CD plays "scratchy"... why?

A

Al Kondo

Guest
My wife does educational seminars and uses the cd player on her laptop
computer to play music for the participants during breaks. She
mentioned to me that the music sounded "scratchy" and wondered why. I
checked and she is right. So, what is causing the problem? Does the
player need to be changed, or, is there a cleaning procedure that can
be done?

Thanks, Al Kondo
 
Get one of these cleaning kits that use a CD disk, to start with. The laser
may have some dirt on its lens. If this does not do it, you can see if you
can take apart the CD drive and clean it yourself.

If all of this does not work, the only thing you can feasibly do, is to
change the drive.

--

Greetings,

Jerry Greenberg GLG Technologies GLG
=========================================
WebPage http://www.zoom-one.com
Electronics http://www.zoom-one.com/electron.htm
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"Al Kondo" <alkon@hal-pc.org> wrote in message
news:40892667.4295422@news.hal-pc.org...
My wife does educational seminars and uses the cd player on her laptop
computer to play music for the participants during breaks. She
mentioned to me that the music sounded "scratchy" and wondered why. I
checked and she is right. So, what is causing the problem? Does the
player need to be changed, or, is there a cleaning procedure that can
be done?

Thanks, Al Kondo
 
Al Kondo wrote:
My wife does educational seminars and uses the cd player on her laptop
computer to play music for the participants during breaks. She
mentioned to me that the music sounded "scratchy" and wondered why. I
checked and she is right. So, what is causing the problem? Does the
player need to be changed, or, is there a cleaning procedure that can
be done?

Thanks, Al Kondo
Click to expand...
Hi Al...

It's digital; it can't be scratchy! Either works or
doesn't, one way or the other :)

Unless, that is, we're thinking of "scratchy" in different
ways...

What would be interesting would be to play a commercial
Cd, see what that sounds like. If it's nice, then
perhaps the CD's she's playing have been copied from
a scratchy source, like old records?

Just thinking out loud...

Take care.

Ken
 
My wife does educational seminars and uses the cd player on her laptop
computer to play music for the participants during breaks.
Click to expand...
More information, please.

Who made the CD-ROM drive, if you are able to find out.

Who made the laptop?

What operating system does it have and what version is it? - Reinhart
 
Al Kondo wrote:

My wife does educational seminars and uses the cd player on her laptop
computer to play music for the participants during breaks. She
mentioned to me that the music sounded "scratchy" and wondered why. I
checked and she is right. So, what is causing the problem? Does the
player need to be changed, or, is there a cleaning procedure that can
be done?

Thanks, Al Kondo
Click to expand...
Is it just CDs, or all music played on the computer? My guess
is that one or both of the speakers have a problem (e.g. a hole
or a foreign object on the cone, or poor alignment of the voice
coil). The suggestion of the other poster (dirty lens) is also
a possibility, as is a software mis-configuration.

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net.
 
"Ken Weitzel" <kweitzel@shaw.ca> wrote in message
It's digital; it can't be scratchy! Either works or
doesn't, one way or the other :)
Ken
Click to expand...
- - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
KenWeithzel:
A "scratchy" sound from your CD player can certainly be valid...... first
place to investigate is the disc itself, try some other commercially made
discs..... or could be a dirty laser lens, faulty gears or lubrication on
the laser sled, faulty spindle motor, faulty electronic laser alignment such
as tracking or focus, worn or low laser output, etc, etc.
In the world of digital there is an in-between world where things don't
quite work correctly.
--
Best Regards,
Daniel Sofie
Electronics Supply & Repair
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 
"Sofie" (sofie@olypen.com) writes:
"Ken Weitzel" <kweitzel@shaw.ca> wrote in message
It's digital; it can't be scratchy! Either works or
doesn't, one way or the other :)
Ken


- - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
KenWeithzel:
A "scratchy" sound from your CD player can certainly be valid...... first
place to investigate is the disc itself, try some other commercially made
discs..... or could be a dirty laser lens, faulty gears or lubrication on
the laser sled, faulty spindle motor, faulty electronic laser alignment such
as tracking or focus, worn or low laser output, etc, etc.
In the world of digital there is an in-between world where things don't
quite work correctly.
Click to expand...
I only recently got a CD writer, and obviously I was looking for a good
deal on the blanks. I bought a pack of fifty, assuming name didn't matter.
Most of the ones I've tried have not turned out useable. There is indeed
skipping of a sort, and a level of "scratchiness" (as long as you stretch
the meaning to mean not noise in the sound, but an obnoxious sound when
I try to play some trakcs.

