Apologies if this request, centred as it is, around arguably lo-fi kit, offends the purists. I burn a lot of CDs. This is because I receive a lot of DLs, for the purposes of reviewing. Of late I have noticed an irksome problem, namely that occasional tracks, not all, are foreshortened by the process, lopping off any music running much over the 4 or 5 minute mark, ending them abruptly, mid-track.
Reading the various web solution pages, they say the usual, i.e. use good quality CRrs, slow the speed or recording and turn off other programmes. Currently I use ACCU-DISC pro series, which have a good name, if not the best. I am using a RIODDAS burner via my 2024 MacBook Pro. I have used a lens cleaner disc. I have recorded at everything from 8x to 4x to 1x but it stil happens. For the two main offenders, I have tried different DLs, i.e. the ones sent by the PR agents and also downloaded and paid for the Bandcamp equivalents. It makes no difference, each resultant copy around 5 minutes short of what it should be, spread across a handful of the longer tracks.
I recall @fentonsteve talking about the difference between CD and DVD burners, but that, given the economies and that most DVD burners handle both, very few companies can be arsed to differentiate, and sell the DVD option to do both. Could this be the issue, and, if so, how do I find a dedicated CD burner with the right coloured laser? None of the manufactures go into such detail.
Or any other bright ideas?
FWIW, the 2 culprits are the debut by Common Culture and the Real Life reprise, Evolution, by Joan as Police Woman.
Burner cuts tracks short
by 52 Comments
I can’t help but thought I would mention that clicking on ‘continue reading’ takes you to FentonSteve’s page rather than show the rest of your post.
Glad it wasn’t just me making random dumb clicks that led to that experience!
Could it be the software? I know nothing of Apple computers. Windows Media Player stopped working last year for the purposes you mention….well, certainly for automatically naming the tracks. I’ve had nothing but trouble with it since Windows dumped it, so I looked elsewhere. DB Poweramp was just the thing, and it comes with a free 21 day trial(full version free trial). I got all I wanted done for free. I need to get a new PC as Windows 10 will stop working soon. I will gladly pay for DB Poweramp then. So maybe try different burning software?
That’s what I suspect – it sounds like some setting in the burning software is causing the issue.
@retropath2 – what burning software are you using, and in what form do the downloads arrive – are you changing their format before you burn the discs? If so, what software do you use for that task?
I should add that, like Stevie above, I know nothing at all about Apple tech.
My thought too. Software issue. Using a Mac probably doesn’t help, there are frequently busy body restrictions requiring incomprehensible key combinations to get around.
They arrive as either mp3 or wav, sometimes both. I download as either, but sometimes need to convert WAV to mp3 to play on Apple Music, via a Media Human converter. (I don’t know why only sometimes, as they sometimes can play and sometimes can’t.)
Burning software is via RIODDAS external ODD & HDD device, I presume, as MacBooks, grr, no longer have CD drives. Stop press, no, that is just, I gather, the vehicle, as the software is the in-built MAC-OS one. Or so I read…….
I’m sure someone else can suggest what Apple-friendly software you should try, but it sounds to me like it may be entirely possible that the native MAC-OS ability to burn orange book (i.e. standard format) based audio CDs is the thing at fault here.
My only suggestion is to try converting everything to Wav format before burning.
Yes – this – the audio CD standard uses wav files as the default form. I usually burn using Nero Burning ROM under Windows, which has a setting specifically for audio CDs; you line up the wavs in the order you want, and Nero does the re-organising so that a CD player will recognise the thing as an audio disc. You should try to adopt the same process (in its Apple guise).
I have burnt it as WAV, as MP£, from Bandcamp and from, as it arrived, via google drive. All the same. Any track over 4 minutes loses its extra time. Yet no issue with Stramash II, where al the tracks are 5 minutes plus and up to nearly 10.
That’s annoying. The only time I’ve ever had any trouble was 15+ years ago, using a Flac plugin for Nero, burning to CDR direct from Flac files.
If I decoded the Flac files to Wav, then burned from Wav to CDR with Nero (without the Flac plugin), it was fine.
I have not burned a CDR for years.
I use some software called Burn on a Mac, which seems to work pretty well (although I only use for burning video and not tried audio). It should do all the necessary conversions for you from whatever source file you present.
