CD error detection

[Lin Howard]

I read years ago an article by Roger Nichols in EQ Magazine about checking the errors on a burned CDR. It seems that a CDR burned at x1 speed doesn't mean that it would have less errors than a CDR burned on the same burner at x8 speed. Before sending his master CD off to replecation, he would determine which speed to set his burner.

Always being Mr. Frugal, I was wondering if any of you knew of a cheap way of doing this?

[Rich LePage]

I also wondered about this for ages, figured there had to be some software out there that would do this. I read a bunch of articles and looked all over the web, but came up empty. It's a fairly specialized area.

The only solutions I could find are dedicated hardware/software quality checkers. You can get these both as a standalone player that can be hooked to a PC, some of them come with a specially set up PC.

The cheapest thing I could find is a specially modified drive with special software that Clover Systems puts out, called the CDX. It is calibrated using special Philips test discs and says it will analyze a master CD at up to 40x. Several of the drives could be combined into a system if wanted. It also claims it will evaluate blank media.

It is expensive though, about $3000 for the drive/software, slightly more if you want them to bundle a PC with it. A company called Media Techniques also sells a unit, for more money, based on a small Shuttle "shoebox" PC.
Clover also sells a standalone special player.

There is more fairly good info at Clover's website, www.cloversystems.com.

I couldn't find a truly "frugal" solution, though.

Hope this helps, if anyone else finds other stuff out there, please post it here.

[geezer]

There is, indeed, a frugal solution. Of course, this depends on my understanding of what you mean by "error detection". The only logical meaning for this that I understand would be a bit-for-bit comparison of a burned CD with the original file or a master CD.

Wavelab, in fact, has a function that does exactly that. I used it once to compare some descktp duplicated CDs with the master I had sent. It worked and explained some anomalies, and ended up being very useful in an analysis of the real-time playback issues with some kinds of CDRs.

[Rich LePage]

Thx for the info-- very good! Will def. investigate that and Wavelab!

Now if we could just get some updates to Medit and/or MicroCD....

I've been also using Adobe Audition 1.5 mostly to host Direct X plugs for
mastering. It is OK, though not perfect. Some plugs run really well with it,
others real poorly. Bias Sound Soap 2 runs badly in both Direct X and VST modes with it, though I'm not crazy about the plug-in itself, can hear many
of the same artifacts in its stand-alone player app.

[Lin Howard]

Thanks for your help fellows. I have made a little progress in my search. There is a product called DED ($200) and DED Pro ($350) that you can attach to the coaxial or optical output of your CD player and it will either blink or count, depending on which model you get.

The PlexWriter Premium burner ($100) has software called Plextools that has a test called Q-check that I think will show fixable and unfixable errors.

I found a freeware program and have downloaded it. I don't want to load it till I get my c drive backed up by Drive Image. I haven't done this in a coupla years (since Rich told me about the Stomp Back Up My PC program). Naturally, Drive Image is giving me grief, but once I figure out that speed bump, I'll give this freebie a try and let you know how it works out.

Can't get much more frugal than free....

[Rich LePage]

Backup My PC is good for data and also for boot drives on Win 98 and ME, but not so good for boot drives in XP. For that, would recommend Ghost.
Version 9 of it is designed for XP, but I also use the older Ghost 2003 on FAT 32 formatted XP systems to make an image of the C drive that can be restored when XP complicates itself to the point of no return.

Backup My PC though is great for Medit data etc. I use it with DVD recorders all the time lately, and still also with SCSI tape drives for project backups.
Sonic now owns the program, but Stomp apparently still distributes it.
Sonic also now owns Roxio by the way. Previously Backup My PC was owned by Veritas, and before that, Seagate Software.

[Lin Howard]

I'm a idiot !! This started because I burned a high speed copy of a CD I had made using PlexWriter 48/24/48A burner and it's Oak software. I make the master on my x8 burner with MicroCD and then copy it onto my hard drive with the Oak software and burn x48 dupes from it. The CD started out with spoken word on track one and the rest music. After I burned the 1st copy, I put it on my studio CD player to verify it ok. The spoken word sounded terrible. Glitches up the ying yang. I found I could play it back on every other CD player in my house ok, and the custie was having no troubles. Then I found I could slow the burner down to x32 and it sounded ok.

Then I start this quest to find a way to measure errors. I did load the freeware DiskCheck1057, but it didn't do what I wanted. Wednesday, I tried to burn some CDs and found the burner was doing alot worse. I decided the burner was at fault and ordered the Plexwriter Premium with the PlexTools software. Then Friday, I decided to stop by Radio Shack and see if there was such a thing as a laser cleaner. Natch they had one for 13 smackers.

I brought that thing home and ran it on my x48 burner, and sheezam, it burns perfectly again. What an idiot !! I'm not going to clean my CD player since it seems to be the only one that will let me know when the laser lens is getting dirty. Thanks for yall's suggestions......Lin

[Gefivo]

It is really??