Michael
 
Hi!

It's digital; it can't be scratchy! Either works or
doesn't, one way or the other :)
Click to expand...
Technically I guess that is true...but...

If the disc cannot be satisfactorily read or the media is damaged, you will
hear the player start to approximate the sound or fail to track momentarily.
This can lead to a "ticking" or "scratchy" sound as the OP has mentioned.

William
 
A "scratchy" sound from your CD player can certainly be valid...... first
place to investigate is the disc itself, try some other commercially made
discs..... or could be a dirty laser lens, faulty gears or lubrication on
the laser sled, faulty spindl
Click to expand...
SNIP

The cause of the scratching noise can be attributed to many things.

If the lady has WindowsXP on her machine, the CD-ROM drive can be set up to
treat the audio CD as a CD-ROM disc and digitally extract the audio and play it
through the CPU as opposed to playing it directly off the drive. This is
especially true is she is using Windows Media Player 9 to play the CD.
Sometimes, the scratchy noise could be due to a bad interrupt request setting
with the internal sound card.

This was the case with my computer when I tried to play CDs and other sounds,
so I had to place the sound card in a different PCI slot to stop IRQ sharing
between the sound card and another peripheral on my machine. Of course, the
computer being discussed on this topic is a laptop. - Reinhart
 
If the disc cannot be satisfactorily read or the media is damaged, you will
hear the player start to approximate the sound or fail to track momentarily.
This can lead to a "ticking" or "scratchy" sound as the OP has mentioned.
Click to expand...
A scratching noise on a regular CD player would indicate an error that the
player's onboard CIRC electronics could not correct completely. Tracking
failure would not just cause a scratching noise, it would cause the CD player
to skip back a few seconds or abort playback altogether. - Reinhart
 
I agree. A scratchy sound indicates the disc is "barely" playing. Still
could be a cleaning / maintenance issue, but a grating lens issue, spindle
motor problem, even a bad decoder IC are also possibilities.

Mark Z.

--
Please reply only to Group. I regret this is necessary. Viruses and spam
have rendered my regular e-mail address useless.


"LASERandDVDfan" <laseranddvdfan@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040424231942.13628.00000333@mb-m21.aol.com...
If the disc cannot be satisfactorily read or the media is damaged, you
will
hear the player start to approximate the sound or fail to track
momentarily.
This can lead to a "ticking" or "scratchy" sound as the OP has mentioned.

A scratching noise on a regular CD player would indicate an error that the
player's onboard CIRC electronics could not correct completely. Tracking
failure would not just cause a scratching noise, it would cause the CD
player
to skip back a few seconds or abort playback altogether. - Reinhart
Click to expand...
 
I agree. A scratchy sound indicates the disc is "barely" playing. Still
could be a cleaning / maintenance issue, but a grating lens issue, spindle
motor problem, even a bad decoder IC are also possibilities.
Click to expand...
However, I still feel that the original poster must give us more information.

We need to know what laptop (including any available config info) and what
operating system.

By default, WindowsXP doesn't play the audio off the CD like a regular CD
player. It digitally extracts the audio from the CD at high speed, runs it
through the SCSI or IDE connection, and then it plays it as a sample. -
Reinhart
 
In answer to some of your posts, the notebook computer is an HP
Pavilion zt1230 and its CD came with the unit. Yesterday, I purchased
a cleaning kit. With it I cleaned the offending CD and inserted a
cleaning disk into the unit. Additionally, I found that when I
played another commercail CD in the unit, it played well. When I
played the offending CD on another player, it also played well. I am
a little up in the air as to what to do. It would seem that the next
step would be to replace the CD player. What do you think?

Al Kondo
 
One more thing about the system I am using on the notebook.... I am
using Windows XT.

Thanks, Al Kondo

My wife does educational seminars and uses the cd player on her laptop
computer to play music for the participants during breaks. She
mentioned to me that the music sounded "scratchy" and wondered why. I
checked and she is right. So, what is causing the problem? Does the
player need to be changed, or, is there a cleaning procedure that can
be done?

Thanks, Al Kondo
Click to expand...
 
