Laarree's obsessive-compulsive CD> Apple Lossless project progress report

[laarree]

bwicklander wrote:
Im doing the same thing right now - CD or ink is uneven - happening to me too

Very interesting. There have got to be zillions more people who have experienced this on laptops, Minis and other small computers. Maybe my gewgle-fu was weak, but I've had to scrounge to find info about this slightly-uneven CD phenomenon. Or maybe it's my fate to always have rare problems.

[decay]

care to share a few off-kilter titles? maybe some of us nerds would also like to see if ours hum.

[(vikm)]

I'm also doing this using a new iMac and the biggest issue I'm having is that about 3 discs don't show up unless I launch disk utility.

[JoeM]

You could try cleaning one of the offending discs and then retrying it in the mini but I'll bet that isn't the issue. It is probably is the sensitivity of the slot loader to something on those discs. Also, there's an off chance that the connection to the logic board or the interconnect board may possibly be loose.

[motopsyco]

All of my DVD drives (internal and external) hum to some degree or another. My Minis are rather loud though. So far I cannot assign any problems with a drive spinning up a disc to the point of it humming and any problems, as I have not encountered any problems. I think the humming is nominal.

Cheers!

[mikebw]

My MacPro sounds like a full-on KitchenAid 12 quart stand mixer sometimes when ripping DVDs. I suspect the drive is not secure in the case but it gets the job done anyway.

[laarree]

The CDs in question are very clean, and the noise level difference between these and the other CDs is dramatic. There was the issue of other applications becoming unresponsive (e.g. showing spinning beachballs) while importing a track and becoming responsive again during the brief interval between tracks, so it's not just the noise, there are other symptoms going along with it.

[RAMd®d]

Even though the CD drive spins at very high RPM, it seems strange that the application of ink is enough to through a drive out of balance at all, let alone enough to be a problem.

I've had a few CDs that had a hole that was a tiny bit larger than spec. The CD slipped on the spindle, chattering a little, until it spun up enough that it eventually stopped slipping. It wasn't very long- somewhere less than 5s.

[laarree]

RAMd®d wrote:
Even though the CD drive spins at very high RPM, it seems strange that the application of ink is enough to through a drive out of balance at all, let alone enough to be a problem.

I've had a few CDs that had a hole that was a tiny bit larger than spec. The CD slipped on the spindle, chattering a little, until it spun up enough that it eventually stopped slipping. It wasn't very long- somewhere less than 5s.

Yeah, it's all kind of strange to me. In my experience, Mac Superdrives over the years have been odd ducks. For example, I've had data DVDs burned onto archival media and verified during the burning process that were unreadable on Mac Pros, but were readable of G4 Macs, and have encountered the same thing with commercial video DVDs. I think there are variations in the different DVD/CD readers/burners that Apple uses from different sources that account for this, but I'm not technically knowledgeable enough about this stuff to pinpoint what the problem is. All I know is that at work and at home, it's better to have at least a handful of optical drives of different makes and generations if you want to make sure that all your CDs and DVDs (both commercial and produced with your Mac) will all be readable.

[ka jowct]

I've got some disks that cause my MDD's optical drive (Pioneer DVR116) to make a horrible amount of noise. They rip very slowly, too. These tend to be older CDs. It's alarming: these things should NOT go bad just sitting in their cases on the shelves.