Struggling to create CD player compatible media

[ASF]

Greetings, all.  I am an imgburn newbie and am trying to make audio CDs that will play on a CD player.  Using the guide, I set the app to "write" and tried to create a cue file from a list of flac files. I received an error message which -- after further research -- prompted me to install madflac codec.  The installation said the codec was registered on my machine, but the error message persisted.  After additional research, I realized that the FLAC files were hi-resolution which I suspected was the issue.  I then converted these files to WAV format, but the error did not resolve.  I noted that the wav files were still hi-res, so I decided to use mp3 files that I have created when I downloaded the original flac files.  At long last, the app created the cue file and ultimately burned a CD that will play on my computer drive.  However, the CD will NOT play on a standalone CD player which claims that the CD is not finalized.  I used the read mode in imgburn and it said that the process was complete, which I understand means the disc is finalized.  At this point, I am in need of help which would be greatly appreciated.

ASF

[dbminter]

I've never heard of a CD player that even detects if a CD-R is not finalized.  Does this CD-R play on any other standalone CD players that you've tried, if any?

 

My guess is it's a read compatibility issue.  That the player cannot properly read the contents.  It can detect a CD-R has been inserted, but it thinks it isn't finalized.

 

Can you post a log from the burn of one of these CD-R's?  I wonder if you're using CMC media and the standalone cannot properly detect any contents on it due to reflectivity issues.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Yes, as dbminter has said, the log of the MP3 -> Audio CD burn would be useful here please.

[ASF]

Thanks to you both for the prompt replies and your help.  I would note that the player that generated the "not finalized" message is a standalone CD player (AH! Njoe Troeb 4000).  I have attached the log of the session I described; I think the mp3 burn begins around 19:04:01.  

ASF

ImgBurn.log

[dbminter]

Nothing sticks out to me as immediately obvious.  You are using the high quality Taiyo Yuden media.  Could still be a reflectivity issue.  I believe the standalone CD player simply cannot read the contents from that particular type of CD-R and is assuming it's not finalized.  Again, I've never heard of a standalone CD player that checks for something like that, but I've also never heard of a Njoe Troeb 4000 or even Njoe Troeb before.

 

Given the audio CD plays on your PC's optical drive but not in this Njoe Troeb 4000, the fault is most likely in the standalone CD player.

[ASF]

Thanks for this input.  Unfortunately, I have some additional information that might muddy the water.  My wife is usually the one who burns CDs so she can play them in her car (no bluetooth) or send them to musician colleagues.  She typically uses Nero Express to burn such CDs.  When she tried to do so with flac files, she encountered errors as I did with imgburn.  Once I realized that I could burn CDs with imgburn using mp3 files as the source, I asked her to try using mp3 files with Nero Express.  The resultant CD, which was burnt on the same Taiyo Yuden media, burned properly and played perfectly in the Njoe Troeb 4000 and in her car without any error message about not being finalized.  I will keep you advised of any additional information that might help.

I really appreciate the support!

Best

ASF

BTW, the Njoe Troeb 4000 is an older unit, but still a favorite of ours.  I was able to find a review in an older issue of Stereophile magazine, which I've attached.

 

AH! Njoe Tjoeb 4000 CD player _ Stereophile.com.pdf

[dbminter]

Now, that is odd.  Nero will generally leave discs in unfinished states, particularly when you're using rewritable media.  If any application is going to have a finalizing problem, it would be a Nero one and not ImgBurn.  Which is one of the reasons I no longer use Nero products.  They don't do the job fully, generally, and will often times overlook errors that ImgBurn catches.

[ASF]

Being new to Imgburn, I think I may have done something wrong yesterday in creating the CUE file and/or selecting ONLY that file to burn.  I tried again this morning and WAS able to burn a CD that included all 17 files recorded in CDA format!!  Interestingly, while I couldn't play this disc in my computer driver, it played perfectly on the standalone (Njoe Troeb) CD player.  So I think I am making progress, but remain confused about the apparent requirements of one player versus the other.  I also noted that (undoubtedly due to something I failed to do) the tracks and the global CD weren't named but only numbered.  How to I have Imgburn include this information?

Thanks for your time.

ASF

 

[dbminter]

Well, now you're all over the map, unfortunately.  Now the CD works in your standalone player but not in your PC drive, which is the exact opposite condition from before.  If it's going to fail, it would fail in both, but not one or the other AND alternate back and forth.

 

What file you choose to burn, regarding the CUE sheet, won't affect playback on one device versus another.  If the CUE sheet is bad, the resulting burned disc won't play back on any device.

 

As for the tracks not being named, only numbered, are you putting in the necessary CD Text fields for that information in the CUE sheet creation?

[ASF]

Yes, I am equally confused, but will keep trying to establish a consistent baseline...more to follow in this regard.  As to the CD text fields, do I have to enter the information manually for each track or can I use the options in the lower right hand corner to select appropriate settings for " Default CD text (disc/track)" so that the information is entered automatically by the app?