Its free software and available here….
https://burn-osx.sourceforge.io/Pages/English/home.html
Thanks all. I’m wondering if it is some sort of bug in the actual files, to discourage copying to disc??? I will monitor the situation over future travails.
That occurred to me. Paranoid record company inserts bug into review streams to discourage the home burning that is killing music?
I know little of this witchery as I don’t burn discs but my first thought was is this some variation of DRM.
Try loading the file into Audacity (or Mac equivalent) then saving/exporting to Wav. A bit of a faff, but it will strip out any metadata.
Good call – this is definitely worth trying if you have access to Audacity.
Ah, but, you have a Mac…
…does the @retropath2 gaff have a PC down the back of a sofa somewhere?
Those crayzee guys and gals are ahead of me!
https://www.audacityteam.org/download/mac/
Excellent, I had no idea.
Can you play the songs without having to burn a CD? Nearly all my CDs are ripped to lossless FLAC or ALAC on my computer and can be played on portable players (FiiO!) or streamed across a home network and even outside my home using Plexamp. Burning a CD hasn’t been necessary for me for a decade or more (if I download files from iTunes (not lossless) or Qobuz or equivalent). My Blu-ray player can also play such files from a USB stick
Sure, but habits and preferences die hard…..
It had been a long time since I needed to burn a CD, as I also generally rip any CDs I get and play music files from my PC.
For the most recent CD Swap I had great trouble burning CDs (on Windows 11) using MediaMonkey’s built-in CD Burner or from Exact Audio Copy (EAC). Lots of unplayable “coasters” resulted.
I thought it was a faulty USB CD/DVD drive at first but my spare one gave the same negative results. In a hurry to meet the swap deadline I ended up downloading some alternative free disc-burning software -CDBurnerXP- and the problem was solved. Then I uninstalled EAC and reinstalled it and it’s worked fine ever since. Unfortunately in the context of this post, EAC is Windows software only.
Get this, used it for years, brilliant.
https://www.thomann.co.uk/steinberg_wavelab_elements_13.htm?msclkid=846cbfeb31d11034301ed5c67aa7d12b&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Shopping%20UK&utm_term=4576304864609286&utm_content=SW
I have a full copy of Wavelab 11 that I got as a freebie when I bought some guitar tech, but I haven’t yet found a file wrangling function it has that Audacity can’t also do – for free!
You can do your edits, compile your cd, set the CD text, sort out levels etc and burn all in the same environment. Plus the onboard plugins are excellent.
Retro: do let us know when/if you get it to work – and how.
I’m glad you asked! I think it is the new external burner, as it has just lopped 6 minutes off the new Hanging Stars. That came via DISCO, one of the commoner options used instead of Dropbox. I am away this week, but will try it once more with different burning software, on return, and then, I fully expect, get rid the RIODDAS, and seek a refund.
Are there external burners that are better than the bog average? Apple no longer make their own, that being the last one I had faith in, and that, too, died after a couple of years!!
I use this from Verbatim….
https://www.verbatim-europe.com/en/optical-drives/products/ultra-hd-4k-external-slimline-blu-ray-writer-43888
Main reason for this choice was it was USB-C so could connect direct to the MacBook and not have to use an adapter. Had no issues with it – mainly used for ripping Blu-Ray, but have done some DVD burning successfully
Could it be that the Mac isn’t always allocating enough cache memory for the burn process?
Not sure how you’d correct that, if it’s so. Are you burning discs while doing something memory-intensive with the Mac at the same time?
Is your burner plugged into a USB port on the Mac’s mainboard or from a USB hub off the mainboard? Straight off the mainboard is the recommended way.
Please explain exactly what you mean by on/off the main board. It isn’t my first language.
Does your Mac have the correct USB socket to allow direct connection of the burner? Or do you need to use an adaptor? Eg, my Mac only has USB-c sockets – so I have a hub/adaptor with different sizes of socket and a USB-c connector, needed to upload/download from old-fashioned USB sticks.
I’m fairly sure this is what Mike means.
If that’s the case, use a cable with the correct USB connectors on either end. Or use a type A to type C adaptor. When burning CDs, don’t use a USB hub between Mac and CD drive.
