[kcm3]

Hello,

I just picked up a Sony Spressa Plus USB CD-RW. I'm pretty sure this has been discussed before, but is it possible to get a USB drive to burn audio at 4x? If so, whats the secret? So far, I have 100% success at 2x, and 0% at 4x.

I am using Toast Deluxe 4.1. I also have discribe, which came with the drive, but crashes on me all the time.

Thanks for any help,

Kyle

[Cipher13]

USB is your problem. I don't think USB can provide data fast enough to write at 4X.
Sorry, there isn't a way to remedy this without getting a new burner.
I have a SCSI and can burn audio at 8X no probs...
I'm unsure on all this, so anyone correct me if I'm wrong.

Cipher13

[exa]

Well, technically, USB can provide data fast enough (why would they have made a 4x burner for usb anyway?). USB can transfer at 12Mb/s, or 1.5Megs/s. 1x CD speed is 150k/s I believe, so 4x is 900k/s... You SHOULD be able to burn at full speed... are there any other data hogging devices on your usb chain? If so, try removing them and then burning, with the cable plugged directly into the computer.... hope that helps... Oh, and don't try "verifying" with that drive, it would take quite a while to do so with usb drives (around 20 mins? My scsi burner takes 1 min maybe?)

[Trapper]

Well, so far I've had no problems burning audio at 4x with my USB ZipCD-RW. However, I always unplug everything else except the keyboard and mouse when I use the burner. If I leave my hub plugged in, there doesn't seem to be enough power to run everything.

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Travis Hreno
Department of Philosophy
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario
CANADA
threno@julian.uwo.ca

[This message has been edited by Trapper (edited 06-14-2000).]

[kcm3]

I'm pretty sure USB has enough bandwidth to do 4x, because I can burn data at 4x no problem. Its only audio that causes me trouble.

And there is nothing else hooked to my usb at the time. I have an iBook, and the burner is the only thing hooked to my usb port. straight in, no hub.

Kyle

Well, I just got the Spressa USB from Sony a couple of days ago and it's a wonderful drive (contrary to all the bad PR from people, I've had zero problems on my macs). It just won't do 4X audio. It's not software related. Won't do it with Toast 4.1 or the Sony Spressa software. On my PC I'm using Adapetec EZCD Creator 4, still won't do it at 4X. But who cares? It works great for everything else at 4X. An aside. The sucker is a beast to install on a PC using Winbloze98. It took me half a day to figure it out. I tried Sony Tech support and they were lost. Nice on the Mac though. Just installed Toast 4.1 on both my iMac and iBook, rebooted, plugged in the drive, powered it up, ran toast and burned every kind of CD imaginable just to see if it would work. It does. The only thing I haven't tried is PSX. But then I can use my other IDE PC based burner for that. My drive is the CRX-100E/X2. Got it for $170.00. Not bad.
-joe-


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iMac (Lime 266 OS 9), iBook (Tangerine 300 OS 9), SE/30 (Platinum 16 OS 7.5.5)

To those who've succeeded at burning audio at 4x, I'd love to know how. I have a SCSI LaCie 4x/6X W/R CDR, but everytime I've tried to burn audio at 4x, it comes out useless. I can do it fine at 2x though. I use a FireWire drive to hold the source audio (I defrag it and optimize it for CD burning), which is fine for 2x; but as I said, 4x can't be done (* I don't know how).

I'm using a PB (Lombard at 333, w/ 128MB) and the CDR is on a SCSI 2 connector out the back end.

Thanks.

Well, the Spressa will burn PSX disks. Used Astarte CD-Copy to extract the ISO9660 CDROM-XA sessions. Saved them as Toast ISO image files and then used Toast to burn them to CD-R. Works perfectly!
-joe-


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iMac (Lime 266 OS 9), iBook (Tangerine 300 OS 9), SE/30 (Platinum 16 OS 7.5.5)

[Trapper]

As I've said before, I've had absolutely no problem burning audio at 4x. My setup is:

iMac 350, 192 MB RAM
9.0.4
Toast Deluxe 4.1
Iomega ZipCD 650, USB

To tell you the truth, I have no idea why I'm not having any problems. It just seems to work out well for me when I burn audio at 4x. Who knows why? (asked rhetorically)


------------------
Travis Hreno
Department of Philosophy
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario
CANADA
threno@julian.uwo.ca

[Avon]

There is no reason why any drive would have a problem burning an audio CD at 4X speed. USB is more than fast enough to transfer 600K/sec ..

Here are the only 2 problems I have ever experienced burning CDs at 4X:

when I used the internal CD on my old mac to read with.. This was an apple CD 600i, you cannot use the same speed reader, it must be faster.

The bigest problem I have had was in my selection of CDs. A bad quality CD will not write a faster speeds. I suspect this is the problem some of you are having.. Make sure the CDs you buy are rated for 4X burners..

[sprynmr]

Actually even the makers of USB drives have admitted that you probably will only have success burning audio cds at 2x speed. It has to do with the fact that at the heading of every sound track, there is a very large piece of information that the burner just can't handle. After a couple of them, it just can't keep up anymore an makes you a nice coaster. I haven't figured out any way around this with a Que! Drive 4x2x8x. Nice other than that. I'm considering buying a firewire one. If anyone is interested in buying my usb drive, it's in perfect condition. E-mail me
Bob

I have a near 100% success rate burning audio over USB at 4x. The best thing you can do is setup the RAM cache in Toast to as high as you can support. I suggest 32 or 64 meg. Since I've set mine at 64 meg, I have at least a 95% success rate.

