Hi there
  I’m experiencing an kind of digital scratching noise in the background of audio CDs I burn on my NEC ND-6500A (A DVD RW+-drive). I notice it increases with higher speeds – on 4x it’s minor, building up towards the end of the CD (from about 40mins on..). At 10x you can all but hear the music. Could anyone confirm if the drive is meant to write (audio) at these speeds- and whether there’s anything I might do?   I’m using firmware 203D and Verbatim and Maxell discs (running at 10x and 4x respectively..). Also, it’s a Dell Inspiron laptop.   Thanks so much   Tom Herts, UK

I don't do any burning on a laptop, but a couple of things you may wish to do... defrag your disc before a burn... it will help with the buffer control... Check to insure DMA is enabled in the device manager for the IDE controllers.  You may be in PIO mode...  Disable your active virus scanner during the burn.

Try those and if problems continue, post a little more detail about your laptop and configuration (software installed, etc).

(in reply to Epicurious)

Hi

Thank you for getting back. I have tried following these tips, but still, no joy.

I'm on Nero 6.6. The laptop is running winXP home and I've disabled everything unnecessary. (The IDE is set to 'DMA if possible').

I'm pretty much out of ideas on this, though note the one thing that does seem consistent is the way the 'scratching' increases with increased burn speed..
The other more extreme notion I had was that Nero was originally set to 'overburn', which according to the disclaimer can damage the hardware. This I think unlikely.. but that's my best theory for now..

Cheers again for your interest
Tom


nb. It's a Dell Inspiron 510m w/512memory, 40gig h/d 1.4gz

(in reply to SithTracy)

Did the NEC drive come with the Dell, you may want to see if you can get warranty service on it... how does the thing do with data discs?  Also, what kind of media are you burning on?

(in reply to Epicurious)