Audio distortion on one of my DVD drives

[cdb]

This problem just started a week or so ago. I've had the computer for 2 years.

When I play a CD or DVD on one of my drives (the DVD-ROM drive, which is set as the primary drive on the same IDE channel as my DVD-R/W drive), the audio clips/distorts/crackles noticeably at volume peaks. If I play the disk in the other drive there is absolutely no problem. If I rip the CD/DVD *from the problem drive* to the hard drive and play it as a file, there's no problem, so it seems to be reading the disc just fine. I've tried reducing the various playing volumes (wave, CD, master) using the controls in the system tray, and it reduces the volume but doesn't stop the distortion.

Any suggestions what might be going on and how to correct it?

Thanks in advance!

[piano632]

I don't know what playback app. you're using, but do you by any chance have *the problem drive* set to analog instead of digital playback? Analog playback would convert to analog inside the drive instead of sending the digital signal thru to the computer and convert it there. This could possibly cause crackling/distortion if the D/A conversion inside the drive was poor.

[cdb]

Thanks for the suggestion piano632, but that wasn't it. I checked and both drives are set to "use digital audio". And I get the distortion no matter what playback app I use -- PowerDVD, Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic.

[redwudz]

DVD audio is over the IDE cable. It's always digital.

[JerryB]

This problem just started a week or so ago. I've had the computer for 2 years.

When I play a CD or DVD on one of my drives (the DVD-ROM drive, which is set as the primary drive on the same IDE channel as my DVD-R/W drive), the audio clips/distorts/crackles noticeably at volume peaks. If I play the disk in the other drive there is absolutely no problem. If I rip the CD/DVD *from the problem drive* to the hard drive and play it as a file, there's no problem, so it seems to be reading the disc just fine. I've tried reducing the various playing volumes (wave, CD, master) using the controls in the system tray, and it reduces the volume but doesn't stop the distortion.

Any suggestions what might be going on and how to correct it?

Thanks in advance!

This can be a hard one to track down.. smile.....

first... might be usefull to know what your playback programs is also did you try any other playback program???

I am not sure about my answer if this works or not..... and that is disable some of your programs that running in the background...!! my reasoning on this is that.... if there too many programs running in the background that tends to slow everything... and if your getting music/movie data from the portable drives.... that will slow that down and possibly cause some of the symtoms your reporting...

Also along with playing , are there any graphis/movie animation playing ????
the reason I aks here... sometime if the color resolution is high and not enough graphic memory and the cpu speed is a little on the side..... I can see that combination really slowing things down too much to get nice smooth transfer rates fro the portable drives..... if in 32/24 bit color change to 16 bit color and see if that helps...

note: possibly the reason why there no issue with the hard drive playing your music/video is that that the hard drive transfer rate a lot faster than portable drives.. hense that fastness can make up for slowness of programs that running in the background... probably not making myself too clear on that point.. smile..

anyway those are my thoughts..