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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Ripped cd playback

poetguy - Nov 8, 2007 - 8:46 am

When I rip one of my own store-bought cds, I find that the songs skip during playback. The skipping occurs in each song, like back in the day when you bumped your turntable. So, it's not that it skips from song to song. While each song is playing, it skips.

The same cd sounds fine when I play it through my Mac. Any suggestions about what might be going wrong? Is it something I can fix?

Thanks for your help.

ScottW - Nov 8, 2007 - 10:11 am

Paul,

If the burn a CD and it plays fine in your computer, but doesn't play well in your music CD player (ie. Home System, Car, Portable) it could be a few different reasons.

First we need to make sure that the CD is good. If you play it in the Mac and it works fine, but not another CD player, then try using that CD in yet another CD player, preferably a newer CD player. Don't go out and buy one if you don't have a newer one, just find a friend or take the CD to a local electronics store and "demo" their systems with your CD.

If it skips everywhere BUT in your Mac... then your Mac drive may be faulty and out of alignment. As such, it is reading the CDs fine because it "wrote" the data on the drive, and as the same alignment, but other CD players are not matching up.

Another thing is some CD players have "skip protection". Each player various to how much time it "stores" data before you hear a skip if it can't recover in time. If you have a "bad" CD, it make take longer for it to read the data and in some players may skip while others may play it fine, like your Mac.

If all players, but the one the CD is skipping in play the CD fine, then the problem will be with your CD player where the CD is skipping, might have some issues.

I imagine, if your Mac CD player is at fault, you will have other signs like problems with data discs, slow copying, etc.

Scott

poetguy - Nov 8, 2007 - 11:15 am

Hi, Scott

Thanks so much for your speedy and thorough reply to my tech problem. As I read your response I realized that I had badly misstated my problem. I apologize for that. Let me take another shot at it.

If I play a cd in my Mac, it sounds fine. However, if I import the songs on a cd to my iTunes, the playback through iTunes is what skips around on each song. (Quite different from what I wrote earlier.) Any suggestions on this problem?

You mentioned that slow copying as a possible sign that there is something amiss with my Mac player. I get various speeds when I import music. I might get a 1.3x on one disk, then 3.5 on another. What causes that variance is speed? Will it be slower if I am listening to iTunes while importing a cd?

Once again, I apologize for leading you astray.

Paul

ScottW - Nov 8, 2007 - 11:23 am

No problem.

If you play the CD in the drive w/o importing them into iTunes, does it play and sound fine? It just happens when you play them as MP3 or whatever format you save them as? Does this happen to all CDs or just some? All songs on a given CD or just some songs?

poetguy - Nov 9, 2007 - 2:29 pm

Well, Scott, it turns out that my cds skip when I play them in the Mac. I tried several store-bought disks and got the same result. So, now what? Any ideas what might be the problem? Something simple, like dust on the player lens?

Paul

ScottW - Nov 12, 2007 - 1:01 pm

I am going to have you post this in the forums to get additional feedback on it. I don't have any suggestions if EVERY CD is doing that. I don't know if CD Drive cleaners you can purchase are "hype" or really do work. I suppose like you said, it could have dust, but it could also be an alignment problem with the laser, ie, faulty drive.

Scott