Optical drive sound quality bad?

I recently had a firmware update done to this computer. However I noticed that when I ripped CD's into iTunes the sound quality diminished. There is almost no bass and a lot of highs. I have checked the iPod EQ, the iTunes EQ, OS X sound preferences, my speakers, and my headphones. I also checked the iTunes store purchases I made but they still sound great. Only songs I rip from CD's sound worse only after I updated the firmware. Any suggestions?

There shouldn't be a reason for a firmware update to the drive to cause a quality issue with music you rip. Basically, the drive just reads the data. It can either read it or not, but it won't change it. As A BRODY asked... do you know what bitrate you recorded it at? Perhaps you had changed a setting?

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Hi tayfos,
Thanks for visiting Apple Support Communities.
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Audio podcast sound quality bad

Hi, I'm producing a podcast that's all vocal. I compressed the half hour long show to mp3 with the standard vocal podcast (which has a bitrate of 96). The sound quality for the voices is pretty bad. It sounds like we have lisps. The s sounds get muffled out. I tried doing an mp3 compression at 160kbps and it sounds a bit better but I don't think I need to be compressing it with such a high bitrate. Is there anything that I might be missing? Thanks in advance.

Have you tried to export it without compression, just to check if it maybe sounds bad by itself? E.g., when you're clipping the levels, you might not hear it in GB, but in the exported audio file.

Optical Drive Sound

When I pick up my curent Macbook 13'' (mid-2010). I hear the optical drive spin a few times then stop. I am wondering if this is normal?

The issue doesn't happen every time I lift the computer.

This Optical Drive is Crazy

My optical drive is going bad...I think. I can no longer burn movies. Brand new blank (high quality) media is not recognized when I try to burn. Every archived photo CD -- will not be read. When I put the Apple Install CD's in -- it can read that. It seems to be able to play a DVD. But everything I read seems to indicate this Matshita drive is crap.
Well, at least I have Apple Care, right? Right. But they want me to mail my laptop in to them. Mail my entire laptop in to God knows where??? Or take it to a store and they will MAIL it off for repair. I cannot be without a computer. I would be out of business. And do I really want all of my personal, business and client information to be floating around -- again -- God knows where.
If I had a Dell, they would come in one day and repair it on-site. I am so angry. I have been a Mac owner for over 20 years, and this type of customer service is why I will probably buy a Dell next time around.
Any thoughts, help, suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Specs are:
MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-846:
Firmware Revision: FQ3T
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipped/Supported)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW, +R DL
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Burn Underrun Protection DVD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO
Media: No

somewhitechick1 wrote:
Sounds like you work for Apple. Dell absolutely will come to your home, your office...they come to wherever your computer is -- so that you have no down time. That's a pretty darn good selling point, in my opinion.
LOL. Um, we manage over 600 systems, about 45% are Apple the rest run Windows and a good number of them are Dell. We have both Apple and Dell servers. When I call Apple and describe the steps that I've taken to figure out the problem and what my conclusion is, the actually listen, go thru their pages that tell me what steps to try, and suggest any that I have missed, or just plain out put in my order for parts. Straight forward and quick. We have called Dell before with a know problem, but have had to troubleshoot the same steps we already performed in house, time and time again, while they are on the phone. In one case, with a server, we were on the phone for over 6 hours for the span of 2 days before they agreed to send us out a new controller for our RAID. Mind you we have 4 hr (or is it 6?) same day support on these!
My point is.. every tech call does not go as smoothly as we would like. Apple keeps scoring at the top of service call satisfaction as rated by (from what I understand) an independent body. Nobody is saying that they are perfect. I have far fewer problems calling for support with Apple than I do Dell or HP. If your whole point was just to rant about service and not solve a problem.. then this is not the place for such a discussion.

Mac Pro optical drive is really loud.....

I just got may mac pro today and when i turned it on I noticed that the optical drive sounded as if it was running on full throttle at all times. It is in a well ventilated area, I reset the pram, and still no luck! I also did a hardware test and it detected an error 4SNS/1/40000000:Vp0C. Just before it detected the error the optical drive became quiet for a few seconds and then went right back to being loud....Any ideas????

Thanks for the reply, but I took it to the apple store today and they ran a full diagnostic test on it. It turns out it really wasn't the optical drive. There was a bad sensor on the logic board causing the power supply fan to run at full blast. Looks like im gonna have to wait even longer to be able to enjoy my mac pro:(

Optical Drive Problems

I am experiencing two problems that I am a bit worried about in the long run. Upon disc insertion or deletion, there is a bit of noise that I'm not used to hearing and when this noise is happening at the same time the illuminated keys above the disc drive flash off for a split second. Should I be worried about this?

