CD Noise/Vibration

[paulshu]

Just got a 200A5 and am really loving it, but when I play a CD the whirring noise and vibration is unbelievable. If I can't fix it, I'll probably return the PC. Has anyone had any success solving this problem? Do all the VPRs have this problem?

[Angus]

This is an interesting issue, or at least it has been for me. I found this annoying at first but have discovered that it's rather intermittent in nature. Sometimes I'll put a CD (audio) in the drive and fire up Winamp to play it. The CD will spin and spin and never stop. But if I eject the CD, put it back in there, and play it with the built-in Windows CD Player it will run right at the beginning (buffer up I assume) then spin very little.

The same can be said about DVDs which sometimes I notice will be quite noisey but if I use a different program or even just eject and insert again it will be cured. Some programs seem to spin the drive much more or at max speed when they don't have to, so I think a BIG part of this issue is software related.

However, there's nothing you can do about the noise of the drive head seeking but that's not constant. I've also noticed that CDs with stick-on labels (CD labels) sometimes tend to spin out of balance and get REALLY noisey. Those are almost always cured by an eject and reinsert. Just gotta make sure that you stick it in there slowly.

So overall I guess the problem is hit and miss.

[geekrock99]

just like argus said, due to CD's inherent variablity (not always perfectly shaped), we will just have to bear the load.

interesting though, that my friend's old apple powerbook which has the same dvd-cdrw doesn't have this noise/vibe issue.

if porsche's car is loud, the their computers much be loud.

[Angus]

If you read the other thread about encoding/decoding/ripping CDs you'll see my comments about Media Jukebox which I'm trying out because one of the other users here said it was pretty good. Well the good news is that there's NO drive noise when playing an audio CD with this program!! Like I said before, some programs are better than others, clearly.

Winamp3 is loud as hell and constantly spinning the drive at full speed. Media Jukebox seems smart enough to buffer and only spin the CD once every couple seconds and not at full speed. One caviat is that Media Jukebox seems more prone to error on dirty discs. As I am typing this it's freaking out because the CD in my drive has a little bit of goo on it. Meanwhile I can put that same CD into my stereo or CD walkman or anything and get it to play just fine. Nothing a little rubbing with my tshirt couldn't fix though. It's good now.

Anyways... no CD spinning noise with Media Jukebox or Windows CD Player (Windows 2000 version).