[MacNN Staff]

[MacNN takes no responsibility for the content of the following post and cannot ensure its accuracy]

Name: Erik Mattheis
Subject: Que! Fire 12/10/32
Timestamp: Monday, September 18, 2000, 12:55pm

In response to todays post about the FireWire CDR/RW drive from QPS that freezes about 4 minutes into an audio CD, I'd like to note that I received my drive on September 7th. It shipped with Toast 4.1.1 and I STILL have the same problem reported by others. It burns data CD-Rs and CD-RWs beautifully. I have only had problems with audio CDs. It almost always fails about 4 minutes into the CD. I managed to burn two audio CD's from MP3s, but it's random. I made two coasters before I realized you can do a simulation, then I had one good audio CD at 8x. Thinking I just needed to slow down, I tried to burn another and got a coaster. Then I thought it was the fact that my second attempt was with AIFFs instead of MP3s, so I converted everything to MP3s and managed to burn at 12x, a full CD. I thought I had solved the problem, but now I can't burn audio CDs AT ALL. Not from MP3s, not from AIFFs, not directly from CD. I'm really frustrated, and have been unable to contact QPS via e-mail.!

.....but someone with the same problem as me apparently got a FirmWare update from QPS that solved the problem. I'll continue to try and contact QPS, but everyone should know that the problem is NOT solved by having Toast 4.1.1, if it is indeed a Toast issue, perhaps that's why 4.1.1 doesn't appear on their web-site anywhere, maybe they'll fix the bug and release 4.1.2.

- Erik Mattheis




[This message has been edited by MacNN Staff (edited 09-19-2000).]

[CraigS]

I have the very same problem. I have set the buffer as high as it can go and I still have trouble with certain cds and mp3 files. i thought i was going crazy. I would burn 3 or 4 discs, change nothing and all of the sudden, i have a new coaster.

i switched to Jam 2.6 (supports the firewire drives) for my music stuff, the problem still exists but not quite as often. i too, will attmept to contact QPS.

thank you for making me feel a little more "sane"

I have been having similar problems with Jam 2.6 and the Que Firewire 8x4x32. Also having trouble with the last few second of a couple of tracks repeating before the next tracks comes in. It's getting very annoying and any advice would be most welcome

I had the same problem, I dropped the speed down to 4x and things seem to be OK. But by the sound of things I could have the same problem as you in a few CD's time. I did have probs initially, writting CD's and CD-RW (wold crash as soon as it started). I have an iMacDVSE first batch, running 9.0.4 (and OSX on as well) with toast 4.1.

Ian

You were burning a Audio CD at 12x?

That's a no-no! Data maybe, but the CD-ROMs in your stereo are not as good as your burner or possibly you Mac's drive.

Burn at 4x MAX but I suggest 2x to be compatible with all CD Players. Ohh yea, the brand/type of disc might also be a problem. I found on some players that wouldn't read normal burned audio discs, that Kodak Gold CDRs were the only discs that worked on em.

I've made well over 40+ audio cds and burning them at 2x speed, never had one coaster.

Hmmmm.....then why is QPS advertising this burner as being able to burn an audio CD in 5 minutes (at 12x speed)?? It's the primary selling point of the drive!!

I had decided on buying the Que! Fire CD-RW 12x/10x/32x - but am now going to wait-and-see, given that I'd planned on using it primarily for burning audio CD's...

Good luck, guys. Please let us know what you find out.

Larry

Erik is my brother, i can attest to the fact that one can burn audio cd's succesfully at 12x, from another cd-audio, or from mp3's. We have narrowed it down to a firmware issue that apparently QPS knows about, but the updater is for window's only.

I got the Que Firewire 12/10/32 drive as soon as it came out. I also had trouble burning audio CD—I could only bun at 1x. I contracted their support (via email because it is impossible to get in touch with them on the phone). The technician evntually admitted to a problem with the drive and sent me a firmware update. Ever since that update I have had no trouble burning audio CDs at 12x. However, I have not seen any public anoucment of the patch at their website.

