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Recording not sounding good [RESOLVED]

Started by JCook, January 20, 2010, 02:23:55 AM

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JCook

Hello,

I've just recorded my first LP with VinylStudio 7.0 trial version on the Mac, OS 10.5.8. I was very impressed when trying out this software, and the recording went flawlessly. I recorded both sides of the LP, cleaned them up and played them in VinylStudio. They sounded excellent. I then burned an audio CD of only the first 5 tracks (that's all the trial version would let me do). When I play back the CD, it sounds terrible. The sound quality is thin and tinny, and there are tiny errors that sound like micro skips all through it. I played it back on my Mac at work, in iTunes, and on a stereo CD player at home - same result.

So I went back into VinylStudio again and played the tracks. They sound great. Even when I toggle back to the original uncorrected audio it still sounds great, but with crackles, not the little hesitant skips that the CD has. I opened CD burning options and set the write speed to 4x, as I had read that you can have problems with audio CDs written at higher speeds. Still the same.

I originally recorded these tracks as WAV files at 44kHz, 16 bit. I've burned three CDs so far, and have not gotten a good one yet. They are Memorex Music CD-Rs. I've used these CDs to burn LPs recorded with Audacity with great results, so I doubt that the CDs are faulty. I'm wondering if there's a setting that I'm ignoring, or some other thing I am neglecting in the process?

thank you,
Jack

Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)

#1
Hi,

Thank you for your post and sorry you are having trouble.  It sounds like a 'buffer underrun' problem (i.e. data is not being sent to the burner fast enough to keep up with the burn speed), although why that is affecting VinylStudio and not Audacity I have no idea as we (and no doubt they) use Apple's 'disc recording framework' to burn CDs and that handles all the details.

At the risk of burning a few more coasters, you could try (in order):
 - changing the 'write mode' to track-at-once or session-at-once
 - turning the write speed down even more
 - turning off buffer-underrun protection (or, if it has got turned off somehow, turn it on)

What kind of Mac do you have?  And, to go off at a bit of a tangent, what do you make of our (perhaps controversial) buttons with pretty little pictures on?

Regards,

Paul Sanders
AlpineSoft
http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk

JCook

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your quick response. I've just tried all of your suggestions, and unfortunately had no difference in the results. Here's what I did:

I burned a bunch of CDs.

1. I tried track-at-once, session-at-once, and even disk-at-once Raw (after reading about it online). No difference.
2. I turned the speed down to 2x. No difference.
3. Buffer underrun protection was turned off, so I turned it on. Still no difference.

I guess the best way to describe how the CD sounds is that it sounds like it's being played in a CD player going down an exceptionally bumpy road. It isn't skipping parts of music, but it sounds like it's being severly shaken so that the sound is erratic. It doesn't seem to be missing any music, just playing very badly.

As for my Mac, it's an iMac, about a year old. The CD burner is a Matsushita DVD-R UJ-875. It's burned plenty of CDs without problems. OS 10.5.8.

My usual procedure has been to record the LP in Audacity, clean it up in ClickRepair, and then split the songs and name them in Audacity, and use Export Multiple to export the individual songs. Audacity has no CD burning capabilities, so I make a playlist in iTunes and burn that to CD. It works well. But your program should be able to do all of that in the same program, which I like because it's a lot less work. I'd like to use VinylStudio, but I can't seem to get a good CD out of it. I'm hoping there is a solution to this problem. Maybe I'll try recording another LP and see how it comes out.

Regarding your buttons, I like them. I don't think they should be very controversial. I like the interface of the program, and the features. It's the CD burning that doesn't seem to be up to snuff.

Jack

Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)

Hmmmmm.  This is very frustrating.  I really don't know what might be wrong.  What happens if you save tracks in VinylStudio and play them in iTunes?  Do they sound OK?  I assume the recording plays OK in VinylStudio itself.

If they do, I'm not sure where to go from here.  We haven't had any other reports of this, but the program has only been out in the field for a few days so perhaps we wouldn't have.  Would it be possible to rip one of the CDs you have made and send me a short extract via email?  About 1 minute, compressed in MP3 or MP4 format to keep the filesize down, would be ideal.  If I can hear it for myself, maybe it will tell me something.  You can email me at:

         p DOT sanders AT alpinesoft DOT co DOT uk

Many thanks and sorry we're not making much headway on this.

Regards,

Paul Sanders
AlpineSoft
http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk

Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)

Update for interested readers: we finally got to the bottom of this and it will be fixed in V7.01 and later.