Hello, Michael. Thanks for the reply!
On Fri, Jan 02, 2026 at 10:43:05 +0000, Michael wrote: > On Thursday, 1 January 2026 21:46:27 Greenwich Mean Time Alan Mackenzie wrote: > > Hello, Gentoo. > > Happy New Year! > > On my (no longer quite so) new PC, I've still not managed to get audio > > CDs to play properly. Originally I was using the program aqualung, but > > that gave a constant crackle on top of the music, making it unusable. > > (But it was fine on my old PC.) > > I've since moved to deadbeef (officially called DeaDBeeF), which though > > much better is still not right. What I get now on playing a CD is: > > (i) the first track of the CD gets ~6 seconds of crackle at the start; > > (ii) at each subsequent track (regardless of whether there are any actual > > gaps between the tracks) there is about 2 seconds of crackle at the > > beginning; > > (iii) if I pause the playback and restart it, there is no extra crackle; > > (iv) on moving the playback to a random part of the track, I get the ~6 > > seconds of crackle; > > (v) there are random moments of crackle in the middle of tracks, too, > > often ~6 seconds after an audible drive head movement. > > I've spend quite some time trying to modify deadbeef's source to > > eliminate the beginning of track crackle, so far without success. > > However, one thing I did try was to double the sampling speed from 44,100 > > samples/sec to 88,200 in deadbeef's settings menu. This doubled the > > speed of the music, putting it up an octave; useless for listening. > > However, doing this gave only ~3 seconds of crackle at the start of the > > CD. This strongly suggests that my problem is at the CD end of the > > chain, not the ALSA end. > > I've come to suspect that I have a fault in the DVD drive that I'm using > > for this. When I use it to record a DVD+RW disk with backup stuff, it > > usually takes quite some time before it recognises the first ?sector on > > the disk, after which it records the rest of the image correctly, without > > problems. The disk I used for this (one of two) is an Intenso DVD+RW, and has been rewritten ~70 times. Thus is is wearing out. When I tried on a fresher disk, it found the start of the disk somewhat more quickly. > > Does anybody know if there are any programs I could use to test my DVD > > drive? If so, please tell me about one. Such a program would be > > preferable to the alternative of hoiking the DVD drive out of my old PC > > and connecting it up to the new. (I'm no longer an enthusiast of > > dismantling PCs.) > > Any help here would be most welcome. > > Thanks! > >From what you're describing this seems to be a hardware issue. It is likely > there's some dust/fluff on the drive's pickup laser lens, or the lens is > reaching the end of its life - cheap ones don't last very long under > continuous use. I now also think this is a hardware thing. The drive is just over a year old (2024-08), and has been used only moderately, mainly for writing backup files onto DVD+RWs. As for cheap/expensive, these drives are commodity products now, priced around 25 Euros. I suppose that counts as cheap. > Depending on the design of the drive, access to the lens may be difficult > without dismantling the drive. With some CD/DVD drives, especially on > laptops, the whole head and lens assembly slides out when you eject the > drive, > allowing unimpeded access to the lens. Other drives keep the head within the > DVD case, necessitating taking the drive apart. It's a drive I would have to dismantle to get at the head. :-( > Compressed air and a cotton bud with isopropyl alcohol ought to deal with any > dust on the lens in short order. If you cannot access the lens and > disassembly is not a favoured option, see if you can direct compressed air > inside the drive after ejecting the disc carriage, to blow out any dust which > may be covering the lens. I think I am just going to buy a new drive. At ~25 Euros, it's just not worthwhile trying all these things on the current one. For example, I don't have any compressed air facilities (beyond a bicycle pump ;-). Also, the drive, although not perfect, is good enough to write my regular backups, so I'm loathe to risk dismantling it without having a backup. I don't want to take the DVD drive out my old PC, as it is still a working system. > There are inexpensive cleaning discs sold for CDs and DVDs, with small > brushes > on them. I've never used them and would hesitate to do so. Brushes running > over the lens at high speed could well scratch the lens surface, badly. In > addition, the DVD lens is closer to the disc than CDs. The wrong cleaning > disc could cause worse damage than what you are trying to fix. That's my feeling, too. Maybe I'll get this sorted out in the next week, or so. Thanks again. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