I suspected that was the meaning. Have tried both, as the RIODDAS machine has both USB connectors. I tried both the c and the tradtional, that via a connector. But I will report back in due course, as said, on return home.
My external disc drive was not recognized with my new Mac using an A to C adapter. I bought a new cable and that worked
Yeah, I’ve got one like that for charging Mrs F’s iPhone 15 or 16. Works fine when charging but not for data transfer.
Could you not simply send a track by email to someone and ask them to attempt to burn it? I would offer, but I haven’t done it for years, and as I said before, Windows media player has changed a lot recently, so I don’t even know if it still burns. If nothing else, it would eliminate the track from the problem, or of course, prove that it was the problem.
If a track plays properly to completion on the Mac, then all of the data is there, correctly orchestrated as an audio file. Burning it to an external digital medium – a CD-R – should allow an external device – a CD player – to replicate the same completion.
Therefore the usual suspects are this lot:
a) the file transfer process that moves the 1s and 0s from the source file on the hard drive to the external CD burner via the Universal Serial Bus (USB), which is under the control of the Operating System on the Mac, which might be doing other things at the same time, or
b) with the application on the Mac that uses that file transfer mechanism and orchestrates the replication of the received 1s and 0s for burning to the recording layer of the target CD-R; this is the CD burning software that is in use, or
c) there is a sneaky form of digital DRM in use within the tracks that are being truncated – it is entirely possible to equip digital files with embedded metadata to prevent changes or other actions being made with or to a file; this is how some commercial systems control things like digital security, and it may be that there is a way for the same technique to signal ‘end-of-file’ at a predetermined position within an audio stream, or
d) with the physical USB cable that the CD burning software via the Mac Operating System uses to transfer the 1s and 0s seamlessly, exactly and completely, at the external CD burner and which might just be a cheap piece of wire originating in far Cathay, or
e) with the physical external CD drive itself, which having received the incoming data stream via the USB and the CD burning software, then instructs the laser to burn pits – representing 1s and 0s – on the CD-R recording layer, or even
f) crappy target blank CD-Rs (not in this case, I think).
I’m increasingly thinking it a cabling thing and am excited to check that out/make more coasters over the w/e, when I get home.
Warning:
Making a lot of coasters might mean you’ll have to drink more, in order to make use of them.
STOP PRESS!!! Yes, a cabling thing. I have now a kosher Apple USB to USBc and it has burnt all the requisite minutes. and then transferred on in complete.
Huzzah! Air black wiv ‘ats!
Remember that, the next time someone says “all cables are the same”.
Phew.
As an admitted almost sceptic of the differences between bits of wire, I am repent.
Ah, so it was indeed a cheap piece of wire, possibly originating in far Cathay, and maybe even using aluminium as a conductor, rather than copper, which costs more.
It was a cheap mult-function adaptor of all sorts of connections, ranging from usb, usb3, scandiscs of various sizes and lord knows what else. Possibly a bribe from a drug company, found at the back of a drawer after my previous Apple one broke.
I have one of those. Handy for charging phones and suchlike when out and about, but not for data transfer purposes.
I am mystified. I thought cables just transmitted stuff from one end to the other. I didn’t think there would be any selectivity – either on/off or intermittently on/off. Clearly this is not the case but I wonder why.
Connectors vary in quality – the pins of a USB-C are tiny. Cables vary in quality – the stranding of the copper, the dielectric properties of the insulator, the positions of the wires (relative to each other) within the cables. The quality of the crimping where the cable meets the connector. Bends in the cable can squeeze wires further together, or further apart, than they should be. Basically, a data cable is a “Transmission Line” and the whole thing is ruled by the laws of Physics.
USB-C cables have to pass data at speeds up to 10GB/s, which is a bit like trying to drive a F1 car round the Nürburgring on cross-ply tyres.
Thanks Fents!
In video world, not all USB C cables are created equal. Charging cables generally don’t carry video and I know of at least one colleague who thought they were recording to an SSD but either weren’t or the recording was corrupted, I forget.
https://www.anker.com/blogs/cables/are-all-usb-c-cables-data-cables
I had, in the past, some USB A to Micro B “charger” cables, which lack the two data wires. Cheapskates!
They second time I used one, hoping to transfer a podcast to the Fiio, they all went straight in the bin.