Help! : Conundrum - Perplexed

[Tea24]

I make no excuse for bringing this up again as I don’t understand what is happening.

I bought a Pioneer PDR-609 CD recorder from Shuggie with which I am mightily pleased. I have successfully recorded half a dozen CDs (been ill so not more yet) but occasionally I get a hiccup, which I originally put down to bad Audio CD-Rs, but now I have my doubts.

When played back through the Pioneer all is fine but on play back through my Quad 66 CD player SOME tracks (always the same ones) on SOME discs seem to “skitter” and one can see the seconds counter “skittering” along too!:(

Now the other day I went to stay with a chum & tried one of the ‘defective’ CDs on his Arcam player – NO PROBLEM AT ALL!!:scratch:

So I conclude that I have a problem with my CD player, but it was rebuilt by Quad in 2007 with a new laser assembly etc. & has had little playing since as I usually play vinyl.:doh:

Can someone amongst you shed some light on this phenomenon?

Would a good clean of the CD player help?

If so how to go about it? Should I try one of the cleaning CDs one can buy?

This is what I hate about electronic technology; when it works it is fine, but when it doesn’t it is usually intermittent and no test seems to suss it out!

ANY HELP GRATEFULLY RECEIVED!

[Reid Malenfant]

Forget cleaning CDs, i reckon they might cause more damage ;)

Unplug the CD player & remove the lid, if you can't see the laser you might need to plug it back in & eject the draw - DON'T GO LOOKING DIRECTLY INTO THE LASER!. Power down & with a cotton bud which has be dampened with Isopropyl Alcohol (Isopropanol) gently clean the lens. Then with the dry end dry it off.

Use very little pressure as the lens & actuator are delicate, you'll see this as soon as the cotton bud touches it - it'll move...

You can purchase Isopropanol from just about any independant chemists & it's cheap.

[The Black Adder]

A note here on buying Isopropanol. Apparently you can no longer buy it from the chemist. I tried in ours and they told me that it's now no longer available in any Chemist due to being an active ingredient in bomb making!!!

[Dingdong]

I 'borrow' medical alcohol wipes from the labs I work in. Works okay for me. I think those wipes you can get for glasses or camera lens should work too.

[Reid Malenfant]

A note here on buying Isopropanol. Apparently you can no longer buy it from the chemist. I tried in ours and they told me that it's now no longer available in any Chemist due to being an active ingredient in bomb making!!!
FFS!!!! :rolleyes: They'll be banning Sodium Chlorate weedkiller next & sugar come to that :lol:

[Beechwoods]

You can buy IPA from Maplin still - they don't worry about what it's going to be used for ;)

[YNWaN]

A note here on buying Isopropanol. Apparently you can no longer buy it from the chemist. I tried in ours and they told me that it's now no longer available in any Chemist due to being an active ingredient in bomb making!!!

I bought some two days ago from my local chemist - no problem at all) they just went into the back and brought it straight out).
____________

However, I don't think the problem has anything to do with dirty laser optics. I think it is to do with the different error correction levels that your Quad and your friends Arcam CD players apply. When CD players first came out many CD players would apply huge amounts of error correction. However, as the years have passed players have gradually applied less and less. It seems likely to me that your recorder is recording faults (not uncommon) and your CD player is skipping over them whilst your friends Arcam has more active error correction and is happy to invent (extrapolate) the lost data.

Can you record at a lower speed or increase the buffer level etc.?

[Tea24]

YNWaN, if you are right, no, I cannot record at a lower speed & or increase the buffer level, the machine does not allow these alterations. Could I avoid this by recording to an audio CD-RW, uploading to my computer & re-recording to a CDR?

Reid Malfenant; unfortunately I am hamfisted with this sort of technology and would no more take the top off than service my own car, even were I to consider myself competent enough to know how to get it off! Sorry, but I leave fiddling with these sorts of things to the pros as I am not a DIYer. There must be many like me!

