Audio CDs run at max spin speed!

[DickK]

Hi,

I have a PC (bought in 2002, works perfectly otherwise) with XP pro and an Audigy 1 sound card. It has the following DVD and CD burner drives:

Samsung DVD-ROM SD-616T
Plextor CD-R PX-W4012A

These drives are the originals and exhibit no problems other than the following:

Whenever I attempt to play an ordinary audio CD in them, using either Windows Media Player or the Creative PlayCenter, the disk spins up to full speed and remains there. I don't remember noticing this prior to about 6 months/1 year ago (I don't use them for playing audio CDs that much).

Does anyone recognise this behaviour and perhaps have a solution? I've looked for items such as "spin up to an annoyingly fast speed for audio CDs" check-box in the device properties and couldn't find one.

The Creative drivers are up-to-date with respect to Creative's auto-update on their site.

XP is service pack 2 with latest fixes up to about 2 months ago.

Thanks in advance.

Dick

PS: forgot to add that apart from the spin speed, the audio CDs play fine. The whirring of the drives is audible over any sound at "normal" volume.

eta: more detail

 

[alfaniner]

Do you have some kind of automatic service running that perhaps goes out to the internet to get the titles of the tracks?

 

[DickK]

Media player and the creative player do this, sure, but they've always done that, it's not an XP service. Not sure how that might make the disks run at max revs though.

 

[kevin]

Media player and the creative player do this, sure, but they've always done that, it's not an XP service. Not sure how that might make the disks run at max revs though.

media player can be configured to auto-import cd's inserted into them. to do this quickly they treat the cd as a data disk and spin it at full speed. Once the disc has been imported the disc should stop spinning.

default import setting is to auto-import as DRM protected WMA.

 

[DickK]

Kevin, in media player, the "rip cd when inserted" check box was unchecked, and I unchecked "add music files to library when played". It's still doing it so I'll just let it run for a while and see what occurs. Thanks.

 

[Rat]

If you have a look at the drive properties for either of the drives, under the 'Properties' tab, is digital extraction enabled? Whichever it's set to, change it and apply, then insert a CD and see if it still happens. It may just be reading ahead to prevent skipping.

Cheers,
Rat.

 

[DickK]

Thanks Rat (and all), I'll give that a go. I know digital is set for both drives at the moment, so I'll uncheck it and try that...I'll get back here with the result, probably tomorrow, I'm spending the rest of the evening in the garden, it's too damned hot inside!

 

[DickK]

Turning off digital audio did nowt I'm afraid, still the same old Spitfire taking off

I think I'll just have to live with it, like I said, I don't really use the PC it for CD audio in any case.

Many thanks.

 

[Art Vandelay]

Have you tried copying the CD to the harddrive and then playing it from there?

 

[kevin]

possible anti-virus software decided to scan the whole disc?

Check your task list before inserting a disc, and after. see if a particular process starts up or starts using more cpu than before.

 

[DickK]

possible anti-virus software decided to scan the whole disc?

Check your task list before inserting a disc, and after. see if a particular process starts up or starts using more cpu than before.

Good suggestion Kevin. All that showed up was the Windows Media Player consuming 3-5%.

Have you tried copying the CD to the harddrive and then playing it from there?

Amazing, thanks, that worked! The CD no longer spins at all! Of course this would work, but is not a solution to the "think I'll just bung a CD in and listen to it while I'm surfing teh Interweb" requirement. Thanks though.

 

[Beerina]

Well, at least the drives can't get any faster. I already had a CD fly apart inside my computer, a copy of Roller Coaster Tycoon*.

Yes, I hadda disassemble the CD mechanism to get all the pieces out.


* Just to be obvious, by "copy", I mean original from the factory.

 

[richardm]

It may just be reading ahead to prevent skipping.

This sounds quite reasonable - resampling the CD to make sure there's as good as a result as possible. Sounds like it's being annoyingly keen though. Something like this might do the job for you.

 

[DickK]

This sounds quite reasonable - resampling the CD to make sure there's as good as a result as possible. Sounds like it's being annoyingly keen though. Something like this might do the job for you.

Thanks richardm, I'll give that a go. Cheers.

 

[DickK]

Hey, that worked nicely! I downloaded Nero DriveSpeed and it runs very sweetly, doesn't install anything either and sets the speed of the CD player from 40x down to 8x, which cures the problem. It switches everything back okay as well, you can just hit "Silent" or "Fast" buttons, neat!

I think the problem must have always existed, I just didn't play enough CD audio to notice.

One thing to note, DriveSpeed recognises the DVD player, but only reports one available speed (12x, I think), but the spin noise was always less on the DVD player, it was the CD player running at 40x that was the real noisy one.

Thanks a bunch all (cheers richardm for the pointer).

PS: not having to listen to the damned CD player over Hendix's "Red House" is a real relief.

 

[richardm]

Good news, glad to be able to help

 

[DickK]

..one last note, at full spin speed the CDs used to end up fit to fry an egg on, now they are merely "tepid" .

 

[Starthinker]

You are lucky all the bits didn't fly out to the outer rim of the CD. I think there's a demagnetizer that can cure that, if it did happen.

 

[DickK]

You are lucky all the bits didn't fly out to the outer rim of the CD. I think there's a demagnetizer that can cure that, if it did happen.

Yeah, I was worried about that for a while but these old disks always were very generous with the bit glue, so no probs, whew! Thanks Starthinker, always good to know I can count on you guys for support

 

[El_Spectre]

Hi,

I have a PC (bought in 2002, works perfectly otherwise) with XP pro and an Audigy 1 sound card. It has the following DVD and CD burner drives:

[snippy]

At a guess, I'd say that the software is probably pre-caching a lot of data, and then playing the buffer. The drive is going berzerk because it is reading ahead a lot.