Al Kindo:
It's all a matter of numbers.... if you have 100 commercially made CD's
and the unit will play every one except a few, then there is nothing to fix.
If the offending CD is a "home-made" burnt CD then I am never surprised that
you may have trouble playing it on some units that otherwise play the
majority of discs just fine.
--
Best Regards,
Daniel Sofie
Electronics Supply & Repair
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


"Al Kondo" <alkon@hal-pc.org> wrote in message
news:40965d45.5211287@news.hal-pc.org...
In answer to some of your posts, the notebook computer is an HP
Pavilion zt1230 and its CD came with the unit. Yesterday, I purchased
a cleaning kit. With it I cleaned the offending CD and inserted a
cleaning disk into the unit. Additionally, I found that when I
played another commercail CD in the unit, it played well. When I
played the offending CD on another player, it also played well. I am
a little up in the air as to what to do. It would seem that the next
step would be to replace the CD player. What do you think?

Al Kondo
Click to expand...
 
My recent post about my CD/DVD player problems drew a few questions
about matter that I neglected to include earlier. Here are my
responses to your questions:

Laptop: HP Pavilion zt1230
DVD/CD player: Toshipa DVD-ROM SD-C2502
Operating System: Windows XT

The problem I am having is that the player is playing "scratchy" on
one CD I have to use for work purposes. It is a music CD and it was
purchased from a store. Here are the symptoms:

1. I can play the CD on another player and it plays fine
2. I can play other music CD's on the player in the computer and they
play fine.
3. Recently, I ran into the problem that the Drive designation no
longer showed on Windows Explore. Of course, this could have
occurred as I was trying to remove the player from the computer. I am
assuming that I need to reload the driver.
4. I found out that another CD player for this computer costs $341
from HP. Wow!

I would appreciate any suggestions that you may have.

Al Kondo

My wife does educational seminars and uses the cd player on her laptop
computer to play music for the participants during breaks. She
mentioned to me that the music sounded "scratchy" and wondered why. I
checked and she is right. So, what is causing the problem? Does the
player need to be changed, or, is there a cleaning procedure that can
be done?

Thanks, Al Kondo
Click to expand...
 
Ok, not having complete info on everything, it sounds like it may not be the
actual unit in the computer. To me, it sounds like it very well could be
the disk it's self. First "?" is it a burnt CD? I have had burnt CDs that
will play great on some units, and on other not play at all, or sound like
it was a 45 that has been through hell and back. Not all burnt CDs are
created equal. The main reason I am thinking this, before you have the
problems with Hardware config. not recognizing the CD unit, you could play
"OTHER" CDs fine. But this "ONE" CD would sound scratchy. In this case, if
it was a burnt CD, I would re-burn another CD (Don't use the original
"Scratchy" CD), use whatever media you used before to create the original
Burnt CD. Or, if it is an original CD (Unburnt, bought in store), buy
another one.

I will give you another example of a sound problem I had with my CD player.
I purchased Windows XP Plus. I thought it was the neatest thing since
sliced bread. It had all these new things, including sound enhancements. I
play around with it, and thought the speakers were just crappy. It sounded
like music that was running wide open, and all distorted. So, I changed my
speakers (Knowing it couldn't have been Microsoft Software, we know how
reliable Microsoft is..:), but the sound didn't change. So, I disabled the
enhancement software in Plus, and boom, everything sounded great!

But, the first thing you will have to do, is getting Windows to recognize
your drive again. Is it even showing up in Hardware Config? Should have a
"!" next to it. If it does, then you may get by with just installing the
drivers. It is kinda hard to tell you how to re-install the hardware,
with-out knowing what it looks like in the hardware config. (this is
assuming that you don't know how to do it, if you do, I am sorry for making
it sound like you don't know what you are doing.).

Get that unit running properly again, then try the above with the CD's.
Once again, the reason for my thinking, is that other CD's played fine, but
this one would not. Some CD Players can read through a deep scratch. and
others won't if it has even been slightly scratched. But once again, I
can't see the CD, and can't see the computer, just going off experience.

Hope this helps,
Rick


"Al Kondo" <alkon@hal-pc.org> wrote in message
news:40a0ea34.10535443@news.hal-pc.org...
My recent post about my CD/DVD player problems drew a few questions
about matter that I neglected to include earlier. Here are my
responses to your questions:

Laptop: HP Pavilion zt1230
DVD/CD player: Toshipa DVD-ROM SD-C2502
Operating System: Windows XT

The problem I am having is that the player is playing "scratchy" on
one CD I have to use for work purposes. It is a music CD and it was
purchased from a store. Here are the symptoms:

1. I can play the CD on another player and it plays fine
2. I can play other music CD's on the player in the computer and they
play fine.
3. Recently, I ran into the problem that the Drive designation no
longer showed on Windows Explore. Of course, this could have
occurred as I was trying to remove the player from the computer. I am
assuming that I need to reload the driver.
4. I found out that another CD player for this computer costs $341
from HP. Wow!

