I recently purchased an Arcam CD73 CD player, and find it generally fine except
for one very weird problem. I'm describing it in the hope that some of the
technical experts here will be able to offer assistance.
On my Dell laptop running under Windows XP, I burn a CDR on a Philips SDVD8820 combo
drive using EAC. The burn proceeds without a problem and when I play the CDR on the
computer or on the Sony boombox in my study, all is well. Then I put the CDR into
the Arcam. It starts up fine and plays the first track, but then sticks when it gets
to Track 2; I can hear a soft clicking sound. If I try to skip directly to an
intermediate track, I get the same sticking and clicking. Thinking the problem might
be EAC, I tried burning a CDR on my computer using ITunes with the same result.
Now it gets weird: I take the CDR upstairs to my wife's computer, which has two
drives, and using Roxio's disc copy function, I make what presumably ought to be
an identical copy of the problem CDR. The *copy* plays perfectly in the Arcam
every time! This process may be good for my brother-in-law, to whom I plan to
send the extra copies, but it's costly in time and blank disks, not to mention the
annoyance factor.
I suppose the simplest solution would be to burn all of my CDRs on my wife's
computer, but I'd like to stay married, so that's not really feasible :-)
Is there something obvious that I'm missing here, or does this go into the
Inexplicable Computer Weirdness file?
Alan Cooper wrote:
>
> I recently purchased an Arcam CD73 CD player, and find it generally fine except
> for one very weird problem. I'm describing it in the hope that some of the
> technical experts here will be able to offer assistance.
>
> On my Dell laptop running under Windows XP, I burn a CDR on a Philips SDVD8820 combo
> drive using EAC. The burn proceeds without a problem and when I play the CDR on the
> computer or on the Sony boombox in my study, all is well. Then I put the CDR into
> the Arcam. It starts up fine and plays the first track, but then sticks when it gets
> to Track 2; I can hear a soft clicking sound. If I try to skip directly to an
> intermediate track, I get the same sticking and clicking. Thinking the problem might
> be EAC, I tried burning a CDR on my computer using ITunes with the same result.
>
> Now it gets weird: I take the CDR upstairs to my wife's computer, which has two
> drives, and using Roxio's disc copy function, I make what presumably ought to be
> an identical copy of the problem CDR. The *copy* plays perfectly in the Arcam
> every time! This process may be good for my brother-in-law, to whom I plan to
> send the extra copies, but it's costly in time and blank disks, not to mention the
> annoyance factor.
>
> I suppose the simplest solution would be to burn all of my CDRs on my wife's
> computer, but I'd like to stay married, so that's not really feasible :-)
>
> Is there something obvious that I'm missing here, or does this go into the
> Inexplicable Computer Weirdness file?
>
> TIA for any help/advice,
>
> AC
sounds like the arcam may have a physical problem. The clicking sound
may well be the laser hitting the disc when trying to read it. bad
sign
>> On my Dell laptop running under Windows XP, I burn a CDR on a Philips SDVD8820 combo
>> drive using EAC. The burn proceeds without a problem and when I play the CDR on the
>> computer or on the Sony boombox in my study, all is well. Then I put the CDR into
>> the Arcam. It starts up fine and plays the first track, but then sticks when it gets
>> to Track 2; I can hear a soft clicking sound. If I try to skip directly to an
>> intermediate track, I get the same sticking and clicking. Thinking the problem might
>> be EAC, I tried burning a CDR on my computer using ITunes with the same result.
>>
>> Now it gets weird: I take the CDR upstairs to my wife's computer, which has two
>> drives, and using Roxio's disc copy function, I make what presumably ought to be
>> an identical copy of the problem CDR. The *copy* plays perfectly in the Arcam
>> every time! This process may be good for my brother-in-law, to whom I plan to
>> send the extra copies, but it's costly in time and blank disks, not to mention the
>> annoyance factor.
>>
>> I suppose the simplest solution would be to burn all of my CDRs on my wife's
>> computer, but I'd like to stay married, so that's not really feasible :-)
>>
>> Is there something obvious that I'm missing here, or does this go into the
>> Inexplicable Computer Weirdness file?
>
> Years ago there were many reports of car cd players being "picky" in
> playing back. The usual advices given then were try different disc
> brands and burn at slower speeds. Since Arcam plays the ones burned in
> another burner, perhaps the first thing you can try is burn at slower
> speeds. If that doesn't fix the "weirdness", then try different brands.
> As I recall many reported happy endings with Taiyo Yuden.
I have had problems on players with skip protection with disks burned
track at once. They seem to choke and reread the (bad) data between tracks
where the laser is turned off. Are these discs burned track at once or
session/disk at once?
In article <Xns9A8FC39CAB9D4amcooperoptonlinenet@209.197.15.2 54>,
Alan Cooper <amcooper@NOSPAMoptonline.net> wrote:
>I recently purchased an Arcam CD73 CD player, and find it generally fine except
>for one very weird problem. I'm describing it in the hope that some of the
>technical experts here will be able to offer assistance.
>
>On my Dell laptop running under Windows XP, I burn a CDR on a Philips
>SDVD8820 combo
>drive using EAC. The burn proceeds without a problem and when I play
>the CDR on the
>computer or on the Sony boombox in my study, all is well. Then I put
>the CDR into
>the Arcam. It starts up fine and plays the first track, but then sticks
>when it gets
>to Track 2; I can hear a soft clicking sound. If I try to skip directly to an
>intermediate track, I get the same sticking and clicking. Thinking the
>problem might
>be EAC, I tried burning a CDR on my computer using ITunes with the same result.
>
>Now it gets weird: I take the CDR upstairs to my wife's computer, which has two
>drives, and using Roxio's disc copy function, I make what presumably
>ought to be
>an identical copy of the problem CDR. The *copy* plays perfectly in the Arcam
>every time! This process may be good for my brother-in-law, to whom I plan to
>send the extra copies, but it's costly in time and blank disks, not to
>mention the
>annoyance factor.
>
>I suppose the simplest solution would be to burn all of my CDRs on my wife's
>computer, but I'd like to stay married, so that's not really feasible :-)
>
>Is there something obvious that I'm missing here, or does this go into the
>Inexplicable Computer Weirdness file?
>
>TIA for any help/advice,
>
>AC
This isn't too weird or difficult. It would help if you posted the MID of
the blanks you're using so we could tell their relative quality.
1. The CDR's the Philips combo drive is burning are difficult to read, either
because of poor quality media, burning too fast, or a bad match between
blank disc and burner (typically because it lacks the proper write
strategy. This is true with many DVD burners - they scrimp on CD space in the
firmware to allow more DVD write strategy information). If you were to scan
the burned discs using hardware/software capable of returning error rates
and jitter (such as a Plextor drive with Plextools or Nero DiscSpeed) you
would probably see objective evidence of this.
2. The Arcam is picky about reading poor discs. I have a Marantz CD67SE
that has the same problem due to its "picky" Philips transport.
The combination of the two makes it impossible to play those discs on your
Arcam.
Weird CDR problem 
Linear Mode