Any other suggestions gratfeully received

[aquapiranha]

FFS!!!! :rolleyes: They'll be banning Sodium Chlorate weedkiller next & sugar come to that :lol:

The fun we used to have with that combination! It still worked after they started adding an oxidising inhibitor too. A bit of pipe and that stuff = no end of fun!


:lol:

[jostber]

http://www.wikihow.com/Clean-a-CD-Player

[YNWaN]

YNWaN, if you are right, no, I cannot record at a lower speed & or increase the buffer level, the machine does not allow these alterations. Could I avoid this by recording to an audio CD-RW, uploading to my computer & re-recording to a CDR?

In short, no. You could record directly to your computer though and then burn a CDR (or CD-RW) - which is just what I did for the last compilation CD I made.

[Tea24]

I have had a look at my CD player (Quad 66). The top doesn't come off ( don't be a fool, of course it comes off:doh:). What I mean is that on examining the thing you have to turn it upside down & undo screws on the bottom, effecitively dismantling it, as far as I can see. This is way beyond me as, like with my Aunt's clock when I was a boy, I probably won't be able to get it together again:eyebrows:!

What is not good about CD cleaning discs? Any other suggestions gratefully received.

What I don't understand if it is a dirty laser is why it is only one disc & always at the same place, unless (which I think probable) YNWaN is right.

I cannot physically record direct to my computer YNWaN as the two are some 30 feet apart & I am not sure I have the right soundbox or whatever to do it anyway. I do not want to 'remaster' taking out clicks etc. as I can live with them & just dig the music, so I fail to see why I cannot do as I suggested in my pots of the 23rd - IF- this would solve the problem, though I hate fiddling with the complexities (to me) of uploading analogue to a computer.

[Reid Malenfant]

Well I have never purchased a CD cleaning disc so i'm not 100% sure how they work :eyebrows: However, the disc must spin & unless it has some kind of built in compressor & squirts air at the lens, there must be some kind of fine brush or similar that removes any dust as the disc spins?

Personally i'd rather do it manually as i just don't like the idea of the lens being slapped about by something i can't control :eek:

If someone knows exactly how these lens cleaning discs work then please fill me in :)

[Reid Malenfant]

By the way, are you 100% sure you can't use the PC to record from analogue? As far as i'm aware all you need to do is download a free program called Audacity & plug your analogue input into the PC & it'll convert it to a WAV file which can be burnt to a CD ;)

I think :scratch:

[Tea24]

My dear old fruitcake (Reid); I have no idea what a WAV file is or if my computer supports it or what to do with it when I've got it in my glass of gin:eek:!

Physically my TT is some 30 feet from the computer; how do I plug it in & with what?

In addition, on the odd occasion when I have been able to download a thing called a podcat to a CD I have fiddled for ½ an hour and never actually worked out how I did it;).

I can order a tube of toothpaste online but at my advanced old age I really cannot get my head around the more esoteric nuances of the medium. [And I don't want to].

All this is the reason I bought a simple disc to CD recorder in order to obviate all the complications I do not want to get involved with.

Please don't tell me it is impossible for I know it is not; I seem to have a small problem at the moment on some discs which I would like to be able to solve in the simplest possible way:)

[Reid Malenfant]

:lolsign: Ok, point taken Julian ;)

I guess I can't add a lot as I'd only advocate manually cleaning the lens, so I'll shut up unless i can think of something else that might help :)

[YNWaN]

I fail to see why I cannot do as I suggested in my pots of the 23rd - IF- this would solve the problem.

Because, it wont solve the problem, once an error has been recorded - re-recording it won't remove the error from the first recording - it can't.

If you have a picture with a pen mark
on it, making a photocopy of it won't remove that mark; it will just produce another copy with the same fault.

To be honest, I fail to see why you think your idea will make any positive difference.
--------------------
What does occur to me is that the fault you describe could be caused by you seriously clipping the CD recording. Digital clipping sounds quite different than in the days of analogue cassette recording - sharp sudden clicking and HF distortion.