Oh yeah, I have a powerbook firewire, so the update is not only availble for Windows. I got the CD-RW on Aug. 15. I definately had the patch before the 25th.

If you have a Mac version of the firmware updater PLEASE let me know. The tech I spoke with at QPS insisted that only a PC .exe existed for this drive, and that I have to run it on a PC with FireWire which I obviously don't have... drop me a line at <ironduck@mac.com> if you have a lead on this...

I own a Que Firewire CD-RW and a G3. I had been having the same problems (quitting or freezing after a few minutes of burning audio files) and even bought a new cable to try and fix the problems. I finally made a few modifications and everything works great now:

-The primary fix is to set up a special extension set for buring CDs. Turn off everything that does not involve CDs, Firewire, or Toast.

-Set Toast's memory high. Mine's something like 100 megs. When I reboot with the new extension set, Toast is the only thing I run anyway.

-Like another poster mentioned, set the buffer to the max, 64 megs.

I have had no problems with my QPS drive since taking these steps and enjoy it very much.

Good luck,
Joe

I've done all of that, to no avail. I even went as far as to try each version of the FireWire extensions from 2.2.2 through 2.5 and I still have no luck. Extremely frustrating considering that data CDs burn beatifully, and FAST, and correct me if I'm wrong, but all an audio CD is, is a specially formatted data CD with a bunch of AIFF files on it...

I would agree with "Another user" and suggest that you try burning at 4x or 2x. I was experiencing a problem with my SCSI CD-R doing that exact thing and I think the cause was actually my hard drive not being able to keep a steady flow of data to the CD burner.

Toast has a built-in feature called "Check Speed"...I would recommend running it for a few songs before attempting a burn. If the Check Speed fails, there is no way that you can burn that fast and you should try a lower speed.

If you are having trouble burning a particular song (it crashes every time on the same track), it might be do to severe hard disk fragmentation for that file or the mp3 might be corrupt.

I have a usb que burner, and I dislike it tremendously. I urge people to not buy que cds. They do not work as advertised and take a great deal of babying. I get angry just thinking about how much money I wasted buying a que drive. I should have just saved my money and kicked myself in the butt a couple times. I'dve had the same experience but a bit more money in my pocket.

Maybe I'm jinxing myself by saying this, but I haven't had any problems using the QPS Firewire burner at 8x for audio CD's (using Toast). I did create a new desktop folder that I drag the songs into from the original CD, and then use that folder as the source for writing to the new CD. It takes a little longer, but seems to work just fine. Now, learning not to write on the back of the burned CD, even with a felt tip, took me a little longer to figure out . . . .

I purchased the QPS 12/10/32 and never installed any software that came with the drive. I used toast deluxe (4.1 not the OEM version) and have had no problems burning audio at 12x. My firmware version is 1.02. Installing the QPS drive extension will definitely cause problems with the latest version of firewire. I never used it and the drive works perfect. There is a firmware updater; but the firewire drives use an IDE to firewire adapter (inside the drive enclosure). I do not believe there to be a way to transfer the firmware update through this type of circuitry. Please let me know if you know how. You could probably open the case remove the bare drive and attach what I would hope would be an ide connector to the ide bus and do the update; but this may not be easy and may void your warrantee. Anyway, the Plextor EUROPE website (http://www.plextor.be/) has the Mac OS updater. You may also be able to connect to a Windows box (ich) and use the Windows updater. The QPS literature clearly says firmware updateable. Yeah, I guess if you're a tech maybe.....Bill

First, there is no difference in CD quality burning at 12x vs. 4x or 2x. Just so the media is rated at that speed....to a CD player there is no difference in the disk. So to the guy burning at 2x....man, you're wasting your time.

Some cd players are not calibrated to read the dyes on CD-R. So on some players, gold media will work, and blue and green will fail. On my Sony CD player in my car, it won't read blue, but reads green well. My CD changer reads blue and green. Trial and error....don't buy a lot of disks until you try them. As far as brand, the only important things are dye (color) and speed rating. Faster rated media will actually cool faster, and that matters in the burning process.

