Windows XP Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 87 Problem-Free CD Burning

XP lets you easily record digital music to your
PC and burn music CDs. Here's how to make sure your
digital music doesn't skip, pop, crackle, and hiss,
as well as other advice on CD burning.

Windows
Media
Player lets you burn CDs, as well as
"rip" digital music from CDs and
put them on your hard disk; but, as anyone who has ever burned and
ripped music knows, the process is never problem-free. When you rip
music, you may find that your digital music files skip and pop. And
when you burn CDs, you may find that those CDs skip and have similar
problems as well.

I've had many problems like that myself,
particularly when copying opera CDs, which, as
you'll see later in this hack, suffer from a nagging
problem that causes most copied CDs to skip at least several times
per CD.

10.3.1 What to Do if Your Digital Music Files Skip and Pop

When you rip
music from CDs or old LPs, you may find that the digital music you
rip to your PC skips and pops. There can be many causes for skipping
and popping, so this section provides a number of ways to fix a
variety of problems.

10.3.1.1 Cleaning up .wav files

If you're recording from old LPs, the
problem most likely isn't your computer.
You're probably recording the music faithfully, but
the vinyl on the LP has been damaged, so the resulting digital music
suffers from skips and pops. You can solve the problem by cleaning up
the skips and pops using downloadable software.

WAVClean (http://www.excla.com/WAVclean/English) and
WaveCorrector (http://www.wavecor.co.uk) will both eliminate
pops, skips, crackles, hisses, and similar noises from music you
record from old LPs. Both programs require a several-step process.
First, record the digital music using Windows Media Player or similar
ripping software. You'll have to record in
.wav format, because that's the
only format these programs handle. Next, clean up the
.wav files with one of the programs. Which one
you use depends on whether you want to automate the cleanup or take a
hands-on approach, and on how bad the problems are that you want to
correct. WAVClean is the more automated of the two; load the
.wav file, select Scrub, and choose from basic
settings, and it eliminates hisses and crackles. It
won't, however, clean up deeper scratches, so
it's best for recordings that suffer from just
hissing and crackling. With WaveCorrector, on the other hand, you see
an actual oscilloscope view of the music files, with pops and similar
problems highlighted in blue. You can either have the program make
the edits to the file itself, or you can preview the edits and do the
correcting yourself. WaveCorrector also includes a recording feature,
so that you don't have to use Media Player or other
ripping software, such as MusicMatch Jukebox (http://musicmatch.com). Once
you've cleaned up the music, you can either convert
it to .mp3 or .wma digital
music to save on your hard disk using MusicMatch Jukebox, or you can
burn directly from a .wav file to a CD using
Windows Media Player, MusicMatch Jukebox, or similar software.

Both programs are shareware and free to try, but you are expected to
pay if you continue using them. WAVClean costs to register, and $30
WaveCorrector costs $45.

10.3.1.2 Other advice for reducing skips and pops

If you've recorded the digital
music
from
a CD rather than an LP, the problem may be dirt and grime on the
original CD, and physically cleaning it may solve the problem. Wipe
the bottom of the CD clean. The bottom of the CD may be scratched,
and that can cause problems as well. In that case, you can try some
of the CD-cleaning devices sold at music stores and computer stores.

Don't let your friends and family stomp around during recording! With enough movement, CD players can skip just like turntables, for those of you who remember such antiques.

Additionally, if the ripping software you're using
allows it, try slowing down the speed with which you rip your music,
or ripping it at a lower bit rate.

Windows Media Player doesn't let you adjust the speed with which you rip music, but it does let you alter the music's bit rate. MusicMatch Jukebox lets you adjust the ripping speed as well as the bit rate.

Finally, if you have a very old CD drive, the drive itself may be a
problem. With some older, slower drives, when you rip music,
you'll frequently get skips. If
that's your problem, the only solution will be to
buy a newer drive.

10.3.2 What to Do If Your Burned Music CDs Skip

On
occasion, your source and
the digital music files will be free of skips, but when you burn a
CD, the resulting CD skips. Sometimes, if you slow down the speed
that you burn to a CD, you'll solve the problem.
Most burning software will let you adjust your burning speed. In
Windows Media Player, choose Tools
Options Devices and highlight your CD drive. Then, click
on Properties and choose the Recording tab, as shown in Figure 10-3. From the "Select a write
speed" drop-down box, choose a slower speed than
Fastest. Also, close all other programs when you're
burning a CD, so that CPU, RAM, and system resources are all devoted
to CD burning.

Figure 10-3. Slowing down CD burning in Windows Media Player

If that doesn't solve the problem, try using
analog rather than digital CD writing.
Choose Tools Options Devices, highlight the CD
drive that you want to use analog playback, click on Properties, and
go to the Audio tab. From the Copy section, choose Analog. If that
still doesn't work, go back to the same tab and
choose "Use error correction." This
will slow down the CD burning process even further, but it may solve
the problem.

10.3.3 What to Do if Long Selections Are Interrupted by Skips

On opera CDs, or any CD with particularly lengthy pieces, a single
aria or other musical selection is sometimes spread out over two or
more contiguous tracks. When a CD player plays the CD, the aria
sounds as if it were one track; the music flows smoothly, without
interruption. However, Windows Media Player and similar burning
software, such as MusicMatch Jukebox, automatically adds pauses
between tracks when you burn to a CD, so when you rip music from the
opera CD and then burn it, the aria will be interrupted.

Some software lets you eliminate the pause between tracks when you
burn to a CD. But then it eliminates all pauses,
so the entire opera plays as if it were one long, single track, with
no pauses, and you can't listen to it.

What's a Cecilia Bartoli or Renée Fleming
fan to do?

You can solve the problem by using a program that makes an exact
duplicate of an entire CD, rather than copying individual files. Both
Exact Audio Copy (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de) and
Nero Burning ROM (http://www.nero.com) will do that.
They'll make images of the CD and then let you use
those images to burn a CD. I've found that opera CDs
burned with them generally don't have the unnatural
pauses. Exact Audio Copy is free, while Nero Burning ROM is shareware
and free to try, but $69 if you keep using it.

10.3.4 See Also

If you use Windows Media Player Version 9 to burn CDs, download and
use the TweakMP
PowerToy
for Windows XP from http://www.wmplugins.com.
(It's available for Version 9 only, not Version 8,
of Windows Media Player.) The PowerToy has a variety of tools, most
of which are only moderately useful. But the feature that makes it
worthwhile is its ability to level the volume of files when you burn
a CD. One problem with burning CDs is that the digital music files
you're going to burn are frequently recorded at
different levels. That means that when you play the CD, the music
plays at different volumes, forcing you to constantly change the
volume control on your CD player. The PowerToy automatically levels
the volume of all files, so that the volume is the same on all tracks
on the burned CD. After you install the plug-in, choose Tools
Plugins TweakMP to run it. To do volume
leveling, click on the CD tab and check the box next to
"Automatically level the volume of files when
copying to an audio CD. "