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A Pop Or A Snap Is That What You Hear?

© E. Ross Helton

Listening to a Digital audio CD which you have recorded can a most satisfying experience. However that experience can be extremely miserable if the recording you're listening to has annoying 'POPS' and 'Snaps' in it. At this point you will probably pitch the CD into the garbage; and you may want to trash The CD-R/W. Before you throw the 'Frisbee' fit; you may want to consider what could have happened.

Good Digital audio CDs should play on any reliable CD-ROM unit in existence. Playing good Digital music is one of the basic default options of a CD player. Even the 1X-speed CD-ROM units will play a good audio CD.

If the above is true; then why do some recorded CDs have less than stellar sound quality? Was the media at fault? Did the CD-R/W fail to operate correctly? Was it the fault of the recording program? Was the original CD one of poor quality?

To begin answering the question of the 'POPS' and 'SNAPS' we have to say that any one of the previous possibilities could be the problem. However, it has been our experience that over 60% of the faulty recordings occurred because of inadequate preparation. Recording a good audio CD isn't 'Instant Oatmeal'. It takes some time and thought to make the process have a good end result.

One of the first issues that needs to be addressed; is are all the 'Time and Space' issues taken care of? These issues can include, have you made sure the screen savers are disabled during the writing process? Have you disabled the virus protection schemes? Are all of the power management options disabled? A short cut to getting most of the above out of the way is to do hold down the 'ctrl' and 'alt' keys then tap the 'Del'. This will bring up the 'end task' message screen. In this screen disable all the task except for 'Explorer' and 'systray'. Doing this will assure that most of the 'Time' issues are taken care of. The power management options may have to be disabled in your computer's setup section.

The 'Space' issue deals with the amount of temporary space, which is used by the recording process during the recording. A good rule of thumb is that you need at least as much free space on the hard drive as the amount of recording, which you are doing. For example if the total recording is going to be 500 Mbs, then you will need at least that much free space on your hard drive. Since audio is recorded as minutes you will need to translate( 1 minute of recording equals about 9.3 MB of space). Recording quality can be enhanced by making sure that the temp file used for this recording is redirected to another hard drive or partition besides 'C' drive. The reason for this is because Windows is on 'C' and it rules that drive very carefully. As a result it may try to question what is happening during the recording and thus make it fail.

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