Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help

Subject: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 18 Apr 03 - 01:19 PM

I'm recording a CD solo folksong CD on my 'puter. I'm using Goldwave to record, and have so far been trying MusicMatch to burn to the CD.

There are two or maybe three problems:

My experimental CD does not start playing when inserted. I've seen references somewhere on the web about a signal or characteristic that needs to be put at the beginnning, and I don't see any reference to any such thing in either Goldwave or MusicMatch. The computer doesn't seem to recognize there is a CD in the drive.

How do I set up the various songs so that the CD "plays through" from one song to the next, but is recognized by programs as separate tracks? I had thought one had to cut and paste to make one large file, which will indeed play through, but it doesn't recognize the material as separate tracks if I do that.

Do I need something more heavyweight than MusicMatch to do the autoexecute characteristic and/or the recognizable play-through tracks? Or am I just overlooking functions that I have with these programs?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: open mike
Date: 18 Apr 03 - 02:11 PM

gosh dave-o i hope you get answers to this..I am anxious to hear your
c.d. Always love having you share your great tunes on paltalk! Wish I
knew the answer...Laurel

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: NicoleC
Date: 18 Apr 03 - 03:32 PM

Dave,

Is this for use in a computer or a regular CD player? Does your computer recognize the CD at all, or it just doesn't start playing automatically when you insert it? Did you record it as an audio CD, or as a data CD?

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Apr 03 - 05:05 PM

Here's a page I wrote for my own purposes on making a CD using Goldwave How to put music from a tape onto a CD

I don't recognise the problem you've come across. It sounbds as if it's the CD burner rather than Goldwave.

I use Adaptec Easy CD Creator for actually making the CD - it came with the CD recorder when it was installed.

One thing - are you sure you've allowed the CD burner to do all its tricks? I mean, with CD Creator, after it's finished recording the tracks it tales a couple of minutes doing other stuff before saying it has finished.

The other thing where I have had problems has been where I hadn't closed down pretty well everything else on my PC before burning the CD. The program didn't seem to like competing with other stuff.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 18 Apr 03 - 11:07 PM

I suggest you go to the news-groups.

McGrath did a brilliant writeup...and it taught me MANY things...but for tech questions this is not the place.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From:
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 09:26 AM

I wonder the steps you used, did you specify to make a Music CD? If you didn't it won't recognize and play without additional software.

MP3 files and WAV files on a CD require additional software.

Can you tell us what steps you used?

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 09:44 AM

I now find that Goldwave doesn't want to admit that I have a D drive (which is the letter assigned to the DVD drive), and that MusicMatch won't admit that a disk has been inserte

Dave

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 10:54 AM

I should add that the DVD drive plays commercial music CDs just fine, and executes program CDs just fine.

This is a new (almost) Compaq EVO WD4000 workstation, running WIN XP PRO.

I had thought that I had recorded a test CD, with four songs. It now seems clear that I recorded nothing, and I was playing back from the hard drive or memory. Thus the failure of the music to play back automatically on insertion of the CD is understandable: It was either not monitoring the drive and/or the disk was still blank.

Any thoughts?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 11:16 AM

Dave,

You say:
"The computer doesn't seem to recognize there is a CD in the drive."

The following is for Wintel machines NOT MACS.

1st
There's always the possibility of a bad CD or drive.
To check:
Put CD in drive and open Explorer
A drive symbol and letter should appear along with the notation "Audio CD" OR "Audiofs".
If you see the drive symbol and letter but NEITHER notation, the CD is bad.
If you do NOT see the drive symbol and letter, there's a problem with the drive itself. (I have a PC that occasionally does not recognize its CD-Rom drive. Sometimes it takes a couple of reboots (and a whack) to get it to do so.)

Anyway,
There are two different notations because
your computer treats CD-Rom drives differently depending upon how Windows has been configured. Windows will treat a CD-Rom drive as a data drive OR a music CD drive.

If you have a single CD-Rom drive and it is configured as a data drive, a music CD will NOT start playing automatically when you insert it into the drive.

To check this look at:
Control Panel
Multimedia (icon)
CD Music (tab)
Default CD-ROM drive for playing CD music
If your single CD-Rom isn't listed here, it is configured as a data drive. You can configure it as a music CD drive by selecting it from the drop-down list.