[pjrgois]

I have a Lacie 4x4x24 USB drive connected directly to an iMac Rev. C 266MHz with 160MB and a Zip 100 USB drive connected to the keyboard. I can burn everyting at 4x, but when I burn audio at 4x I have to unplug the Zip drive, or Toast Deluxe 4.1 will return me an error saying Buffer Underrun. This is because the USB ports on this iMac versions are not independent and work as a chain. This problem should not hapend on the newer iMac's, the 350MHz and 400MHz becaouse these revisions already have 2 independent USB ports. Also I have been able to burn audio with everything connected at 4x speed, only with the Toast 4.0.1.1 version. The only problem with thsi version is that it can't read MP3's.

[iPaul UK]

For the record.. I recently bought a QPS Que FireWire drive.. And I burnt an audio CD in under 10 minutes at 8X speed! Whats more.. The CD blank that I used was not even rated for high speed use. Works fine though!

4x Audio requires just over 700k/sec. 4x data requires 600k/sec. The best bursts over USB are only slightly faster, regardless of the hogwash you hear about 12 Mbits/sec- that's just the clock rate. So your audio track length, cache size, drive speed, memory, processor speed, phase of the moon, are all factors which may or may not result in a successful audio burn.

You just have to try it.

[Bubba Jones]

I have a pismo 400 and i use one of my roomates Sony spressa. I have burned tons of auaio cd's at 4X with a zip plugged into the other usb port, camera and ext. hard drive in the firewire port, and with all silly extensions turned on. Pysically the usb port can take it. It's just a matter of tweaking the system and the machine your working on.

Would love to know if it's even possible with my setup... I picked up a QPS Que! USB 4x4x8 CD-RW drive the other day (from buy.com at a steal of $236 after $30 rebate), thinking I could eventually wrangle Toast 4.1 into burning 4x audio. This hasn't worked even once. Data is no problem at 4x, but audio?

I have a Rev.B 233MHz iMac with 160MB RAM. No matter how much RAM I allocate to Toast 4.1 or to its buffer, I still get that dreaded "Buffer Underrun" error.

P.S. I also get coasters at 2x occasionally with the "-6911" SCSI connectivity error I've seen reported elsewhere. Can't return the drive... any thoughts?

[iPaul UK]

I was under the impression that Mac OS 9 was far superior in terms of USB support compared to previous releases such as 8.6 or even 8.1 etc... So surely this must have some bearing on USB CDR performance? especially when on the limits of bandwidth etc. It would be interesting to see who is using what OS and what audio burning speeds they can achieve... Post away!

[kcm3]

I dunno if thats much of a factor, paul.

I'm using OS 9.0.4 with my drive, and I still can't burn audio at 4x. It punts with the buffer underrun message somewhere in the middle of the burn every time. Even with nothing else on the bus, and a ton of ram for the buffer.

[B.I.L]

Try ripping the audio tracks to your harddrive first with Toast Audio Extractor. I always do this because read errors in TAE are WAY less noticable than direct disc-to-disc read errors (little "ticks" instead of a couple seconds of white noise). It may be easier for the computer to handle the data since it's coming off the HD, and might solve your problem.
Using this method I have always been successful burning audio with this setup: iMac 233, Que USB 4x, OS 8.6 (w/ stripped-down extension set).
The CD-R is even going through a hub!

Well, I think there has to be some karmic explanation, since I'm burning from my HD (extracted audio files - not disk-to-disk), I've got 160MB RAM, I've got 1.4GB free on my HD before extraction (so around 650MB free after), I'm running OS 9.0.4's supposedly-improved USB support, a pared-down extension set, etc. Perhaps there's a conflict with the USB GameSprockets 1.7.4? Hmmm.

Also, is the USB ZipCD very reliable at 4x audio? Many posts seem to say it is. If these lucky folks are also using Toast 4.1, then that proves to me that the other drives are the culprits, ¿no?

Help! My damn ZipCD wont record USB in 4x speed. Its driving me insane. I need help!!!!

F.Y.I...

No luck yet at 4x, but I just bought Belkin's 500VA Regulator Pro™ UPS battery backup (Item #F6C500-USB) with Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR). This is supposed to protect "against all power disturbances - including brownouts and blackouts." (Also features a USB output which will tell the computer to shutdown when power is interrupted.)

I hope this will help my SCSI -6911 errors. I'll keep you all posted.

[l008com]

4X!?!? I have an old Panasonic SCSI recorder i picked up off ebay for $150 it burn perfectly, everyhting i want (except PSX), and it does it absolutely flawlessly at 8X. I've never used a speed slower than 8X and the only problems i've had have been bad data to begin with.

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I see dead people.

[iBorg]

1008com,

4x burns are the limit for USB burners, due to the slow transfer rates of USB (until USB-2 comes).

Your SCSI and my Firewire burners, of course, burn at much faster rates, because of faster data transfer.



iBorg

[iPaul UK]

Urmm.. I'd guess that many people here are like me in that they don't always read those funny little "ReadMe" files.. I mention that because out of boredom recently, I thought I'd take a look through the ReadMe file that came with my copy of Toast. And there is an interesting section regarding problems with burning audio CD's with USB drives at 4X speed. It would appear it's largely down to an incompatability with certain aspects of OS 8.6 I suggest some people here take the time to have another look at that ReadMe file! ;o)