I use Toast 3.5.7 with a Yamaha drive, and have had the same problem of freezing during burning some audio CD's. What you should try is setting the cache smaller...8 megs will do just fine..., quitting, and staring Toast again after a failure. Increased cache size has a neglegable effect on burn time.

Or, you could get a copy of Discribe from Charismac.

[pcarrington]

Eric
I have more information for your 12/10/32X CDRW from QPS. I will share it w/ you only and you can elect to share it w/ others. I can't tolerate the traffic as my email site is also business. Send me your email address to ...
pcarrington@cox-internet.com
Patrick

Addendum of 9-20-00
The email address of the person who emailed me the updater is...
RodC@qps-inc.com The updater is the 2.14 Patch/Updater. Email him or call
him and he will send it to you.

[This message has been edited by pcarrington (edited 09-20-2000).]

[ecasadei]

Eric,

I have been following this forum closely and I would like to politely request that you share the above gentleman's information regarding the 12x Que! burner with us, as I have one on its way in the mail and would like to know what I am getting into. Thank you.

Erik:

An audio CD is quite different from a data CD, and it mostly certainly doesn't have AIFF files on it. The appearance of an audio CD as a bunch of track files in the Finder is a convenient illusion brought to you by the Audio CD Access extension.

Andy McFadden's [a href="http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/"]CD-R FAQ[/a] is an invaluable resource.
http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/

Okay, here's the final word on the Que Fire 12x/10x/32x drive:

The drive shipped with v1.0.1 and v1.0.2 firmware on the drive. Version 1.0.2 corrects some bugs, but both versions will work fine. An updater exists from 1.0.1 to 1.0.2 apparently in a FireWire and ATAPI version, but only for the PC. The main issue is the firmware on the FireWire to ATAPI bridge. The latest update is version 214 which is available only by request from QPS as far as I can tell. This update is Macintosh-native, and corrects the audio burning issue. It include an extension that makes your drive appear as a SCSI device in Toast. The bottom line is: if you're having the issue many have reported where you can burn data fine at any speed, but audio stalls just into the beginning of the burn, you need the 214 updater from QPS. Dial their tech-support number, and keep hitting redial when you get a busy signal, eventually you'll get through. Do yourself a favor and call before you try different buffer sizes, extension sets, etc. After the update, I can burn at 12x audio or data with all extensions and virtual memory on, and not even using Burn Broof, which isn't particularly useful since toast won't let you switch out of the app while it's burning anyway. Good luck! Let's hope they post the updater on the net sometime soon.

toh -

Thanks for the link (http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/). It comfirms my previous thought, although I don't think I wrote what I was thinking quite right. An audio CD is basically a data CD with digital audio as the binary data. The audio is raw binary data like an uncompressed AIFF or PCM file (although I now realize they are not one and the same because of the byte ordering). The encoding scheme is different, to allow for error correction and to meet the red-book standard, but it shouldn't affect how fast you can write to the disk. Now that my drive is working, I can burn audio like a champ at 12x and my car stereo, home stereo, my girlfriends stereo, my DVD-ROM drive, and my CD-ROM drive at work all read the disks perfectly. The only time I can see a need to write slower is when you can't supply data fast enough (e.g. when burning directly from an audio CD in my stupid-ass DVD drive that can only manage to read audio at 2x).

Well, an AIFF file is a specific file format with a defined header and internal structure, and can contain much more than just PCM audio, even if that's the most common use of the format these days. Raw PCM is a different beast even beyond the issue of endianness (which actually isn't an issue in this case - only Wintel .wav files store 16-bit PCM audio little-endian, everyone else in the world does it the right way.

But the differences go well beyond that. Red Book audio is interleaved and written in an arc across the disc, while data is written linearly, even beyond the other differences in error correction and block size. Those differences are well discussed in the CD-R FAQ, so I won't go into them here, but it's worth noting that your CD-R machine uses different circuitry and firmware to burn audio than it does for data - so different issues may well apply (as they obviously did for you).

