48x Cd-Rom unable to keep up with 8x Burner??

[codeyf]

This doesn't make much sense to me. It sucks cuz if I want to copy a cd, it has to cache it to the hard drive first, which makes the whole process twice as long. It's a samsung 48x drive, and my burner is a 8x panasonic SCSI. it'll burn at 4x fine without caching the data, but i want 8X!!!!! What could it be?

 

[sun818]

It could be a few things. Obviously, the data rate is not high enough. What kind of Samsung 48x drive do you have? Is it IDE or SCSI? And what kind of SCSI card do you have?

My SCSI card is a cheap Adaptec ISA 1540CF SCSI. My HP 8x SCSI would CD-COPY at 4x, but would crap out at 8x. Once I used a modern scsi card, the problem went away.

 

[codeyf]

it's a tekram scsi card, don't think there's anything special about it, probably pretty basic. the cd-rom is IDE.

 

[sun818]

Tekram SCSI should be okay. My brother uses that brand to burn at 12x. The bottleneck could be your IDE CD-ROM transferring data to the SCSI burner. If you do not already, try putting the CD-ROM on its own IDE bus.

Thanks,
sun818

 

[codeyf]

it's the only ide device in my system. the hd is ata100, and of course the floppy is on it's own. i have it set at cable select right now, whould I stick as master?

 

[sun818]

Yeah, that should be fine. What I was attempting to communicate there was that the entire computer, from the motherboard bus to the recorder itself, needs to be configured properly for faster recording and highest maximum sync transfer rate.

There could be a lot of reasons why your writer is not reaching is maximum potential. Here are a few other things I would suggest:

1. It may be necessary to write audio at slower speeds than those you can achieve for data, since writing CD-DA audio requires streaming more bits per second to the recorder.
2. Close all unnecessary applications such as screen savers, anti-virus programs.
3. PC power management makes PC slower and thus it may result in buffer underrun. Disable the power management or delay the power saving time.
4. Try a different brand of recordable disc. TDK seems to have the best compatibility across hardware brands.

Good luck!

Thanks,
Sun818

 

[codeyf]

it isn't the burner though. i use cd creator 4, and when I go to copy disc, it says something to the effect of my cd-rom drive not being able to sustain a high enough data rate. this is when i go to copy a audio cd only. so perhaps the cd-rom drive is just to slow in ripping audio? but am i actually ripping the cd when I copy it?

my logic says this. when I create my own cd's they're wav files. when i pull up an actual audio cd, the tracks show up as wav files. now, wouldn't that mean, when i copy an audio cd, all i'm doing is copying the wav files?

again, if i'm just copying a data cd, it'll take it straight from my cd-rom drive at 8x. it'll only do this when i'm trying to copy a audio cd.

Once all the data is cached to my HD, it burns it at 8x just fine.

 

[sun818]

"now, wouldn't that mean, when i copy an audio cd, all i'm doing is copying the wav files?"

Actually, no. An audio CD's encoding structure is different from a data CD. An audio CD is clustered 2352 bytes at a time, while a data CD is clustered 2048 bytes at a time.

So, the solution for now is burn audio CDs at 4x with your Samsung. You could try upgrading your Samsung to a SCSI CD-ROM to shorten the data travel path. My guess is that you will be able to burn audio CDs at 8x by upgrading your CD-ROM.

Thanks,
Sun