- Audio noise after installing LiteOn DVD/CD rewritable
- Posted by Dan on January 13th, 2004
I just installed a LiteOn 811S DVD/CD rewritable drive in my 2yo Gateway
1100 athlon running win2k. Now I get all sorts of odd audio sounds whether I
am using the drive or not. I don't mean mechanical noises from the drive
itself (the level of those seems normal) but rather noise through the
speakers, not only the motor whine when the drive is spinning (and this is
louder than I've ever heard & is accompanied by odd chirps & other sounds
when the drive is being used), but also sounds when there is no disk in the
drive, such as a very odd "zipper unzipping"-like sound which seems to occur
with every use of the pc's cpu, as when moving the mouse, scrolling,
opening/closing a program, etc. Have tried uninstalling/reinstalling various
audio devices, still there. The sound disappears when the audio or power
cables to the drive are disconnected. This is supposed to be a good drive
(it may be, haven't gotten around to actually using it yet), but there's no
way in Hades I am going to be able to tolerate all this racket. The sound is
quite audible with the system audio set mid point, where I usually leave it.
2 prior cd-r drives in this system (the OEM Philips & a Cenedyne that
crapped out after 8 months) were silent. Did some searching on google & DVDR
help, no help ;-( Only thing related to DVD noise I can find relates to the
mechanical drive sounds, not the symphony of cacophonous crap I'm getting
from my speakers. I'm beginning to think the drive has a defect in its rf
shielding & is picking up all kinds of harmonic noise from the PC & passing
them on as audio. I would assume the drive's case is grounded from being
screwed into the pc case, but I'm wondering if a separate ground lead might
be in order. Any ideas?
TIA
Dan
- Posted by Harry Avant on January 13th, 2004
"Dan" <none@hotmail.com> wrote:
I have the same drive in a new system and it doesn't make a sound. You
may have a bum drive.
- Posted by Dan on January 13th, 2004
Thanks for the reply. I was thinking it was bad too & was anticipating
having to return it (bummer) but I went into device manager & clicked
"enable digital audio for this device" under the drives properties then
removed the analog audio cable between the soundcard & drive & all is well!
You have to wonder why they don't mention this in the manual!?!
Can't wait to start using the drive now!
"Harry Avant" <havant@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:400485dc.21220421@news.west.earthlink.net...
- Posted by Dave on January 14th, 2004
"Dan" <none@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bu22jr$crkri$1@ID-209897.news.uni-berlin.de...
your motherboard/sound card is very dirty or worse it may be knackered,
either way what you have done has solved the problem, the only thing you
wont be able to do is make use of any headphone socket on the front of the
drive, it will not effect the drives burning abilitys though 
)
- Posted by Dan on January 14th, 2004
Dave-Thanks for the reply. I really don't think it's the connections or the
cable, they're fine, plus the original cd-r has no problem with them. The
new audio cable that came with the LiteOn made no difference. I'm guessing
for whatever reason this particular drive was just susceptible to the rf
noise/harmonics inside this particular pc. When you've got a cpu working in
the gigahertz and numerous other things going on in the hundreds of
megahertz it's surprising there aren't more troubles of this type, but who
knows. Could also be the switching PS is putting out some racket. You're
right about the headphones (had to dig out an old set of airline phones to
check this, I really don't use headphones) but if I do want to use them the
speakers have a jack which still works ;-)
Dan
"Dave" <Fake@NG.com> wrote in message
news:bu2amb$1qo$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
- Posted by J. Boyd on January 14th, 2004
Dan wrote:
Dan, this is probably a dumb question, but do you have the digital
audio pins on the drive connected to your mother board's digital audio
input?? If not, then you have NO audio output from your drive to the
computer with the analog connector off. The drive will probably be very
quiet. :^)
J.
- Posted by Dan on January 14th, 2004
Yeah, I wondered about that too. There is no place to connect a digital
input to the soundcard or mobo (doesn't have mobo sound but rather a
separate SoundBlaster pci card). With no analog or digital cable attached
to the drive, it DOES play both cd and dvd audio. Only thing that doesn't
work is the headphone jack on the drive (which seems really odd, seems like
if the drive has its own DAC (which it obviously does or it couldn't have an
analog output) its output should be going to headphone jack regardless of OS
settings). Great sound, and no noise! Sounded like a pod of whales before
(click, buzz, whir beep squeak... )
Dan
"J. Boyd" <jomalley100@houston.rr.com> wrote in message
news:5aeNb.21989$RV5.6209@fe2.texas.rr.com...
- Posted by Laurence Payne on January 22nd, 2004
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 16:32:01 GMT, "J. Boyd"
<jomalley100@houston.rr.com> wrote:
Digital audio has gone down the IDE cable for years now. You don't
need any other connection.
The audio cable has always been a favourite suspect for injecting
noise. Luckily it can now be thrown away on all but quite old
systems.
- Posted by Laurence Payne on January 22nd, 2004
Only thing that doesn't
Yeah - most odd! Can't say I've ever tried a headphone into a CD
drive, but I might want to one day!
As DVD writers are most unlikely to be installed on computers needing
(or even supporting) the audio cable, I wonder why the maker puts the
jack on at all?