As for whether you can write audio at 12x just as effectively as 1x, weeeell - no, you can't, necessarily. The problem is that timebase jitter comes into play. This is a tricky, slightly difficult to understand phenomenon of digital audio encoding (and is quite different from the misnamed "jitter" that's discussed wrt extracting digital audio from a CD - that can be easily corrected with overlapping reads, as Toast Audio Extractor or cdparanoia do). There will be an audible degradation of tracks written at 12x compared to those at 1x (check the "Can Compact Discs contain jitter?" section of the link at the end of this post). Whether you'll actually be able to detect that difference depends on your ears, what you're recording, the CD-R unit and media you use, and what you're playing it back on. But it is really there, and the safest (but slowest) way to make digital audio copies is to burn at 1x (you may need to read the track at a slower rate too, but probably not 1x).

Again, we're *not* talking about the problem of missed or repeated samples when extracting audio here; real timebase jitter is something else. I know you'd think that a digital copy is a digital copy, end of story, but it turns out not to be quite that simple.
http://www.digido.com/jitteressay.html

(why don't UBB links work?)

to all you folks having trouble with cd burns with audio cd please try turning off virtual memory and setting toast ram cache to maximum 64mb, virtual memory off is real key, if you've done this try going to xlr8yourmac.com and go to their drive database section to look for help. overall a great site.

On the QPS web site a News Flash has been posted about CD writing on the Firewire 4/4/24 machine. It claims you need to use the 2.3.3 Firewire drivers and not the latest 2.4 drivers.

I had this problem of writing Audio CD's on my 12/10/32 machine, so I have gone back to the older drivers as suggested.

I made a CD copy this morning, no problem (but then it is an intermitant fault), I will see how I get on over the next few copies and let you know if this fixes the problem on the faster machines as well.

Ian

emattheis,
Do you have the updater? I have been trying to contact QPS by phone and email with no luck. Let me know. I just purchased the 12/10/32 Que Firewire drive and am pretty frustrated with it! I have a firewire equipped PeeCee running Windows 2000 and it works flawlessly there. Thanks!

Originally posted by emattheis:
Okay, here's the final word on the Que Fire 12x/10x/32x drive:

The drive shipped with v1.0.1 and v1.0.2 firmware on the drive. Version 1.0.2 corrects some bugs, but both versions will work fine. An updater exists from 1.0.1 to 1.0.2 apparently in a FireWire and ATAPI version, but only for the PC. The main issue is the firmware on the FireWire to ATAPI bridge. The latest update is version 214 which is available only by request from QPS as far as I can tell. This update is Macintosh-native, and corrects the audio burning issue. It include an extension that makes your drive appear as a SCSI device in Toast. The bottom line is: if you're having the issue many have reported where you can burn data fine at any speed, but audio stalls just into the beginning of the burn, you need the 214 updater from QPS. Dial their tech-support number, and keep hitting redial when you get a busy signal, eventually you'll get through. Do yourself a favor and call before you try different buffer sizes, extension sets, etc. After the update, I can burn at 12x audio or data with all extensions and virtual memory on, and not even using Burn Broof, which isn't particularly useful since toast won't let you switch out of the app while it's burning anyway. Good luck! Let's hope they post the updater on the net sometime soon.

[skydiver]

I am interested in getting the 12x10x32x drive if it compatible with Retrospect.
Certainly someone who has this drive has tried to use it with Retrospect. I do use a tape drive for backup of my Powerbook, but would also like to have that capability with a Firewire CD-RW to backup my iMac as well as having a more permanent media backup. (I have seen many recommend to backup occasionally to CD-R for archival purposes). Not all CD-RW drives are compatible with Retrospect. I found that out the hard way having to return an APS firewire CD-RW that Retrospect wouldn't recognize.
I notice from the Dantz compatibility page that the Que firewire 8x4x32 is on the approved list, but the 12x10x32 is listed as in "testing." I would rather buy the faster drive with it's burn-proof technology.
Surely someone here has tried to use this drive (or has plans to) with Retrospect. What was your experience? Is this drive compatible? Responses appreciated.

[This message has been edited by skydiver (edited 09-22-2000).]