You ask:
"How do I set up the various songs so that the CD "plays through" from one song to the next, but is recognized by programs as separate tracks?"
If you want separate tracks you must start with separate WAV files, one for each musical item that will appear as a track. If you put everything into a singel WAV file with silences between, then the single WAV file will appear as a single track.

You ask:
"Do I need something more heavyweight than MusicMatch"
For simply taking WAV files and placing them on a music CD, no.
Any CD burning program, including all the freeware,shareware,cheapware programs will do that.
The more editing you want to do of WAV files, the more program you need. I use Sound Forge Studio for editing WAV files and Roxio Easy CD Creator for burning them.

Good luck

Russ (GUEST forever!)

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From:
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 11:46 AM

Those are good suggestions that Russ made.

I use either Roxio Easy CD Creator or Nero. Of the two, Roxio is the easier to understand for creating CDs of music. Sometimes I use Real One's burner for doing Music CDs.

As Russ said, you have to have each song recorded as a separate file. Depending on which format you have it stored as.

Real One's burner softwaare seems to handle all of the standard formats, RA, WAV, MP3.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: reggie miles
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 11:48 AM

Dave, try going to website(s) of the progam software and/or burner hardware maker and look under support to see if there are any free download upgrades or fixes for your program(s) and hardware. I just did this recently and found that, (even though my software and hardware was only about a year old), there were fixes and upgrades that straightened out some issues I was having with my gear.

Also, look to see if there are phone numbers that came with your software and hardware which you can call that offer free tech assistance. Most new gear and programs have a limited time that a new owner can take advatage of this service. Some numbers are just automated FAQ (freqently asked questions) and answer loops so that can be of limited use.

GoldWave's trouble shooting section a FAQ page.

GoldWave's download page is a place that also has some issues explained as well as downloads that may be upgrades for what you are presently working with.

There are also pages of references about MusicMatch when I went to Google. I don't know what you might need but it's there and there does seem to be a lot of it. I suggest that you take a look see and perhaps you'll find an upgrade that will cure some or all of these bugs.

Of course you may have already tried this and been there. In which case all I can say is that I'm out of ideas short of seeking other, more knowledgeable tech help here, or with a local friend, or with the service department of where you purchased your gear. Even if the stuff you're working with is older there is lots of help available out there online via the links above or elsewhere on the web.

It's always handy to have a local friend/guru to call with questions that can walk you through the steps you need to correct the issues over telephone or make a house call.

I have yet to try to record my songs using my computer at home but that is what I want to do as well.

Is this recording going to be you singing into your computer soundcard and using your hardrive to capture your personal work? This approach usually requires a soundcard that allows you access to use your computer in order to use it as a studio recorder for live performances. Soundcards of this variety in music stores can be quite costly. Some can cost more than the whole rest of the computer. You probably don't need one that's real high end given that it's just for home recording but which one to choose is or can be mind boggling. This is the issue that has been holding me up. Which one should I choose? If I listen to computer stores they want to sell me one that is great for gaming or home theater but is this the best choice for home recording or can it handle both tasks? The computer guys don't seem to know much about this home recording idea, at least not the ones I've been talking to. Music stores have another variety of soundcards specifically for home recording or recording live music but the issue as I said is which one will do what I want with the least number of difficulties at the best price. Or, do I even need a special sound card? Is there some adaptation I can use to make what I have work for me now just the way it is?

Or is this CD a compilation CD of folksongs by yourself and/or other artists that you are wanting to collect onto a CD from various online or analog sources? This second recording project is easy by comparison and does not require any special equipment but as you have experienced can be fraught with little bugs.

Good luck to you Dave. I hope to hear you again sometime on Paltalk or in the flesh.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 12:17 PM

Investigating, more or less per Russ's suggestions:

In MY COMPUTER there is no icon for Multimedia, as there was in Win 98 SE. Remember, this is XP PRO.

With a commercial music CD in the drive, I went to MY COMPUTER. It listed, under removable media drives, A: (as 3-1/4 drive) and "D: Audio CD".

When I insert a commercial music CD in the drive, I guess a choice window, to choose the playback program. If I insert my CD-R disk, which I'm now convinced has nothing on it, I do not get this window.

If I have this window I can, of course, play the commercial music CD with my choice of program.

If I cancel this window, or choose "none", and then go to MY COMPUTER, with the known music CD in the drive, I get (besides drive A:) "[Icon] AUDIO CD (D:)" Left clicking on the icon currently runs MusicMatch and proceeds to play the CD.

