Hello, Michael. On Sun, Jan 04, 2026 at 12:30:37 +0000, Michael wrote: > On Saturday, 3 January 2026 16:44:56 Greenwich Mean Time Alan Mackenzie > wrote:
[ .... ] > > Well, I've bought and installed a new drive (made by ASUS) and it hasn't > > helped in the slightest. :-( > > Maybe modern DVD drives just aren't capable of reading audio CDs > > properly. After moving the read head to some position on the CD, it's > > necessary to start reading the sectors accurately straight away. Maybe > > these newer drives positioning of the heads leaves them wobbling, or > > something, and rely on software error correction to reread erroneous > > sectors. On playing an audio CD, I don't think sectors get reread at > > all, just erroneous values get transmitted to the DAC. > > Or something like that. > > [ .... ] > > > Maybe I'll get this sorted out in the next week, or so. Thanks again. > > Or, maybe not. :-( > Unless I've misunderstood something, through a process of elimination you > have > concluded your audio CD crackling problem and DVD sector reading problem is > caused by the drive itself. Your old PC DVD drive exhibits no such problem, > but the new PC's DVD drive and the ASUS replacement you just bought both show > the same symptoms. > In your process of elimination, did you also replace the DVD drive cable on > the new PC? No, I didn't. That's one of the first things I should have tried. However, I've tried it now, and the new cable doesn't make the fault go away. > Is the audio CD crackling evident both on new (factory recorded) audio CDs > and > writeable CDs you burned yourself? If the latter, did you try more expensive > disc brands and different (slower & then higher) burn speeds to see if the > crackling goes away? I've only tried it on factory recorded CDs, so far. I think I've got a bootleg one somewhere which I could look out and try. > Another trick which may work is to increase the cache size on the media > player, e.g. 2x, 4x, 8x. It should give more time for the drive to perform > its error correction gymnastics and hopefully overcome any media error. I tried increasing the "preferred buffer size" in deadbeef from 8192 to 16384, without making any difference. Surely those figures are in kilobytes, not bytes. I also tried increasing the "period size" (whatever that is) from 1024 to 2048, independently of the buffer size. That made no difference either. > The crackling/reading problem at the start of CD/DVDs can happen because of > light scatter from the transparent edge to the initial data tracks. I recall > reading somewhere if you use a black marker pen at the back of the > transparent > region, you can fix this problem. The difference between old and new PC > drives could be related to cheap-ification in components, lower energy laser, > etc. I get the same ~6s crackle when moving the current position within a track or starting listening at other than the first track, so I think it unlikely that the transparent region is the problem. > If the new drive doesn't address your problem, hopefully you should be able > to > return it. Not really, unless I can show that there was a fault in my PC when new (from the same shop as the new drive). Given that xine functions properly, this seems unlikely. But it's not enough money to matter. There's no harm having a spare DVD drive hanging around, either. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