[marusin]

Hello all,

I spoke with a gentleman at QPS yesterday (who was extremely helpful I might add) and he mailed me the 214 update... When I expanded the file he sent and followed the instructions in the .txt file (creating a base set of extensions with the QBP Bridge Enabler Extension and rebooting and then launghing the Install Script...) I ran into a problem...

The text window that pops up when running the installer said that there is no QPS Firewire Drive available (or something like that... I'm at work right now). I quit the installer and then went into Adaptec Jam and I can indeed see my drive. Has anyone else run into this problem? I really really want to get this drive up and running and functional..

Any help would greatly be appreciated...

Thanks,
Michael Marusin
mike@marusin.com

Will the updated version of Toast help, QPS have just posted (today) 4.1.1 for deluxe and OEM versions.

I will give it a go tonight and report back

Ian

I have too the problems with my Que Fire 12x10x32x and AudioCDs.
The updater from QPS didn't change anything.
But I discovered that the problem only occurs in Disk-at-Once mode, which QPS confirmed. They have no solution other than not using disk at once mode, ie do not change the pause between audio tracks, and it'll work !!

[marusin]

Well, I posted a couple days ago regarding the 2.14 update that I got from QPS is bombing out (it's saying that there is no Que Firewire Drive attached although there is and my programs such as Adaptec Jam, etc. can see it when I run the updater)...

Anyways, I spoke with someone there who finally said that there is a problem with the back plates on some of the QPS drives.. I got an RMA number and will be shipping my 8x4x32 FireWire drive back to QPS with the hopes that I get a drive that works.. All of the music that I burn has to be in Disk-At-Once mode (concert cds) and if this drive keeps bombing out once it's fixed, I'll be very upset (for the fact that QPS advertises that their drives support DAO and I would have wasted $330 on it!)...

-Someone who is wishing he had a SCSI adapter on his new iMac DV SE (or the money to get a G4 tower)...

P.S. Does anyone know of a SCSI to FireWire adapter? Just wondering as a last resort...

[roders]

Check this link; http://www.orangemicro.com/oconverter.html

I seem to have fixed the problem with my drive. I made 2 copies of CD's last night, both using Disc-at-once.

I have :-
iMac DVSE 400Mhz
OS 9.0.4 and OSX Beta
Firewire 2.3.3
Toast OEM 4.1.1

I also sucessfully made a CD full of MP3's and another full of graphics.

No coaster for a while, hope it stays that way. I may try the new Firewire 2.5 drivers, see what happens !!!

[Paulos]

On a similiar topic... I've found a strange thing that happens since I've upgraded to Toast 4.1.1 (Deluxe). If I run a Self Test... it fails with an unknown error. I tried the same thing in Jam 2.6 and it returns a good status as did Toast 4.1. Probably not a big deal as my burner works fine. QPS Fire! 8x4x32, by the way. Just thought it was strange...

[marka]

Thanks parky for posting info about your success. I have the same machine and will try it from there. I'll also try it on the G4. However, both the DV SE 400 and the G5 500x2 have Firewire 2.5. Disc-at-once hangs both.

Adaptec's web site lists the problem with Toast:

9. If you are attempting to write an Audio CD in Disc-At-Once Mode with Toast Deluxe 4.0 through 4.1 and you are setting the pause in between tracks to 0 seconds but the resulting CD still has gaps, this is also a known issue. With the next release of Toast we will be enhancing the Disc At Once feature to properly support all currently available drives that support Disc At Once.

<http://ask.adaptec.com/cgi-bin/tic/solution?11=000512-0005&130=958162532>


[This message has been edited by marka (edited 09-28-2000).]

Toast 4.1.1 is out and avail. @ www.adaptec.com and seem to resolve most of my problems. You do need to remove Que!Fire from your extension folder as it conflicts resulting in your Que not being recognised.

I bought a QPS 12/10/32 and also had problems with audio data repeating at the end of a song. Qps said it was a problem with the IDE/Firewire converter and was not fixable. SO, I got a ClubMac 12/10/32, based on the same plextor mechanism, and it has the same problem. I emailed Plextor, and they responded " The problem is based on the way that TOAST sends information to the drive...
the number of blocks at the end of the song are padded by TOAST in some
cases and that's causing the problem.