Putting the presumptively empty CD in the drive, I get no choice window, and in MY COMPUTER I get "[Icon] DVD Drive (D:)" Same thing with a known empty, new CD-R disk. Left clicking on this icon, it directs me to insert a CD disk, although there is the known or presumptively empty disk already in the drive.

On another question: Should I do WAV files or MP3 files for a CD? I know that MP3 files, while much smaller, are a little lower fidelity than WAV. The disks I have are labeled as 80 minute, 700 MB disks, and there is no way my eventual CD is going to be 80 minutes long. I have been making MP3 files so far.

Dave O.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 12:26 PM

Reggie Miles:

This will be a solo CD of me, singing with guitar, unaccompanied, or with banjo. No commercial transplants, so to speak. It will be recorded directly on my computer, a three-month-old Compaq EVO WD 4000 workstation, which came with what appears to be a good soundcard and a DVD drive.

Both my Goldwave and MusicMatch software are VERY recent downloads, so I'm assuming they would be current programs.

Dave O.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From:
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 12:37 PM

OK! an audio CD is not the same as a disk of MP3 or WAV files.

If you are simply copying them using the burner software to the blank CD.

You DON'T want that option. You want to have the software create a Music CD. This will allow you to select the MP3 or WAV files and convert them to a Music CD format, which would look to regular CD machines as if it was a regular CD.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 12:46 PM

While it's great to have gargoyle say nice things, and say them about me, I'm not sure about that suggestion that it's best to go to newsgroups for tech advice.

My experience has been that, if you ask a question in those places, you just get back answers you can't begin to understand, from people who can't begin to understand how it is you can't understand what to them seems plain obvious. And very likely don't believe you aren't just winding them up.

Like those "Dummy" books that start off all friendly and straightforward and then after a few pages they turn on you, and you're in a strange country where noone speaks your language.

And the same seems to apply to most helplines.

The good thing about asking a question here is that there are likely to be some answers from people who don't think it's obvious the way computers work, and whose basic level of technical know how extends to more or less understanding which way to turn a tuning peg. (Except we probably don't agree on that either.)

And at the same time there are some real experts around as well - but unlike a lot of places, the experts don't look down on the rest of us. I think that is because, the focus of the Mudcat is around other things than computers, and real respect is centred around things like making music.


(Mixed)

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: reggie miles
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 04:23 PM

Dave, in Win 98 the icon for Multi Media is in the Control Panel. The Control Panel icon is in My Computer or go to Start then Control Panel then you'll see the Multi Media icon among others. Try looking there.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 05:26 PM

Reggie, we're not talking about 98. It's XP PRO. There is no mult-media icon in Control Panel.

Under Control Panel/System/Hardware/DeviceManager/DVD/CD Drives, I find the installed device listed. Right-clicking, under Status, I find that The Device is Working Properly. I don't find any place to make any choices that would seem to make the drive disappear, as it were.

Dave O.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: NicoleC
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 06:33 PM

There's no "Multimedia" setup in XP Pro because it's all built-in now. Kinda was in 98, too, but that was left over for folks with older computer.

Dave, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say the CD is either a) blank, b) bad, or c) a data CD, not an audio CD. If you can double-click the CD/DVD drive icon and see files, then it's a data CD that you recorded. The music is there, it's just not recognizable as a music CD to a CD player or CD Player software.

Listen to George. He's on a roll. You need Audio Cd recording software, not just CD Burning software. Anyone have an software suggestions for Dave? Something cheap and easy to use?

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From:
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 06:41 PM

The three I mentioned are easily available, through a simple download.

Roxio
Real One
Nero

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From:
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 06:44 PM

Something's wrong up there with the Roxio one.

Roxio Easy CD Creator

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 08:57 PM

Dave,

OOPS! I forgot that XP has become the standard OS for home PCs. I simply assumed that you had a Win98 machine. My mistake and my apologies.

Aside from that, what NicoleC said.

Re your question about formats,
You should keep in mind that Older CD players can ONLY play CDs with files in the WAV format on them. They cannot handle a CD if the files are in MP3 format.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 09:15 PM

That Roxio Easy CD Creator is what I've got, except mine is version 4, and it does fine by me. They seem to have jacked the price up a bit - it might be possible to get a copy of the older version, if you hunt around.

