I Hate my Burner!!!!!!

The BBQ Pit
1

My cd burner is shit.
If you saw in the “General Questions” Forum, you may remember a thread started by me, about Cd burning/playing problems.
Even though several people provided excellent help and suggestions…

My burner is still being a little bitch.

So, for a girl, on my school bus (Yes, I am in Highschool) Asks me if I can make her a mix. Sure thing, being as I informed her my cd burner was…“working”.
So, I get the songs.
So tonight I pop in a blank cd, knowing my cd burner would give me a little message saying, “CD Created succesfully!!” With a little smile and a wink, and maybe a Congratulations message. And If I was lucky a thank you for making me put up with its bullshit.

So, I burn at 4x. Slowest it can go. Seems simple enough, thinking waiting 20 damn minutes for the cd to create will be worthwhile.

Cd created succesfully!!

Oh boy! It worked! I run off and pop it in the cd player to check it out!
Hey!!!
It reads it! I’m almost home!

song 1, check…song 2, check, song 3…etc, …until… song 7…

00 0000000
is what I see.
Me: “?”
“That was odd. Maybe its the player,” I run off and put it in my cd player which can properly read burnt cds.
Same thing.
Why oh lord why would it stop burning at song 7. Did I tell it to do that? No. Did it say it was succesful? Yes. Fucking program lied to me. What kind of program/burner would continue to burn nothing? “Unreadable data is the way to go!!!”

Alright, one more go, (thinking I’d get lucky) This time I will use a better, slightly more expensive cd, with its own unique case. And hey! It says “Platinum” on it…baby I got the goods. Nothing can go wrong this time.

Right?
Wrong.
This time, burning it at 16x, it says “Cd created succefully!!”
“Hot dog…” I say in a slighty agitated tone.
I put it in the cd player. It reads it! It got through song 7! 8! 9! 10! All the way to 17! The last track! YEAH!!!
“What the?”
“Odd, I don’t recognize this song…”

“Oh! I get it! The burner decided to somehow make the song play 4x faster and record it like that! How lovely! I mean, I always wanted a cd burner that would take the last track and speed it up and give **2 minutes of pure silence in the end. **How superb!!!”

No wonder I couldn’t recognize the song. Sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks…

ARRRRGGGHH!!!

2

What burning software are you using, what brand of CD burner are you using (external or internal)? What OS are you using—Mac, PC, or what?

I have used an old external CD burner on both my Mac and PC, and it behaves differently on each system. And the software makes a difference too. Sony’s Windows software (damned if I can remember the name of the software right now, but it came bundled with the burner) was unreliable. EZ CD Creator was much better.

And, oh yeah. Fancy that! The Mac version of the Sony software (Discribe) sucked too! Toast is SO much better. And I found that if I started having problems, I’d just trash Toast’s preferences, and everything would be peachy keen again. At least for a while.

Now I’m using OS X, and so far Toast (Titanium, not like you asked) has worked perfectly. Knock on wood. And I got a faster Firewire drive, which (so far) is great. External CD drives are pretty cheap these days, actually.

However, I have found that CD burning can be an aggravating thing. I feel your pain.

3

I like my Liteon, except for the fact that I can’t make a backup of GTA3 on it, due to various copy protection schemes. The worst one IMHO involves the weak-sector collusion between the software and CD-burner industries, where your burner could burn the disk properly, but the firmware screws it up.

Speaking of which, you may want to add updating your burner firmware to the list of things ybabe mentioned.