There is probably a workaround both in the TOAST program and in the Plextor
firmware, but we are still working that out with Adaptec, so there isn't a
solution at this time.

In any case, QPS would be your contact point, as no Plextor software or
updates will work on QPS brand drives. If/when Adaptec makes the change in
their software, that will resolve it for all brands of drives."

So, as far as I can tell, the Plextor 12/10/32a mechanism is not compatible with Toast , and they're currently tossing the ball around to see who's gonna solve the problem.

So, if you want to do free R&D for Plextor and Adaptec, go ahead and buy the drive.
If you want a functioning burner, avoid the plextor mechanism.

I originally bought the QPS 12x/10x/32x firewire drive and after many coasters and the confirmation from QPS that the problem was not fixable, returned the drive. I bought the ADS PYRO kit and a Plextor 12x/10x/32x drive. It has been flawless on both my 400MHz iMAc DVSE and my PeeCee (w/Western Digital Firewire card).

Hope this helps.

Forgot to mention that TOAST works flawlessly on the Mac with this setup.

Originally posted by MiamiMac:
I originally bought the QPS 12x/10x/32x firewire drive and after many coasters and the confirmation from QPS that the problem was not fixable, returned the drive. I bought the ADS PYRO kit and a Plextor 12x/10x/32x drive. It has been flawless on both my 400MHz iMAc DVSE and my PeeCee (w/Western Digital Firewire card).

Hope this helps.

So then what's the final tally? Avoid this drive at all costs?

[marusin]

My recommendation is to avoid this drive if you are going to be burning Audio using DAO... It works fine for Data, It works fine for regular audio with 2 sec. pauses...

My suggestion is to look at the Yamaha at http://www.yamaha.com/cgi-win/webcgi...0007CRW8824FXZ I've heard nothing but good stuff about this drive and have one on order with Outpost.com for $329... I went through 2 different QPS drives with the same problem.. I know for a fact that this Yamaha mentioned above works great for a lot of people...

Ralphintosh,
I went to buy.com and bought both the ADS PYRO IEEE1394 enclosure and Plextor Plexwriter 12x/10x/32x internal ATAPI CD-RW drive. I put 'em both together and voila! Flawless 12x CD-Rs on a Mac. Unfortunately, you'd have to buy Toast with this setup as it is not included. I can burn disc-at-once audio CD-Rs at 12x with no problem.

Hi everyone,
After stumbling on this post from an outside website I was curious as about whether someone had a solution to the DAO problem with the Que! Fire 12x/10x/32x. Well I've been through it all, done all the MacOS upgrades, tried it with Toast 4.1.1 OEM, 4.1, Deluxe, 4.1.1 I also did the firmware update thing but no difference. After constant complaints to QPS I finally got a reply from QPS Tech Support

"We do not have a solution for the problems with DAO mode and at this point do not know when of if we will have one. We have had a problem with DAO and the firewire to IDE converter panel to some extent on all of our drives, but with this one we also have to contend with some possible issues with the burn proof chip..."
Rod Carrigan

So at the end of the day I returned the CD-RW and payed a little more for the EZQuest BOA PRO-MAR Series with the Plexwriter 12x/10x/32x mechanism and it is absolutely perfect. It's construction is also of a high quality but it is a little noisier because it has a built-in fan but if EZQuest reckons it needs a fan I can live with that.

So that's my 2 cents. Get an EZQuest CD-RW!

Hi everyone,
After stumbling on this post from an outside website I was curious as about whether someone had a solution to the DAO problem with the Que! Fire 12x/10x/32x. Well I've been through it all, done all the MacOS upgrades, tried it with Toast 4.1.1 OEM, 4.1, Deluxe, 4.1.1 I also did the firmware update thing but no difference. After constant complaints to QPS I finally got a reply from QPS Tech Support

"We do not have a solution for the problems with DAO mode and at this point do not know when of if we will have one. We have had a problem with DAO and the firewire to IDE converter panel to some extent on all of our drives, but with this one we also have to contend with some possible issues with the burn proof chip..."
Rod Carrigan

So at the end of the day I returned the CD-RW and payed a little more for the EZQuest BOA PRO-MAR Series with the Plexwriter 12x/10x/32x mechanism and it is absolutely perfect. It's construction is also of a high quality but it is a little noisier because it has a built-in fan but if EZQuest reckons it needs a fan I can live with that.

