Heartland

I've tried a bit of google but the problem is a bit specific, would appreciate any help:

-If I try and play certain CDs (my Sister's ones so far) I get a very crackly sound like a f*cked LP.
-If I try and rip the CD on Win med Player it does so extremely slow and still comes out crackly when you play it back. Took me about 2 minutes to get an 8 second recording of cracklings.

My set up: Lenovo G575 15.6" Laptop Dual-core with DVD±RW and AMD C-50 processor, Windows 7 with standard media player.

Get yourself a copy of EAC and use that to rip the discs - it may be time consuming but its the best thing for the job

Thanks, that looks easy enough and it's free. It's weird how there doesn't seem to be any trouble-shooting for my problem, does anyone have a diagnosis?

Have you tried different players, or is it only when you play them on the pooter?

Just to chime in with czuczu - I love EAC. Easy to use and no fancy bullsh!t.
Don't know why your laptop is causing problems though. I also have Win 7, and it's giving me a bit of pain honestly. I like it much better than xp, but it seems like once in a while, my Win 7 thinks "OMG! I'm a pirate copy! " (which it's not) and starts auto-deactivating certain functions like the DVD drive for example. And the Media Player won't open quite often
I've been wanting to flatten and reinstall everything, but I keep postponing it for weeks now, because it's such a pain in the ass...

-It's just the pootster.

-I've only had my Windows 7 laptop for 2 days and seems mostly ok but a bit touchy about things like the internet. Get the impression it's shutting off bits of itself to avoid breaking the Computer bible or something.

Sita's sounds like it has an attitude problem though!

Thoth_Hermes wrote:Thanks, that looks easy enough and it's free. It's weird how there doesn't seem to be any trouble-shooting for my problem, does anyone have a diagnosis?

Whenever I've had clicky discs its generally turned out to be surface errors on the disc itself - usually older discs or poor quality CDrs.

If it's just the pooter then you might have found the culprit.
But only "might"
As czuczu said, older discs can be subject to surface degradation, especially poorer quality ones & so the laser's prolly not able to read the things properly.
Try them in a proper player & see what happens.

Thanks, this is the most constructive help I've had in a long time, obviously this is the forum for sensible people.

I'll let you know how I get on with EAC etc tomorrow.

Thoth_Hermes wrote: Sita's sounds like it has an attitude problem though!

It's probably a teenage pooter!

Good luck

Thoth_Hermes wrote:obviously this is the forum for sensible people.

How very dare you!

Thoth_Hermes wrote:obviously this is the forum for sensible people.

YER BARRED!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbBcGVAWuEw

Petrol

weebleswobble wrote:Petrol

Are you talking about CDs you've burned rather than commercial ones? The burner might be faulty. Had that problem myself a while back - CDs all had diginoise (the crackly clicking noises) and data discs all had damaged files. Turned out my burner needed replaced. If you burn a lots, you'll probably need to replace every so often, especially if you burn at high speed or on the fly (so burn at lower speeds and don't copy direct from discs but copy to the HD first - slower but kinder to your burner and better results).

And it may not just be playback on the pooter. I find that diginoise isn't as audible on stereo systems so you might just not notice it anywhere else.

Or it could be some of the stuff other people have mentioned.

Yeah, I'd say you need to determine if it's the cd drive that's at fault, or the cd's themselves.
You could try ripping tracks from a new cd that you know is fine. If it rips with no faults then it's probably those other cd's that are faulty. If it rips with the same faults as those other cd's then it's more likely to be a problem with the cd drive.

I'd also recommend EAC as opposed to whatever else you're using to rip cd's. It takes longer than some progs - the prog I was using before EAC did a really quick & dirty rip, a whole cd in around 4 to 5 min - whereas EAC might take longer, not sure I've never timed it, say 30 min maybe, but it does the job properly.

I have a water-damaged Kim Wilde CD that's so old and corroded it has what looks like a hole in it where it's rusted, and the track with a hole in it took 2h40min to rip but plays perfectly!!!

If your cd drive is more than around 3 years old - and if you use it a lot - then it's likely to be the drive that's faulty.

Dan wrote: I have a water-damaged Kim Wilde CD that's so old and corroded it has what looks like a hole in it where it's rusted, and the track with a hole in it took 2h40min to rip but plays perfectly!!!

how did you have the patience to let it work for 2h40?? I get so impatient, after 15 minutes I always believe it's defunct anyway, and exit whatever programme it was

Ha, well it hadn't frozen, I could see it slowly progressing so thought I'd wait to see what it managed to extract. I was amazed it extracted perfectly, you should have seen the state of the cd!

Of course the real WTF in that situation is Kim Wilde

sorry, the title is misleading. These are commercial CDs that I am trying to rip. They neither play on windows media player or rip on windows media player. It's 3 cds that won't work - they are in well tidy shape too - and all the rest play and rip fine.

I tried that EAC but it freezes when it does it's initial checks of the drive/s.

I will get it working at some point over the weekend but I gave up last night.

Thanks again people.

Ah you said it was a new laptop. Have you succeeded in ripping *any* cd's with it? I remember my brother having problems getting EAC to work in his pc because something wasn't configured properly.

Yeah, try different computers - maybe there's something wrong with your CD/DVD drive or it's error correction is poor.

These are commercial CDs

Official or unofficial commercials?

Even if the surface looks healthy there might be some issues with the data layer - depending how bad it is, there might be no chance to restore the data properly, even with the best error correction. I wouldn't place a bet that most silver bootlegs has been produced with proper quality standarts

Could it be the speakers?

Having said that, if EAC can't even complete its check of the drive then there's probably either a problem with the drive itself or a software problem. But as you also have problems playing the CDs in WMP, I'd lean back towards a faulty drive....except that it's just three Sisters CDs. Remasters box set perhaps? Faulty pressing?

None of these would seem to account for all of your problems though (three specific CDs that won't play or rip on one system AND EAC can't configure the drive) so maybe it's a combination of problems.

Maybe the DVD needs a firmware upgrade?

This is a relatively common issue. Story is that the error correction in a "real" CD player will enable it to play CDs without any problem that pooter drives will choke on. Laptop drives are especially crap - tend to be fairly fragile and it doesn't take much to start them freaking out with anything. I've an old Phillips external drive (built like a tank) that I need to keep hanging around for most laptop use. Kinda defeats the purpose of a laptop I know, but what the hey.