3. Help
Check and make sure you are burning as "Audio CD" format. Many older players cannot handle CDs burned in MP3 format regardless of type of disc they were burned to while newer car stereos should play CDs burned as MP3s. Additionally, many players cannot handle CD-RW discs. If you have one of those old players you must use CD-R discs.
If neither of the above is your problem, it may just be that the brand of CD-R disk you are using does not work well with your audio player. This happens sometimes and is quite normal. Try a different brand of type.
Another thing to try is to
burn at a slower speed. Try burning a disk at 1x (rather than 2x or 6x or whatever speed your burner drive supports). Very often audio CD's burned at slower speeds will work in audio players while disks burned at higher speeds won't. It's been said that the laser encoding is somehow "clearer" when burning at slower speeds and this helps audio players, which often have a problem with home-burned CD's, to cope with the disks.
If your CD won't play at all, this probably isn't your problem but another tip is to try and record all your audio CD's in "
disk at once" mode, meaning the whole disk is burned in one pass without turning off the laser. Audio players like disks burned like this better. If you burn the disk "track at a time" the laser is turned off between each track, and audio players often cannot find any track other than the first one on such disks. Although, if you just start them playing at the first track and leave them, they'll usually play all the way through fine.
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got feedback?by snapcase$ 
edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2013-03-22 08:25:33
There may be various causes and some may be difficult to get around (some video drivers conflict with audio output in some circumstances, as do some modem operations, and these problems may be hard to fix, other than by updating your device drivers). Here are a few suggestions...
Turn off stuff in Winamp that's unnecessary, such as the scrolling title display and the graphic frequency analyser (Right click on the corresponding part of the Winamp window to control these options).
Get rid of any programs in memory that you don't need. Use CTRL-ALT-DELT and then "End Task" anything that shouldn't be running. Don't kill Explorer or Systray, or anything you're currently actually using for that matter.
If you have more than one hard disk, make sure you're using the fastest one for Windows virtual memory. This can make a significant amount of difference. Windows will default to using the C: drive usually, but if you've installed a second hard drive later it will probably be faster, and using it for your virtual memory instead will give you better performance. Go to Control Panel/System and select the Performance tab, then press the Virtual Memory button, and do Manual Configuration.
Go to Winamp.com and download the Nullsoft Cross-Fading Plug-in (Experimental). I believe it can be found under both "Best Plug-ins" and "Output Plug-ins". Despite its name, cross-fading (bringing a new song up as the previous one dies away, rather than having a gap in between) is only one feature of this plug-in (and oddly enough, despite the name, the cross-fading feature is turned off by default). It seems to do a better job of managing output than the standard Nullsoft Wave Out plug-in, and it gives you more control. If you select it as your output plug-in under Preferences and then press the Configure button, it allows you to set the buffer size, the thread priority, the pre-buffering percentage and the block-size. Actually the default values seem to work well but if you still have skipping problems, tinkering with these parameters should help if you know what you're doing. Also, if you actually want the cross-fading feature, turn it on by checking the "No gaps on stop or next" box in the configuration window.
got feedback?
got feedback?by snapcase$ edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2002-12-21 10:48:08
There are numerous things you can try:
•Reboot your PC before burning a CD.
•Remove any unnecessary programs from memory (use CTRL-ALT-DELT to bring up the task list, and then use the "
End Task" button to kill everything except Explorer and Systray, including your virus protection software, since this can interfere with CD burning).
•Unplug your printer before restarting your PC to burn disks. Printer drivers that communicate with the printer can intervene with burning.
•Disable your screen saver before burning. A screen saver firing up can easily wreck a burn. Go to
Control Panel / Display and click on the Screen Saver tab to turn it off, if there is one as the default.
•Burn at a lower speed than normal.
Of course, all these precautions may not be necessary but I'd try them all if you're having persistent difficulties. If you get things working, you can discontinue them and see if the problem(s) return.
got feedback?
got feedback?by snapcase$ edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2002-12-03 15:09:00
The problem is almost certainly that while they are indeed valid WAV files, they are not valid files for CD audio. CD audio only supports a sampling rate of 44.1 Khz and a sample size of 16 bits, in stereo (two channels). If your WAV file does not correspond with these parameters (most commonly because the sampling rate is different, ex: 48 Khz), then a CD burning program will not accept it.
The process of converting MP3 to WAV simply undoes the MP3 compression. It does not change things such as the sampling rate. To make these WAV files you have produced suitable for burning to CD audio, you will need to perform an additional step: use a WAV editing program (such as
GoldWave) to "
resample" the WAV files. Convert them to
44.1 KHz, 16 bit, stereo, then, your software should accept them for burning to CD without a problem.
got feedback?
got feedback?by snapcase$ edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2002-12-03 15:09:20
If possible, when burning an audio CD, you should try to use the "
disk at once" option. If your CD burner software has it and your hardware supports it, "disk at once" causes the CD to be burned all in one continuous pass without ever stopping the laser, whereas otherwise the laser is turned off after each track and then started again for the next track. This starting and stopping of the laser causes slight discontinuities between the tracks, and while this generally should not stop an audio player playing the CD through, it often will stop an audio player from being able to find individual tracks on the CD when you try to use things like programmed play, random play, or even just to manually skip to a track other than the first track on the disk.
got feedback?
got feedback?by snapcase$ edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2002-12-03 15:08:26
It sounds as if you're having some problems with your digital audio extraction (DAE).
Exact Audio Copy is a good, free ripping program which seems to be, perhaps, the best at producing good, clean rips in difficult situations (tricky hardware, CD's in poor condition). It may be a little slow, but if you're getting poor results with other programs, you may wish to try it.
got feedback?
got feedback?by snapcase$ edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2002-12-03 15:08:09