So that's my 2 cents. Get an EZQuest CD-RW!

I'm running a G4 with Toast, a QPS 8x/4x/32 drive, and I too have many problems.

Problem 1. If I try and burn a 'mixed CD' from multiple CD's, I always get an error message after typing in the name of the CD, and the Track name and number. The error states that it cannot be saved. This will happen to every other CD that I put into my Macs drive after that. Sometimes the computer will crash, and I'll lose every song that I tried to put into the list. I have solved the problem by first 'extractin' the song from the CD first and storing it into a folder. I'll do this for every song, then I'll burn the CD.

Problem 2. Sometimes a CD will crash 4 minutes into a burn...just like everyone else on this BB.

Problem 3. 99% of the CD's that I burn, cannot be played back on my G4's internal CD player. It'll play fine on every other CD player I play it on, but not my internal one. What's up with that!? Sometimes it'll play..then pause...then play...then....pause....play....pause. YOu get the idea.

I have had the same problem. At random times a cd will be burned. Sometimes, I simulate and it works, but when I burn, I get a coaster. I can't even burn file cd's sometimes. Its really getting me mad. I think that QUE! is the problem. Why don't they respond? HELP!! I read all of yalls problems, and I would say that I must have a faulty drive. I can't even burn file cd's all the time. ANyone out there that is thinking of getting a QPS QUE! drive, DONT. Its crap. I wish I didn't throw my box away, cause I would send mine back. I've tried everything on this board, to no avail. qps sucks. I must have been smoking crack when I made this purchase.

[This message has been edited by lazyeye (edited 10-16-2000).]

[marka]

rdt312 and lazyeye,

I'm sorry to hear you are having so many problems. I'm using an iMac DV SE 400 and a G4 500x2.

Every data CD I've burned is fine. I've burned over a hundred of them. Nearly every audio CD is fine, but I DO have the DAO problem and am awaiting an update from Adaptec.

rdt312: Do you have problems playing other audio CDs on your G4?

lazyeye: I would guess you have an INIT conflict that is preventing things from operating normally. I ran into this situation for a short while where Toast would hang. Finding the INIT conflict solved the problem. Use TechTool Pro 3 to find your software incompatibility, or experiment by turning off as many INITs as you can in the extension manager.

There is also an updater for the drive available from QPS, but you MUST TELEPHONE them to get it.

Marka-

I have had no problems playing other (studio made, and/or software) CD's on my G4. It's only the one's that I burn. It's very frustrating. Again, I'm using the QPS 8x/4x/32/ Firewire drive.

What I really need to do is try all of the suggestions that people have posted, I just haven't had the time to do it as of yesterday's posting.

"There is also an updater for the drive available from QPS, but you MUST TELEPHONE them to get it."

That's ridiculous. Why don't they just post it?

I have been through all of the same frustration expressed by others in this forum. I finally got through to QPS Tech Support last night after an extended hold. (How'd you like to have their job???) Here's the story I got: QPS is totally aware of the problem and is well on the way to a PERMANENT solution with its 2.15 updater, which they hope to post on their website either later this week or next week. According to QPS, the 2.15 updater will definitely provide a FULL fix for the problem. I think they're hesitant to make the 2.14 updater more widely available because it's not quite there yet, and they know it. A temporary (and the only) fix that has worked for me to date: copy the audio files to a hard drive folder using Toast. Restart. Start Toast. Drag all saved audio files to the Toast Window. Do a Save As and name the disc. Try Simulation mode. If OK, burn the disc. PS: don't waste your time resetting memory allocation, cache size, burn speed, or extension sets---none of these will solve the problem. Good luck to us all!