HELP: DMC Audio Input Player Screwed Up

[petriburg]

Re: HELP: DMC Audio Input Player Screwed Up

Hi,
I am yet another happy user of dB software. All the above hints are valid, and I think the uninstall/reinstall action is certainly one which can do no harm, and is quite likely to help - it has done on several occasions here!
Now, here's another thing which you can do, and is by no means time-consuming. One or both of your drives may be configured to Digital Playback mode (WindowsXP does this by default, it seems). To check this, go to Device Manager, then right click on each drive designator in turn, and open 'Properties', then click the 'Properties' tab in the new properties window, and you will see toward the bottom of this window a tick box enabling Digital Playback. Windows makes a note here that says 'You can use digital instead of analog playback of CD audio.......' and concludes by saying you should disable this function by unticking the box if you are having audio problems. So, UNTICK this box, for both of your drives, and try out your system again. If it works, well and good. If not, nothing lost, and if you want, you can go back and reverse the settings again.
Good luck!

[xoas]

Re: HELP: DMC Audio Input Player Screwed Up

Any special procedures that must be followed? I have windows XP

Not really. Go to Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs and select and remove dBpowerAMP Music Converter. Then reinstall from your download file. If you downloaded dMC release 10.1, consider downloading and installing dMC release 11 beta from the beta section of the forum. If you do this, you shouldn't have to worry about the uninstall, that will happen in the course of the installation. The only other "trick" is to download to default locations (some users have run into difficulty trying to download to some other location (it can be done but you have to download all the components to the same place). You will find a list of changes from release 10.1 to release 11 in the beta section.

Since your experience with being unable to rip a track on one occasion was a one-time occurrance, I am at a loss as to what to recommend. If you run into further such error messages, you might want to keep us posted on the issue. Such messages have arisen with trying to rip copy-protected cd's (usually either the first or last tracks) or trying to perform conversions which the program or computer cannot handle (like trying to convert to mp3 at a compression of 16 kbs). When I have had crashes, it seems as though they occur when I am ripping, playing music and doing other tasks at the same time (a bad habit of mine). However, I have not had really serious problems (programs shut down, I restart the computer and all is well again).

With respect to your garbled playback problem I want to ask if you have dBpowerAMP Audio Player (dAP) installed and, if so, whether you have release 2 or the release 3 beta version. If you do not have either installed, I would suggest installing it (its free). If you follow Spoon's advice about switching to the r11 beta of dMC (and following Spoon's advice is almost always a good idea) then also download the dAP release 3 (also from the beta section). Together, they should do a better job of playing music while ripping (they feature other improvements as well). So try this and see if that makes a difference with your 5 second gargle in your read-only drive. Keep us posted.

[dalizard]

Re: HELP: DMC Audio Input Player Screwed Up

PROBLEM AREA DEFINED (CAUSE/SOLUTION STILL UNKNOWN):

The CMC converter will not correctly play a WAV file from the RO drive directly to audio (for monitoring), but will rip a WAV file into MP3 from that drive no problem. I noticed that the RO drive has an LED on the front that lights up when it is reading data.

1) When playing a WAV file directly to audio using the Roxio, Pyro, or Real Media disc player (which all play audio undistorted) that LED blinks on and off at a steady rate of about 2 to 3 times per second (estimate) as it plays. This must be the way it is supposed to work.

CMC PROBLEM:

When playing a WAV file from the CD to audio using the CMC player: the track starts playing (sound is good) and the LED stays continuously dark for about 5 seconds (audio sounds good during that time) then the LED lights and that is when the audio is garbled. The "light on" interval is maybe a half second long and you can hear sound but it is severely distorted during that interval. Then, it goes back to playing the track undistorted for five seconds with the LED off all during that time, then another "light on" half second burst where the audio is distorted while the drive is reading (this repeats indefinitely). The track keeps playing during the bursts (it doesn't "lose time"), but the audio is garbled while the drive is reading.

It appears that the CMC software is not telling the drive to "stop reading" at the correct times and that causes it to overload the memory which stores the digital data and then dumps it empty on every five second cycle. I do not know enough about this to know why it would do this.

RIPPING MP3

The CMC software does rip a WAV file to an MP3 file correctly. The LED indicator when ripping an MP3 file shows this: about five seconds on continuously at the beginning while it reads, about five seconds off, then about five seconds on. This must be the correct method because it produces an undistorted MP3 file.

The RW drive:

The CMC player does play a WAV file directly to audio without problem from the other drive (RW). But, it has no LED, so I can't see how it is communicating. Apparrently, it is talking to that one correctly because it works.


SUMMARY: there is a "communication protocol" error between the CMC WAV file player and the RO drive when playing a WAV file directly to audio. I have absolutely no idea why. The CMC software originally worked properly in my computer. I re-installed the CMC software last night and it did not fix the problem. That indiicates something in the computer is not the same as it was originally, but I have no idea what. It would be hard to imagine it is a hardware problem because the RO drive works perfectly with the Pyro, Roxio, and Real Media players. It also works with CMC when ripping to MP3. No way I could ask somebody to fix hardware that works with about 90% of the software trying to play with it, only failing with the player section of CMC.

