CD Writer crashes & lacks features

**Wayne** · January 20, 2006, 10:06 AM

Re: CD Writer crashes

I bought the dBpowerAMP CD Writer [Fully Loaded], and I am feeling a little disappointed right now. First off, There is no way to reduce the spacing between songs.)

Did you buy dCW before trying out the trial version? If you had tried the trail version first you would have known that it doesn't support gapless CD creation.

Albums like Pink Floyd's The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon have tracks that run together and contain pieces of the previous songs in the following songs.

Is this a really problem with dCW? Could it be a problem related to how the tracks are held on the CDs and hence being ripped from it?

Wayne

**javajeff** · January 20, 2006, 11:13 AM

Re: CD Writer crashes

Originally posted by Wayne

Did you buy dCW before trying out the trial version? If you had tried the trail version first you would have known that it doesn't support gapless CD creation.

Wayne

I tried it a long time ago, and I never noticed it was not there. I assumed it would be there since this company advertises quality products and has every other feature imaginable. What about the crashing Wayne?

**ChristinaS** · January 20, 2006, 01:42 PM

Re: CD Writer crashes & lacks features

What exatly are you trying to do with dCW ? Are you trying to copy an audio cd using dCW for burning and using as source another audio cd - do you have 2 cd drives? or simply to burn an audio cd from various file types on your HD ? Or burn an mp3 cd?

**dbample** · January 20, 2006, 03:53 PM

Re: CD Writer crashes

Quote:
Albums like Pink Floyd's The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon have tracks that run together and contain pieces of the previous songs in the following songs.

Originally posted by Wayne

Is this a really problem with dCW? Could it be a problem related to how the tracks are held on the CDs and hence being ripped from it?
Wayne

I guess I am showing my age, but hey! This is Pink Floyd - surely you know the albums :smile: I know precisely what the original poster is talking about, and it has nothing to do with problems with the CD. It is just that the album is one long track, and the songs are only formally separated without any actual "ends" and "beginning" in the audiostream as it rolls from the "end" of one song into the "beginning" of another. And in fact at the "beginning" of a new song you could still hear bits and pieces from the previous one - it is mixed that way on purpose. These kinds of albums - you need a gapless recorder for them to transfer them in the way they flow on the original CD.

**xoas** · January 20, 2006, 04:34 PM

Re: CD Writer crashes

Well if you wanted to copy the CD as a whole without separate tracks, I believe you can do this but then you wouldn't be able to access the separate tracks as (I believe) you could with the CD in a CD player. You would do this with the "Rip As One Option" in dMC Audio CD Input. You can also use that option to start or stop tracks at spots other than the designated started or stop of the track (useful for live albums or for cases where two or more tracks flow together seamlessly or, as in this case, have some overlap).

dCW however will always place a gap wherever there are tracks. This is a limitation of the burning engine that Spoon uses for dCW. Reportedly he has spoken with the author of the burning engine and he reportedly is not interested in pursuing or in authorizing others to pursue gapless burning with his engine. dMC 12 will feature some features including cue sheet support which will help with ripping gapless tracks and with helping to assure gapless playback but until such a time as a new burning engine is devised I doubt dCW will be able to support gapless burning.

The crashing is a different matter. It looks like a problem that can be resolved but to help JavaJeff we do need a bit more background. So Christina's (in post #4) questions are a good place to start. In addition, it would be helpful to know a bit more about the procedure JavaJeff is using (is he adding a few tracks at a time, is he adding a whole bunch of tracks at once, are all the tracks being added/converted to CD in the same format, whether he has tried lowering the priority of his conversions, confirming that this is a conversion problem which occurs prior to burning).

Best wishes,
Bill

**javajeff** · January 21, 2006, 01:44 AM

Re: CD Writer crashes & lacks features

I ripped "The Wall" from the CD into 192k mp3s, and placed them in a folder "The Wall." Using the dBpowerAMP CD Writer, I select the songs from CD1 for example, and click the arrow key. The tracks start to go through a conversion process. After the last track is completed, it crashes. I get the impression that the last track completed and the program is in the process of doing something else or reportnig that it completed that process to the user. The reason I think that is because when I reopen the program, all the songs are there on the left ready to burn. However, I dont trust it because of the error. So, I remove all the songs, repeat the same process, and it completes without crashing the second time.

As far as gapless recording goes, I used to be able to make a CD copy with older programs that came with my burners. It would copy the CD exactly like the original.

As for being disappointed with the program. I am not disappointed with dbpoweramp as a ripper. I am only disappointed with the writer since I find it to have few features and be unstable. However, I have wanted to give the creators of this program money for a while, so I am happy to support future development.

