New to CD Recording, having problems

Newbie Forum
#1

Hey just found the newbie forum :),

I finally got my first CDR drive (don’t ask why I waited so long, I don’t know), a LiteOn 48x24x48x EIDE. Anyways, I installed the drive (secondary master, secondary slave is Creative 48X CDROM), booted up and installed the Nero 5.5.9.2 software the came with it.

I just burned a music cd from .mp3 format using a .cue sheet, at 40X since that is the media I have, and playing the music cd, about 5 tracks in it just locks up Windows Media Player and hissing/static comes through the speakers.

It took around 5 minutes to burn at 40X, and I noticed in Nero the “Read Buffer In Use” kept dropping from 100% to 0% and then the write process would seem to pause for a few seconds before starting again (at this point the read buffer went back up to 100%).

Anyone know what I am doing wrong? Do I need to install that 4.72 ASPI Layer from Adaptec.com? I think I just have whatever default ASPI setup came with XP (I don’t recall installing one before, although I may have a while ago).

My machine is an Athlon 1200, 512meg ram, Windows XP Professional and the hard drive being written from is a Maxtor 40gig ATA133 7200rpm EIDE (running in ATA100 mode on a Promise controller, the LiteOn CDRW is on the mainboard’s secondary ATA66 EIDE channel).

Thanks for any help guys

#2

nero has to decode mp3 to wav while burning.

i’d recommend burning at much much lower speeds or converting the mp3’s to .wav before even burning.

#3

Burn at no higher than 16x as this way the CD-Burner will write in CLV (constant speed from start to finish) rather than Z-CLV (speed zone writing method used for writing above 16x). Also, from what I calculated, it takes roughly 50MHz per 1x MP3 decoding, so roughly 24x Max MP3 - CD Audio burning on your PC before the rebuffering starts occuring. I burn the occasional Audio CD each at 16x and haven’t experienced any playback problems. :wink:

If you still have playback problems, then try 8x or different CD-R Media, e.g. Memorex.

#4

Thanks for the tips guys. I did the following:

  1. Disconnected CD ROM drive so that CDRW drive is the only device on secondary (Master, Ultra DMA Mode 2)

  2. Used ForceASPI to kill my old ASPI Layer (4.60) and installed ASPI Layer 4.72 from Adaptec.com (install.bat XP32)

I tried burning audio from .cue/.mp3 and experienced the same problem in Nero (buffer emptying), I watched the CPU/Memory activity in Task Manager while this was happening and noticed that CPU shoots up to 80-100% right after the buffer empties, RAM usage stays constant at 175/512 (physical), CPU is around 3% during the rest of the process.

After doing this I extracted a .mp3 mix (58 minutes long) into a .wav file. I used FireBurner 2.1.7 to burn this .wav at 48X (using 40X media, Fireburner gave an error when I tried to lower the burn speed to 40x), it burned quickly (no timer in Fireburner for some reason, seemed like around 2-3 minutes) and the buffer stayed at around 100%, dropping to 50% once and filling up after.

This cd plays fine and has no problems.

So it looks like Nero was the problem (version 5.5.9.2). I want to try burning .mp3/.cue in Fireburner but when I try to open the .cue it gives Error “Access violation at address F44D8957. Read of address F44D8957” - Does Fireburner support .cue/.mp3? The FAQ only talks about .cue/.bin.

I know my machine is capable of doing the .mp3/.cue burn on the fly because my friend has a slower machine (Athlon 900, 512meg) and can do what I am trying to do fine at 32X (in CDRWin, which I am going to have to buy I guess). BTW My firmware is VS06.

Anyone had a similar problem with Nero? I really need to be able to burn with .cue and don’t want to go through the hassle of decoding to .wav to use Fireburner every time.

I will try using 16X in a minute though in Nero.

#5

Alright seems CDRwin has solved the problem.

I have both the CDRW and CD ROM on the same channel again (if I ever do a drive to drive copy I’ll put them on different channels, but I don’t feel like putting in another IDE cable at this hour).

I am using CDRWin 3.9A from www.goldenhawk.com and burned a few full 74min .mp3/.cue in 2min20sec at 40X (40X media) no errors no buffer issues.

Yay for CDRWin. Boo on Nero.