It seems more likely that something in the XP OS was corrupted when the CMC ripper crashed and was talking to the RO drive at that time. However, it's odd that only the CMC player software is failing to "communicate" with the RO drive properly. Is it possible the CMC player software uses a different communication method or "driver" to address the RO drive?

At any rate, I have no way to fix whatever has gone wrong with CMC and the RO drive so I will have to use the RW drive exclusively with CMC.

[dalizard]

Re: HELP: DMC Audio Input Player Screwed Up

With respect to your garbled playback problem I want to ask if you have dBpowerAMP Audio Player (dAP) installed and, if so, whether you have release 2 or the release 3 beta version.

No. All I have is the DMC converter basic software with the Power pack. I just use the player to "preview" songs from the playlist to see which ones I want to rip into memory. Thats why I use the player inside the CMC converter: that is where I am when I need to play the track.

[Spoon]

Re: HELP: DMC Audio Input Player Screwed Up

By wav you mean a standard audio cd? (one you could buy at a music shop?)

and by player you mean the play button below the Rip button (in Audio CD Input), rather than my audio player - dBpowerAMP Audio Player?

[petriburg]

Re: HELP: DMC Audio Input Player Screwed Up

We might get closer to solving your problem if you were to confirm (or deny) whether you have tried all the actions which have been recommended to you by (unpaid) highly satisfied users of these applications. As it is, you appear to be repeating a lot of stuff without having taken the trouble to try these solutions.
And for heaven's sake, refer to the dBpoweramp Music Converter as dMC, and not CMC as you have done throughout these posts - that's confusing!

[dalizard]

Re: HELP: DMC Audio Input Player Screwed Up

We might get closer to solving your problem if you were to confirm (or deny) whether you have tried all the actions which have been recommended to you by (unpaid) highly satisfied users of these applications. As it is, you appear to be repeating a lot of stuff without having taken the trouble to try these solutions.

I tried the suggestion from Petriburg. It did nothing. I did not try downloading any new players because the point is to find out what's wrong.

"As it is, you appear to be repeating a lot of stuff without having taken the trouble to try these solutions."

No, actually, if you read the last main post titled:

"PROBLEM AREA DEFINED (CAUSE/SOLUTION STILL UNKNOWN): "

You will se that what I did was very precise sequence of actions to isolate the location of the problem and define exactly what the mechanism of it is..... in repsonse to a previous e-mail criticising me for being vague and not defining the problem well.

The problem is that the DMC player is not communicating with the RO drive correctly and I have no idea why it does that or why it started doing it after a crash while ripping a CD.

"By wav you mean a standard audio cd? (one you could buy at a music shop?) "

YES

" and by player you mean the play button below the Rip button (in Audio CD Input), rather than my audio player - dBpowerAMP Audio Player?"

I don't fully understand that question. What I mean by player is when the Icon is clicked on the DMC converter and the playlist comes up. You either double click on a track or select a track and hit the play button. That is the player I am referring to. It is what I use to preview a track before ripping it to MP3.

Obviously some other player loaded into the machine might or might not play correctly. I have three others that play correctly (Pyro, Roxio, and Real Media). The point is not to play tracks, it is to be able to preview tracks in the list and decide whether to rip them to MP3 or skip them. Obviously, opening some other player to do this and then come back to the ripper is a time waster.

[Spoon]

Re: HELP: DMC Audio Input Player Screwed Up

Which audio cd was it? some Audio cds install (hidden) copy protection programs onto your pc that mess CD rippers.

[dalizard]

Re: HELP: DMC Audio Input Player Screwed Up

Just loaded the Audio Player. EXACTLY the same symptoms as the player in the DMC converter: plays MP3 files from my drive no problem. When I try to play a standard CD from the RO drive, I get a problem with the drive reading: The LED shows five seconds of undistorted audio playing with the LED off, then a half second burst where the LED lights and the drive is reading data during which time the audio sound is garbled. Then five seconds of clean audio (LED off/not reading) followed by a garble burst, repeat indefinitely.


"Which audio cd was it? some Audio cds install (hidden) copy protection programs onto your pc that mess CD rippers."

I have tried at least a dozen CD's, and everyone plays on all the other players. It is not a "copy protection" issue because I am not trying to copy them, just play them using the DMC player software.

Assuming it was theoretically possible the initial CD that was ripping when DMC ripper crashed had a "trojan horse" sabotage virus in it, then why is it I ripped that very same CD to MP3 one minute later and it created the MP3 files no problem? The only thing damaged so far is the audio player, not the ripper. More accurately, the player seems to no longer be able to tell the RO drive how and when to read the data stream into memeory and when to read the memory out for audio conversion. That is what is malfunctioning. The players that work (Pyro, Roxio, and Real Media) read data on and off steadily at about a 3 Hz rate continuosly (the LED goes on and off regularly all the time). The DMC is the only one with the "five seconds no reading/1/2 second burst, five seconds no read, burst, etc" cycle which does not work because the audio garbles during the long reading interval.

Both the DMC player in the ripper as well as the DMC audio player I just install behave exactly the same way.

[Spoon]

Re: HELP: DMC Audio Input Player Screwed Up

Visit Support >> Audio CD Input

there is a link to Nero Drive speed, install it and extend the spin down time.