And this sounds promising and cheap, with a fortnight's free trial to see if it's OK: PolderbitS Sound Recorder and Editor 2.0

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: IvanB
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 09:25 PM

Dave, what drive are you using to burn the CD? Is the DVD drive you mention a combination reader/writer or do you have another burner drive? The reason I ask is that I get the same behavior in Win XP Pro as you mentioned when I put a blank CD-R in my DVD (non-burner) drive and left click, whereas I get an empty directory listing if I put this same disk into the burner drive and left click.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 10:19 PM

The disk is definitely new, and blank.

What little documentation I got with the computer indicates that it's a read and write drive.

I have ordered Roxio Easy CD Creator, Ver. 5.1, which I should get on disk in about a week, according to the vendor. $6.95 including shipping.

Thanx, GuestRuss. I'll redo my songs in WAV. I guess I should have known that MP3 wouldn't do for a general distribution CD.

I am recording on GoldWave, which I think is pretty impressive. It's got a lot more bells and whistles than I am likely to need, or even figure out how to use. I've learned a lot about things like noise control, and fading out just at the end of a selection, so you don't get that abrupt cutoff.

Through MusicMatch's Help facility, I've sent a message to their tech support. I'm impressed with that, too. Not only does it call for a description of the user's equipment, and then narration of the problem, but with the user's permission (I gave mine) it examines your system and sends all kinds of parameters to MusicMatch, to help them diagnose what to do.

Dave O.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From:
Date: 19 Apr 03 - 11:07 PM

Actually, the software that burns the CD converts from either WAV, MP3 or RA/RM files.

Many of the will do MP3 or WAV.

The format on an Audio CD is NOT WAV, but a different format specifically for playing as an audio file. I believe it is similar to WAV in that it is uncompressed.

If you copy wav files on a data CD, it won't play in CD Players.

Burning software converts from WAV and either MP3 or Real audio files. Real One can do all three.

Some can take in WMA files as well.

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 21 Apr 03 - 09:54 PM

Well, my mystery is solved.   More's the pity.

The technical support function of MusicMatch, based on diagnostic details I provided, told me that I have no CD-R drive.

What I ordered from TigerDirect was a package they specifically held out as having CD-R capabilities. But what they gave me was a unit with a DVD drive without CD-R.

I called them today. They shunted me off to Compaq tech support. They
told me that the workstation I bought was supplied to retailers with different drives, including both CD-R and DVD drives. In effect, they told me nicely that it's too bad that TigerDirect sent me the wrong machine, but it's not Compaq's fault; go back to TigerDirect.

I did so. First they tried to tell me that when I bought the machine, in January, what they were offering was the machine with DVD. I informed them that their own site, both then and now, specified a CD-RW drive. The young man tried the "it's changed, and but then it was DVD" line again, but I told him flatly that at that time their site was advertising it with CD-R (or perhaps it was CD-RW), and they had sent me something other. "Would you like to speak to my supervisor?" "Yes, please."

I informed the supervisor of their having supplied other than what they had been advertising and what I had ordered. He didn't even try the "it was different then" approach. Instead, he declined to do anything because it had been too long (about 88 days now), and they would (he said "could") do nothing. Sure.

I informed him, "Well, you can be sure that I'll badmouth you as well as I can."   And I will, and I have, and I am doing so herewith. To supply other than what you advertise and then try to avoid making it good is despicable, in my book. I advise anyone concerned to be careful with this (what I consider) shyster outfit.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Tech: Doing CD at home; need tech help
From: NicoleC
Date: 22 Apr 03 - 02:08 AM

Dave -- Squeeky wheel and all that. Forget the supervisor; s/he probably doesn't have any authority anyway. Time to write a polite but firm letter to the President of TigerDirect, stating the problem with false advertising of Compaq OEM equipment and clearly state the resolution you want from them. Hope you got the supervisor's name; if not, specify date and time of the conversation.

Don't forget to CC --
Compaq Corporate Headquarters:
Hewlett-Packard Company
3000 Hanover Street
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1185
Attn: Jeff Clark, Executive Vice President, Global Operations

Mis-advertising of Compaq OEM equipment is a HUGE no-no. Compaq/HP pays various resellers handsome sums of co-op advertising dollars to cover advertising costs of catalogs, etc. They don't want to pay for erroneous advertising, and they don't like resellers who refuse to service the customer.