Thanks for your patience with me.

ASF

[dbminter]

If the input files have metadata, they can be imported into the CUE sheet creation.  But, I forget precisely if that's done automatically or if you have to check the Tag button under CD-TEXT.  I think you first load the input files and then check the Tag button under CD-TEXT and any metadata will auto populate.  If nothing does, then check Custom and enter your own metadata.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

The disc you burnt at 19:04 (according to your log) looks fine to me.

As you've burnt it at max speed (48x), there's a chance the burn quality won't be quite as good as if you'd burnt it at something like 24x - meaning it might be harder to read and some drives may totally fail. It was totally readable in your burner though, so playback should be possible on your PC.

If you want names to show up in a standalone player, you need to be looking at adding CD-TEXT to it. You can do that when you create the CUE file based on your MP3 files. ImgBurn can read the ID3 tags (if present) in MP3 files and create CD-TEXT info from them, you just need to instruct the program to do that.

I think the Audio CD guide in the Guides forum does cover that, so please take a look at it.

[ASF]

ID3 tags are present so I will see if I can get the program to create the needed text.  I will burn at 24x for the next CD

Thank you both for your help.

Aaron

[ASF]

Gentlemen:

I thought I'd try to burn another CD.  Since I previously downloaded and installed the madflac codec, I thought I'd again try to do so using flac files, but use some that were not hi-res but were 16bit/44.1KHz like an audio CD.  In trying to build the CUE, I encountered a different error as demonstrated by the attachment.  This says something about a "tabletPC" inking error which I don't understand since a tablet PC was not used in this attempt.  Can you help?  Thanks

[LIGHTNING UK!]

That’s a strange error to report.

At this point, assuming the files are what you say they are, I’d have to say madflac didn’t install correctly.

[ASF]

I am not that familiar with installing codecs, but I thought I had successful installed madflac previously....I even received a successful installation notice.  To be sure, I just download it again (v1.10) and ree-installed it.  I again received the successful installation notice  (attached).  But when I search under audio codecs in system information, I don't see the codec (list also attached).  Not sure I understand....is the codec in a different place?  I am using Windows 11 in case that is an issue.

[dbminter]

For what it's worth, the madflac codecs won't show as "installed" in System Information.

 

madFLAC.ax is installed wherever you told it to install in the installer.  For instance, in my installation, I direct it to a location on my external USB HDD.

[ASF]

I wasn't offered any choice about location, so I assume it went to a default destination.  Might the location be important to the codec's proper function?

 

[dbminter]

Oh, I forgot it's not installed by an "installer."  It's a ZIP file with a .BAT that registers the .AX.  So, the file resides wherever you extracted it from the ZIP file.

 

Make sure you didn't delete the .AX file by accident if you deleted the unzipped folder after running INSTALL.BAT.

 

It has been about 11 years since I last downloaded it.

[ASF]

2 hours ago, dbminter said:

Oh, I forgot it's not installed by an "installer."  It's a ZIP file with a .BAT that registers the .AX.  So, the file resides wherever you extracted it from the ZIP file.

 

Make sure you didn't delete the .AX file by accident if you deleted the unzipped folder after running INSTALL.BAT.

 

It has been about 11 years since I last downloaded it.

I am not that familiar with installing codecs, but I thought I had successful installed madflac previously....I even received a successful installation notice.  To be sure, I just download it again (v1.10) and ree-installed it.  I again received the successful installation notice  (attached).  But when I search under audio codecs in system information, I don't see the codec (list also attached).  Not sure I understand....is the codec in a different place?  I am using Windows 11 in case that is an issue.

[ASF]

That explains it!  After the initial install (from the file in my download folder), assuming it was installed to a default destination, I had deleted the file from my download folder.  After the re-install I described in my earlier post, the CUE file was created perfectly!  thanks

[dbminter]

I thought that you might have deleted that file unwittingly.  When the ZIP is extracted, the .BAT registers the .AX but does not move its location.  So, the file must remain where it was unzipped to and the .BAT file run from in order to work.

[ASF]

Thanks!

 

[ThaCrip]

On 3/4/2022 at 7:41 PM, ASF said:

After additional research, I realized that the FLAC files were hi-resolution which I suspected was the issue.  I then converted these files to WAV format, but the error did not resolve.  I noted that the wav files were still hi-res, so I decided to use mp3 files that I have created when I downloaded the original flac files.

