[CraigS]

i have a g4/400. What are the minmimum extensions needed to burn a cd? I have a qps "firewire drive" also... what us the maximum speed to burn a music cd at. when i tried one at 8x i had a lot of interference on the recording, adding yet another coaster to the coffee table.

thanks!

[Xyphoid Process]

A G4/400 does not need to turn any extensions off to burn at 8x or any speed. It's 99% likely that this problem is due to the fact you are trying to burn audio CDs. Apple's drivers are notoriously bad for pulling audio tracks off an audio CD and onto a CDR - problem is that the CD player will drop below 8x read if there are any imperfections in the source CD, there's a full moon, the planets are misaligned etc.... Once the read is slower than your write, the buffer empties and the burn fails. Your computer can send audio tracks to the burner no problem, but it's the slow ripping that's making your coasters. Your three main options are:

1) Burn at 4x or 6x, esp. if the source disc is old and scratched (USB burners often have to drop to 2x).

2) Create a disc image of the source CD and burn at 8x from the hard drive - most reliable.

3) Jack up the Toast disk/ram caches as high as possible (>64MB). That way if the reader drops below 8x for only a few seconds (it will change speeds as the disc is read) to get past an imperfection the buffer won't run out.

[CraigS]

what about burning mp3 files. I tried Jam and the fist one went through twith out a hitch (at 4x) but then i tried again and kerblam! coasterville. I sold my usb burner because i wanted the "speed increase" of firewire, HA! instead i got the frustration!

[Xyphoid Process]

Ah, you didn't say you were trying to burn mp3s...

Haven't tried burning mp3s straight to CD yet, so can't say for sure, but I'm still guessing a reduced extension set won't make enough of a difference. You've closed all other apps (a free program called Process Watcher helps to see if anything's running in the background)? Do you only have 64MB RAM? Is virtual memory on? Is Appletlalk/File Sharing on? Try it with VM/Appletalt/File Sharing off and see. If you only have 64 megs of memory then you'll need more.

Toast has a "simulation" burn, which you can use to tweak the system w/o creating a coster set.

If you still can't get it to work then convert your mp3s into 44khz/16bit .aiff files ahead of time. That's the audio CD native format, so things will definitely work then.

[This message has been edited by Xyphoid Process (edited 09-12-2000).]

[Cipher13]

With my SCSI drive, I have burned Audio CD's from AIFF, mp3, a combination of those (when I was lazy), and direct CD. And even Direct CD with some aiff's appended to it...
Never any probs. I always burn audio at 4X, and have never tried 8X. 6X was fine. The reason I don't use 6X is the increased risk... I may as well burn at 4X.
I have 128 RAM, with Toasts cache at 64 megs, VM on 1 meg, File Sharing on, and all that...
And a very full System.
I normally convert my mp3's to AIFF before burning though, because as state above, they don't need to be converted 'on the fly'.
FireWire and USB are both still new, and not good enough in my eyes for burning.
If at all possible, stick in a SCSI card, and get a Yamaha SCSI burner.

Cipher13

[CraigS]

sorry for the ambiguities... I have 128 mgs of RAM and realized that I did in fact have VM turned on (darn that quake3!) i'll give it a try again. Thanks for all the advice!

does direct cd work with firewire?