I would appreciate any suggestions that you may have.

Al Kondo

My wife does educational seminars and uses the cd player on her laptop
computer to play music for the participants during breaks. She
mentioned to me that the music sounded "scratchy" and wondered why. I
checked and she is right. So, what is causing the problem? Does the
player need to be changed, or, is there a cleaning procedure that can
be done?

Thanks, Al Kondo
Click to expand...
 
Al Kondo wrote:

My recent post about my CD/DVD player problems drew a few questions
about matter that I neglected to include earlier. Here are my
responses to your questions:

Laptop: HP Pavilion zt1230
DVD/CD player: Toshipa DVD-ROM SD-C2502
Operating System: Windows XT

The problem I am having is that the player is playing "scratchy" on
one CD I have to use for work purposes. It is a music CD and it was
purchased from a store. Here are the symptoms:

1. I can play the CD on another player and it plays fine
2. I can play other music CD's on the player in the computer and they
play fine.
3. Recently, I ran into the problem that the Drive designation no
longer showed on Windows Explore. Of course, this could have
occurred as I was trying to remove the player from the computer. I am
assuming that I need to reload the driver.
4. I found out that another CD player for this computer costs $341
from HP. Wow!

I would appreciate any suggestions that you may have.

Al Kondo


My wife does educational seminars and uses the cd player on her laptop
computer to play music for the participants during breaks. She
mentioned to me that the music sounded "scratchy" and wondered why. I
checked and she is right. So, what is causing the problem? Does the
player need to be changed, or, is there a cleaning procedure that can
be done?

Thanks, Al Kondo
Click to expand...
What you might consider is visiting a friend who has
a nice system. Ask them to play it on their computer.

If it turns out that they can play it nicely, ask them
to rip it and reburn it for you.

Just a thought.

Ken
 
Ken Weitzel (kweitzel@shaw.ca) writes:
Al Kondo wrote:

My recent post about my CD/DVD player problems drew a few questions
about matter that I neglected to include earlier. Here are my
responses to your questions:

Laptop: HP Pavilion zt1230
DVD/CD player: Toshipa DVD-ROM SD-C2502
Operating System: Windows XT

The problem I am having is that the player is playing "scratchy" on
one CD I have to use for work purposes. It is a music CD and it was
purchased from a store. Here are the symptoms:

1. I can play the CD on another player and it plays fine
2. I can play other music CD's on the player in the computer and they
play fine.
3. Recently, I ran into the problem that the Drive designation no
longer showed on Windows Explore. Of course, this could have
occurred as I was trying to remove the player from the computer. I am
assuming that I need to reload the driver.
4. I found out that another CD player for this computer costs $341
from HP. Wow!

I would appreciate any suggestions that you may have.

Al Kondo


My wife does educational seminars and uses the cd player on her laptop
computer to play music for the participants during breaks. She
mentioned to me that the music sounded "scratchy" and wondered why. I
checked and she is right. So, what is causing the problem? Does the
player need to be changed, or, is there a cleaning procedure that can
be done?

Thanks, Al Kondo



What you might consider is visiting a friend who has
a nice system. Ask them to play it on their computer.

If it turns out that they can play it nicely, ask them
to rip it and reburn it for you.

Just a thought.

Ken

That's not a bad suggestion. I once bought a boxed set, and while all
Click to expand...
of the discs played, there was a lot of searching on some of them, and
when I skipped to the next track, my cd player would often fail. The
player was less than a year old at the time. I got a replacement for
the set, and got pretty much the same results. It's been a while
since I played it, but I seem to recall not noticing this problem
when using another CD player. It seemed to be something odd about
the master (since the replacement gave the same resutls) and that
particular player.

Michael
 
This is in response to a response from Ricky. He asked if the orginal
CD was one that was burned. No, it was not. It was an original that
was used often in seminars as background music. I am going to try
to get another original CD to see if it will play better. Thanks for
the suggestions.

Al Kondo

My wife does educational seminars and uses the cd player on her laptop
computer to play music for the participants during breaks. She
mentioned to me that the music sounded "scratchy" and wondered why. I
checked and she is right. So, what is causing the problem? Does the
player need to be changed, or, is there a cleaning procedure that can
be done?

Thanks, Al Kondo
Click to expand...
 
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