You may already know this but as a general rule, for highest quality audio, it's always best to convert from FLAC to WAV as this way your burned audio CD will be of high quality where as with MP3 converted back to a regular audio CD your losing quality (but if your happy enough with the quality of the audio then you might not care).

but personally... if I am burning a standard audio CD ill always use FLAC (which I convert to WAV so ImgBurn can use it) unless I have absolutely no choice, which would be rare for me.

in fact, I strongly recommend using Foobar2000 (with the 'encoders pack' installed) to convert those hi-res FLAC files back to standard 16-bit/44.1kHz FLAC which then you can convert temporarily over to a WAV file which will then be standard 16-bit/44.1kHz and should have no trouble with being burned with ImgBurn straight up on a clean install of ImgBurn with no additional stuff needed to be installed on ImgBurn itself since no conversion on the ImgBurn side of things will occur.

for example on Foobar2000 to convert say a 24-bit/96Hz (or the like) 'hi-res' FLAC file to standard audio format (16-bit/44.1kHz) you basically install Foobar2000, install the 'encoders pack' (i.e. https://www.foobar2000.org/encoderpack ), install the following plugin into Foobar2000... https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=67376.0 ; basically "foo_dsp_resampler.fb2k-component" (101,345 bytes in size) which you can do from Foobar2000's 'File > Preferences > Components' tab and click 'Install'. after that's installed. you go back to main Foobar2000 menu, drag-and-drop your 'hi-res' FLAC files into the window, select them all (CTRL+A ; or you can use mouse with CTRL or SHIFT etc stuff like usual) and then right click on any one of those songs which will be all solid blue color, select "Convert > ..." and on the 'Converter Setup' screen that pops up click 'Output format', scroll down to 'FLAC', highlight it with a left click so it's highlighted in blue, then below it shows 'Output bit depth: Auto' change 'Auto' to '16-bit' (optionally: if you want maximum FLAC compression (smallest file size, which won't effect sound quality at all no matter what you use since FLAC is a lossless audio format) I think it defaults to 'level 5', I change mine to 'level 8' which you can do by clicking 'edit' and simply drag the slider all the way to the right and click 'OK') and then click 'back' and then click 'Processing' and on the Processing menu that comes up you should see 'Resampler (SoX)' on the 'Available DSPs" section and simply click the "+" sign to the right of it which will then add it to the left side of screen which is 'Active DSPs' at which point you can now click BACK and you will be back on main 'Converter Setup' screen at which point you simply click 'Convert' and then guide it to the location where you want to save your new FLAC files and save and after a short period of time it will output new FLAC files which are now standard 16-bit/44.1kHz and anytime you convert these back to WAV they will always be standard 16-bit/44.1kHz which will work without issue on ImgBurn.

even besides your particular use case Foobar2000 is a excellent basic music playback program with solid conversion abilities like from FLAC to MP3/AAC/Opus etc. NOTE: to get the best AAC (i.e. standard AAC-LC files) you have to sort of manually setup Apple AAC or WinAMP's FhG encoder with it since those two are the best. but you don't have to install either WinAMP or iTunes to get it as I already stripped the files needed for use with Foobar2000 to encode Apple AAC files and FhG. but I won't get in this for now as for the most part I suggest using MP3 @ V5 (130kbps) for general music playback (which comes with the 'encoders pack' already which is basically the newest LAME (MP3) encoder) since quality is good enough and is storage space efficient and any device that works with lossy audio will work since if your device plays lossy audio, MP3 is pretty much guaranteed to be universally supported unlike other formats which may or may not work (although AAC (AAC-LC) (.m4a)) has great support to as with Apple AAC or FhG I generally suggest using the 96kbps setting (CVBR mode although TVBR is more of the default on Apple AAC side of things) since it's quality is solid enough and quite storage space efficient.

NOTE: if you want to make things easier in the future with Foobar2000's 'Convert' menu you can save a preset by setting up your settings and then click the 'save <<' and name it whatever you want so in the future if you have to convert hi-res FLAC to standard audio CD flac you can simply select all of your FLAC files (CTRL+A etc) right click, select 'Convert' and your preset should be shown from that drop down menu and you simply click it. so it's much faster this way if you do some conversion which I setup ones for MP3/AAC/FLAC etc so it's much quicker.

NOTE: that 'SoX' plugin is only needed if your 'hi-res' FLAC files are higher than 44.1kHz as if your files are 44.1kHz but are say 24bit instead of 16bit, Foobar2000 can convert back to that without the assistance of the SoX plugin.

p.s. for the record... hi-res FLAC files are pretty much just a waste of storage space (which is why I typically just convert them back to 16-bit/44.1kHz and dump the hi-res) simply because standard audio CD that we have had for ages is already beyond human hearing already. so you can't really improve on it to us humans. basically no one could tell the difference between a random music CD that's a standard audio CD format and a hi-res one in a double blind test like say with ABX plugin on Foobar2000 etc. 'hi-res' audio is basically marketing BS.

Edited March 14, 2022 by ThaCrip

[dbminter]

I've always used madFLAC for ImgBurn to convert my FLAC's.  I've never come across any high resolution ones, though, apparently, as all the FLAC's I've ever fed ImgBurn with madFLAC "installed" worked.