**xoas** · January 21, 2006, 03:43 AM

Re: CD Writer crashes & lacks features

Are you trying to make a CD audio from your mp3 files or an mp3 disc with tracks in mp3 format?

As an experiment, if you select all the tracks from CD1 except for the last track, will it still crash at the end of the conversion process? Likewise if you select all but the last 2 tracks? Can you find a numbe of tracks that you can convert for burning that will NOT crash? The idea is to try to first see if the problem is with a specific track and, if not, if the problem is related to the number of tracks you convert at once.

Back to your issue about dealing with this type of crash. You can use the Preview function to check out whether the tracks you converted for burning are OK or not. To be on the safe side I have, in similar circumstances (working on preparing an mp3 disk) found it safe to simple delete and reconvert the last track (rather than the whole CD or set of tracks).

Best wishes,
Bill

**javajeff** · January 21, 2006, 05:32 AM

Re: CD Writer crashes & lacks features

Originally posted by xoas

Are you trying to make a CD audio from your mp3 files or an mp3 disc with tracks in mp3 format?

CD audio from mp3 files.

I tried different combos, and cannot reproduce the crash with consistency. I can get a consistent crash by doing a first run attempt with different albums. After I reload the program, it seems to run fine.

**xoas** · January 21, 2006, 06:04 PM

Re: CD Writer crashes & lacks features

When crashes occur, will they still only occur with the last track of a batch (or the only track for a single conversion)?
Do your mp3 file tags contain cover art, unicode characters, or long Comment fields?Are you using File Selector, Windows Explorer, dMC or dCW to start/run your conversion to CD?

I suspect you may get best results starting and running the conversion through dCW, if that is not what you are doing already.

If you were to convert your mp3 files to wave first, do you get the same crash?
If you take the wave files and "convert" to CD through dCW do you get the same crash as if you converted from mp3?

If the answer to both of these questions is No, then you could try doing those two steps (although that kind of defeats the idea of using dCW).

Best wishes,
Bill

**javajeff** · January 22, 2006, 02:42 AM

Re: CD Writer crashes & lacks features

Originally posted by xoas

When crashes occur, will they still only occur with the last track of a batch (or the only track for a single conversion)?

They only occur with the last track of a batch.

Originally posted by xoas

Do your mp3 file tags contain cover art, unicode characters, or long Comment fields?

No. I add nothing.

Originally posted by xoas

Are you using File Selector, Windows Explorer, dMC or dCW to start/run your conversion to CD?

I only use dBpowerAMP CD Writer and have nothing else open.

Originally posted by xoas

If you were to convert your mp3 files to wave first, do you get the same crash?

I have not tried this and will not bother. I would rather use a different program to run on my perfectly maintained machine than create extra steps. I have no use for .wav files.

Originally posted by xoas

If you take the wave files and "convert" to CD through dCW do you get the same crash as if you converted from mp3?

Sorry, but I am going to stick to mp3 files.

I did solve my gapless burning problem by buying Alcohol 120%. It takes an image of the CD, then burns an exact duplicate.

**xoas** · January 22, 2006, 03:51 PM

Re: CD Writer crashes & lacks features

Sorry, but I am going to stick to mp3 files.

Not a problem. My guess is that wav files would crash in the same way.

The only other suggestion that springs to mind is setting your conversion priority to "Below Normal". You set this in the window that shows the progress of your conversion. I would personally recommend that you set this in dMC first but you could equally well do this with dCW after you start your conversion process. This will not slow down your conversions (it may, if anything, speed them up) but it should reduce any possibility that your problems are associated with other programs vying for system resources while you are converting.

We have had intermittant reports of the kind of crash you describe and I have experienced these myself, but all of the other instances I recall involved creating an mp3 disc not a standard CD. In many cases (though not in mine), dCW would briefly appear to duplicate the tracks it was converting, then crash, and upon re-starting there would only be one set of new tracks. The other feature of this problem was that it seemed to only arise after a certain amount of the prospective CD had already been created. All in all, it appears that there is some kind of hiccup that the program issues from time to time in the conversion process at the end of converting a batch of files.

Thank you for your reports and your patience. If you can determine anything else that might help Spoon isolate the source of this problem so he can fix it (as you may know, he is the programmer behind all of the dBpowerAMP products as well as being pretty much the whole opf the paid staff), please do let us know.

Best wishes,
Bill

**javajeff** · January 23, 2006, 01:53 PM

Re: CD Writer crashes & lacks features

I am sure that I will use the program a lot in the future. I just built this computer and have been playing with drivers and bios settings to make it perfect. While I think the writer program is extremely buggy to begin with, the crash could be even driver related. Anyways, it is no big deal. I will just delete the last file and add it back before burning. My main reason for the purchase was to support spoon and future development of the program. I have been meaning to buy it for a while.