ends up spinning at a fairly constant speed).

Michael: I only have a 4x burner (cos it's USB).

― Graham, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Aren't CDs recorded from the inner "groove" out, so the disk speed past the laser would be greater at the end of a disk, not the beginning?

Graham's right - audio CDs are typically read/written in Constant Linear Velocity mode, which means that the data-transfer rate is maintained throughout the disc = faster spin speed near the centre.

Some newer CD-burners use Z-CLV, which is a zonal version of the above - data rate is constant up to a point (say 16x), then is ramped up a few minutes into the disc (20x) and eventually undergoes another step-wise increase (24x). This suggests to me that super-fast burning where the pit-spiral is tightest and the spindle speed highest is to be avoided, probably due to stress/vibration issues as Graham says. Hence the problems Gareth has at the beginning of those CD-Rs.

High-speed CD-ROM drives use CAV (constant angular velocity) for reading - spindle speed remains constant = data throughput increases.

Now, will someone explain to me why the World Cup '98 DVD I picked up in Sainsbury's in Penge (for 50p!) isn't recognised by my DVD-ROM drive?

― Michael Jones, Wednesday, 31 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

seven months pass...

some of the more recent ones have been skippy again. has anyone had one off me that isnt playing properly?

― gareth (gareth), Monday, 3 March 2003 14:41 (twenty-three years ago)

is it to do with the brand or batch of CDR's you're using?

― Ed (dali), Monday, 3 March 2003 14:46 (twenty-three years ago)

Hey, if lowering the burning speed doesn't work for anyone, try looking to see whether your burner has normalization on by default. try turning that off. I think it's cause if you're burning mp3s and have it on the program has to re-encode every mp3 as it burns which is CPU intensive or something. That's just a guess, but turning normalization off worked for me.

― Dan I., Monday, 3 March 2003 17:55 (twenty-three years ago)

the second to the last song never ends...otherwise it's all good

― Mary (Mary), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 01:05 (twenty-three years ago)

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