My Plextor sounds like ass

[Reverend Maynard]

Howdy all. Whenever I try to play a cd with my Plextor 24x10x40 it sounds horrible. Besides the static and scrathiness I get, it almost sounds like I can hear the drive spinning in the speakers. This happens whether I use an audio cable or use no cable and go digital. My Yamaha burner and my el cheapo DVD both play fine.

When I put it in about 2 weeks ago it took the place of my Yamaha burner, same cables and everything. The Yamaha had no problem playing whatsoever.

As far as ripping/copying cds, the Plextor is flawless.

I am running Win2k, with a Hercules GTXP sound card. I also have a Via based mobo, and although it has never given me an ounce of trouble, you never know.

Anyone seen/heard/experienced this before?

[paulcs]

Every time I've had poor sound or weird ass-like sounds coming from a ROM device, it's been the cable. Every single time. It might not be your problem, but it's happened to me a few times.

Paul
paulcs@speakeasy.net

[Sasq]

Do you have a digital out on the drive and a digital in on the sound card?

Had similar problems with my set up here till I connected the digital audio cable to the Live

Dan

[Reverend Maynard]

Okie dokie, I'll give the cable a try, as soon as my computer works again anyway. Something dreadful happend today and I have yet to have any clue what it is. I am trying desperately to back up what I can before I do a format.

I don't think I have ever had this much trouble with a computer, one that I built anyway.

[dZeus]

I've had exactly the same problem with my Plextor UltraPlex 32x SCSI CDROM drive... it was the analogue audio cable between the drive and the soundcard in my case. I could hear the drive spinup through the speakers, horrible sound quality, etc.

Just get rid of the audio cable at all.. you can enable digital audio playback in win2k/xp, which doesn't need any cable other than the one between the IDE/SCSI controller and the drive.

[Gurm]

Sounds like the shielding is bad. Or there's a short in there somewhere. Only 2 weeks old? Get it replaced.

- Gurm

[DentyCracker]

Digital Audio can be problematic. If the drive is only two weeks old I agree with Gurm, get it replaced. Use the spdif cable if you have it too. On an unrelated note what speeds do you hit when ripping audio. Nerospeed has timed my LTR-24102B at up to 46X on the outer tracks of an 80min CD. (An 82 minute Burn actually)

[dZeus]

denty, I'm curious about the kind of problems you might get with DAE in Windows enabled... never had any single problem, used it with a lot of different drives, but maybe I didn't know what kind of problems I should have been looking for

[DentyCracker]

Not on my system but my friend has a Slot A Athlon on an AMD 750 chipset mobo and a (yuck) 4XHP burner. Let me just go on the record as saying I hate early HP burners. There is also a Toshiba DVD in the machine. The soundcard is some generic thing, but not a built in one. The bottom line is that in XP as well as in Me before it, there is lots of horrible crackling and distortion with DAE enabled, which went away when I switched to a cable. Unfortunately this means that I can only use one fo the drives to play AudioCDs.

[Wombat]

One thing to keep in mind about HP burners is that they're just OEMs. Some of them have really sucked (back in the JVC and Phillips days), but the latest stuff are the same as Sony's offerings, because they ARE Sony's offerings. That said, I'd rather have a Lite-On Plextor than an HP Sony.