Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

[missnikkisixx]

I downloaded the converter for my boyfriend and thought I had done it properly. After trying to convert a burned CD of his band's new demo the songs were playing all weird. The sound is all in and out and muffled. So through further investigating I realized that my DVD-RW drive in my laptop is also playing music like this. I am totally freaking out, can anyone help. I don't know what to do, did I screw my disc drive forever? Or is it an easy fix?
HELLLLPPP!!!!!!

-nikki

[ChristinaS]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

I don't see what in the dBpowerAMP installation can have any such effect. It must be your player settings. What player are you using?

Are you playing an audio cd in your disk drive or an mp3 cd?

Are you talking about the quality of audio of any cd's or just one cd?

Did you check the Volume Controls? Maybe something is not enabled properly there.

Did you reboot your pc at all?

[LtData]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

dMC cannot break hardware unless the hardware wears out while spinning the CD drive or overheating causes the computer to lock-up or shutdown.

Check your DMA settings for the disc drive. Go to Control Panel --> System --> Hardware --> Device Manager. Once there, click "IDE/ATAPI Controllers" and double-click on the one named something like "Secondary Channel" or, if there is just one choice, double-click on it. Go to normally the second or third tab, and make sure your drive is set to "DMA if available" and NOT "PIO Only".

If you cannot set it to DMA, AND the secondary channel is a separate choice, close the properties window, right-click on the secondary channel, and click "uninstall". Click OK on the window, then click Action --> Scan for hardware changes. It should detect the secondary channel, if it does not restart. Make sure the drive is now set to DMA mode.

If this happened, why? Well, WinXP has a "feature" that sets drives to PIO mode if there are a lot of read errors. This results in CPU usage whenever you try to use your CD drive, and I mean HIGH CPU usage. It also makes any audio sound like absolute crap if it is played while the CD drive is in use in any form. You can still rip fine, just not rip and play audio of any sort, even speech software like Ventrilo or Skype sounds horrible.

[missnikkisixx]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

Thanks to the both of you for the support, I am a bit of a rookie and appreciate the advice. I'm going to to try out the suggestion and if it doesnt go well Ill be sure to try you back for some advice.

Happy Holidays!

-Nikki

[missnikkisixx]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

Hey LtData! Thanks for the advice. I went through and did what you said to do but everything was as it was supposed to be. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling PowerAmp, but that didnt work either. I feel like it is just a simple thing, like you suggested but I can't figure it out. Any other suggestions? Or should I just try taking it in to the "repair" shop to get looked at?

-Nikki

[LtData]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

What audio sounds weird? Audio off of CDs? Audio stored on the computer? Audio from any program whatsoever?

Have you tried a System Restore to back before the audio messed up?

[missnikkisixx]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

Hey LtData!

It is just audio from drive: any disc I put into drive (DVD/CD). Any other audio (ie, from itunes, MSN video, other music stored on my computer) sounds fine. However, when I play a disc in my drive it is totally whacked--it almost sounds like someone has their hand on the volume control and keeps turning it up and down really fast--so the sound is muffled and comes in and out. I only have one audio device on my computer: Conexant AMC Audio and it says that it is working fine. I tried enabling and disabling and restoring default settings to no avail. I hate to have to bother you with this, but my laptop was fine until I downloaded Poweramp and I'm at a loss here.

[LtData]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

Question: Does audio from other programs sound fine when you are ripping a CD?

[ChristinaS]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

Did you try this?

Click on My Computer > right click on your cd drive > select properties > select the Hardware tab > again select your cd drive and click Properties > Once more click the Properties tab > what does it say about Enable digital audio for this CD ROM device?

[missnikkisixx]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

Hey guys! Thanks again for you help.

LtData, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I haven't tried to rip any CDs-but all the sound from previously stored or internet sources is fine. It is just the sound that results from me playing disc in my drive.

Christina, after looking upon your suggestion-it was not enabled. However I enabled it then tested the sound and it still didn't work so I went back in and disabled it. I'm not sure which it is supposed to be-on or off.

[dbample]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

I downloaded the converter for my boyfriend and thought I had done it properly. After trying to convert a burned CD of his band's new demo the songs were playing all weird.

I don't think you have yet said exactly what was on that CD. And what were you converting the songs to? Was the burned CD a regular CD (PCM wav files)? Was it a CD with mp3 files? If the former, does it play with normal sound on a regular CD player (not your CD/DVD drive)?

Did you listen to the songs before converting them (if that applies)? If yes, did they sound fine? Which files did you listen to that started sounding funny - the converted ones (or the original ones on the CD, but after the conversion action)? If the converted ones, were they on your hard drive on your computer? In what format, what kbps (if lossy format)?

[missnikkisixx]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

Hello! Actually the CD consisted of 7 songs converted via itunes to AAC. However, I didn't use the CD after I realized they were already in my itunes library. So as I began converting the songs from my itunes library into mp3 something happened at song 3 and it stopped converting the songs. So, I stopped the whole process and thought maybe it was a problem with itunes and I restarted the CD to start converting from that source when the audio came on all distorted. Now privy to this, I was listening to the CD, because they were not named and I needed to rename them and the audio was fine--this was before I began any conversion process.

[ChristinaS]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

You were trying to play the aac files off of the cd while at the same time converting them from the cd to mp3?

In what player were you playing those files?

I think possibly the distorsion was due to using the cd drive for 2 things at the same time: playing files off of it and reading files off it for conversion purposes.

Have you rebooted that pc since then?

[missnikkisixx]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

Hey Christina!

No, I wasn't doing both at once. I began with the CD converter then by song three it had stopped converting. After which I stopped running the CD in my drive, replayed the converted songs to listen for distortion then switched back to listen to the CD for any errors (which I know was fine having burned the copy and listened to it several times on previous occasions) only to find that the sound was distorted. My laptop has been restarted, shut down, and restarted again several times since this unfortunate incident to no avail. Since noone can figure it out I'm going to have to take it to some friends for some diagnostic testing.

Thanks for replying, though.

-missnikkisixx

[ChristinaS]

Re: Help! Converter killed my Disc Drive!!!

Just one more thing. Did you follow what LtData says in post #3 in this thread concerning the DMA vs PIO setting on the cd rom drive?

What particular player is playing the files from that cd rom? Is it Windows Media Player?

Have you gone through volume controls (rigthclick bullhorn in task bar) to see what is enabled for Playback?