hey everyone.

I was wondering .. eversince i started burning AudioCDs I have a weird problem - when burning mp3z to AudioCD and then listeing to it on my stereo I hear slight noise/hiss, as if i am playing a cassette tape. It's like th esound is not fully digital. Well when I back up CDs however (origina CDs) and use CLONE CD, the copies are perfect with no noise/hiss. now from my readings on forums and EAC/LAME advices - everybody is recommending to extract the CD to wavs, using EAC and LAME, then burn the perfect wavs onto a CD. However this does not help. I get the hiss, so I am like why bother, better to use CLONE CD and make my backups ! ??? Am I right?

cheers.

Clone CD is definitely not better (than EAC) for backing up your audio CDs. It depends whether you have configured EAC correctly for the CD drive you are ripping with. Clone CD will probably not rip the audio tracks exactly where they start and where they end, due to not being able to set the offsets for your CD drive, which you can in EAC. Plus you can get perfect results from EAC if you set up EAC to use the Secure mode to rip. (The report created after the ripping process tells you if there were any errors (which there rarely are with EAC), if there were not, then rest assured, it was a perfect rip.) And why create MP3s if you're doing a regular audio CD to another regular audio CD copy? Why not skip the MP3 part? Just burn straight from the WAVs? MP3 encoding is a lossy process, you do know that? And, when you burn the MP3s, you maybe use a filter of some sort, maybe that's what's causing the noise/hiss?

EDIT: One too many beers?

Sorry let me make it clearer:

when I make CDs off of d/l mp3z, i get the weird hiss.

when I backup CDs making 1:1 copy with CLONECD I do not get any noise.

So I am thinking when I decide to make backup CDs, should I make a 1:1 copy with CloneCD, or should I extract to wavs with EAC and then burn w/ Fireburner

And second, for the second situation - when I make Cds off the d/led mp3z why do I get the noise/hiss, no matter what burning proggy I use. i have not really tried to d/l wavs and make a cds off of them and see if the noise is there.

thanks.

Using CloneCD is more or less equal to EAC burst mode. If you use EAC secure mode with correct settings (and correctly set offsets if you want it to be perfect) you have 99.99...% security that all errors are reported and a lot of them corrected.

About your downloaded mp3s: Does this happen with all your mp3s, even if you encode them yourself with lame+recommended settings?

yup,

dunno why. it is because of sound card stuff, or cuz mp3 is too lossy.. dunno. My Cds have a hiss, that's it. the only crisp Cds i have are 1:1 copies with proggy like CloneCd.

So when you listen to stuff on your PC you get a weird hiss? Probably a crappy/old sound card driver, or your sound card is placed too near a fan in your PC (that causes interference).

No ! i get the noise while I listen the CDs on my stereo. I have given up my poor soud card .. soemwhere i read that laptops are loaded w/ some crappy sound cards ....

Getting a bad sound from downloaded MP3s is normal, MP3s on the net are often of bad quality.

try to decode first and then burn from the wavs.

Simple question:

You said that if you burn a CD from MP3 files that you have encoded yourself, you also get the hiss...

- How did you encode them? Which settings? I hope you used Lame...

By the way, lately I prefer to decode my MP3 files (or anything else, actually) using Foobar2000... Wonderfully simple way to get the best WAVs possible from any of the filetypes supported...

- If you encode a CD to MP3 files using Lame 3.90.2 --alt-preset standard, and then burn a CD with those MP3 files, and you still hear the hiss, I think it's most likely... placebo.

I usually make CDs off of d/led mp3z. if I am to make CDs off of my own Cds - i rip to wavs (of course) and then .. but since I dont have (dont buy) CDs.. LOL )) I have only 1 -- can u believe that .. )

Yeah, so I am getting that noise from the d/led stuff. I dunno. I think I should be d/l wavs I guess. Although there arent that many ... on the p2p (Kazaa, cant use anything else (

I am going to give you a couple of free tips:

- It's not a very clever idea to say so clearly that your whole collection of music is illegal. And doing it around here will not get you many friends.

- You have never mentioned the bitrate or any other details about the mp3 files you have used to test.

Just for the sake of it, get a rewritable, get your ONLY audio cd, rip it to MP3 with EAC and Lame, using --alt-preset standard, and then try burning an Audio CD using those mp3 files, and using the rewritable for saving on cds. If you still hear the hiss, then there's something wrong.

Try also to copy the CD with Nero instead of CloneCD... there was another report about the same thing, http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/29337 , let's check if it's not a Nero bug.