Hi Justin:
This Apple article:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1723
has sound bytes of "normal" optical drive sounds. It may help to ease your concerns.
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Loud optical drive - is this normal?

On my base 13 inch MBP the optical drive sounds pretty loud and i was wondering if this is normal.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1723
it sounds exactly like that

As long as it has no trouble reading or writing discs, I wouldn't worry about it.
See though my FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/cdrfailure.html
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- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Optical drive slow/noisy

Hi, I saw a lot of other topics about the optical drive concerning the 10.4.6 update but I don't think my problem falls under that. About 6 weeks ago I sent my powerbook (15" 1.25 ghz superdrive) into apple after it had started to make a very loud buzzing/grinding noise and the computer was slow to respond. They sent it back after a few days and the technicians had replaced the hard-drive. The apple store genius however had insisted that the problem was the optical drive.
Everything seemed fine for a while until a few days ago when I noticed that it took around 2 mins for a CD to come up in iTunes. The optical drive was clicking away and spinning up and down and being generally wacky. Eventually the CD came up and it seemed ok. I ripped songs from the CD and now I notice in a few of the tracks there are little skips or blips of the song that are cut out for a split second and its not part of the music on the CD.
I've also had it simply eject the CD after 10 or so seconds of being in the drive. Also i've witnessed a song playing off of the CD then it stop for 10 seconds, then start playing again. Finally, the other day I stuck a DVD in to watch and the optical drive sounded like a lawnmower. It was very loud, vibrating my whole desk. I was scared but it calmed down after a minute or so and played the whole movie without any trouble. Right now its playing a CD and its making clicking and whirring noises more often than i've ever noticed.
I'm not sure about the burning capabilities. Thanks for any help, it's appreciated. I have applecare so if it needs serviced its not a problem.
Thanks again
Ben S.

Your drive may no longer be seating properly and the its connection has gone funky. Also there might be a firmware update for your computer/drive. Either way i'd head down to the apple store again and recreate the problem for them.
In the meantime you can repair permissions and run cron scripts. You could also do a hardware test to see if any errors are detected.

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Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi FunkyB,
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ASIO Low Latency Driver sound output is bad?

My Notebook comes with "build-in" asio drivers called "Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver". Further there is ASIO DirectX FullDuplex Driver and ASIO Multimedia Driver.
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Well, it's just the standard driver that comes with my notebook, named HP ProBook 6550b.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=32...
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It is really strange. The soundcard seems to provide real asio, but the low latency sounds as bad as the "pretending" asio4all. hm...

Snow Leopard Install problems on Macbook Pro with bad optical drive

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Are you able to connect the two via Firewire cable? If so you can boot the MBP into Target Disk Mode. Then boot the other computer from the OS X installer disc. The installer should detect the hard drive of the MBP as an eligible target destination.
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Message was edited by: Kappy

Bad Optical Drive Replaced with a New MacBook Black!

Hello,
I just wanted to write and let you all know of my 1st experience buying a Mac computer. I needed a laptop, so I
decided on the MacBook. I saw BH Photo had some 1st generation
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Well, when I arrived home, I once again went through the whole
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black MacBook, but could not justify paying nearly $200 just for the
black color.
Well, tonight I'm writing to you on my new MacBook Black laptop.
I've got the entire Creative Suite loaded on it along with Lightroom,
and I'm very happy with the performance thus far.
Apple has the best customer service I have ever dealt with...they
just might have won over a new customer for life!
Judgement of a company should not be solely on the mistakes they make, no company is going to be perfect, to me is a much better scale to see what they do about their mistakes...I love my new MacBook Black!
-Bryan
Salt Lake City, Utah

Awesome, another fellow BlackBook owner.
Coincidentally, I've found Apple's customer service is generally pretty good. I had to exchange my week-old Blackbook b/c of a slight seperation of the screen bezel (next to the iSight). They were really up-front "...this shouldn't be doing this...please have a seat, we'll exchange this for you right away...do you need us to transfer your data?" Wow. Not to rant, but this is a lot different than when we were at Best Buy a year ago and my g/f bought her Vaio (she teaches at a high school that is PC-only, no Mac at all). She uses her old G3 Lombard as a spare and it still runs beautifully.
The Vaio had a blemish on the lid (paint defect on the lid...bubbles) that we brought back the same day. No big deal, just want an exchange. The kid-manager-on-duty told us that it was "within manufacturer's specifications....restocking fee...etc." before even looking at it. We told him it wasn't a pixel, but a paint defect, and he could at least look at it before telling us to "pound sand." After a 10min demand for the store manager, they relented and exchanged the Vaio for us. Her Vaio just had an XP re-install this last weekend but is otherwise in excellent shape.
After our expeirence w/ my Macbook exchange (..."have a seat...transfer data..etc.") she bought herself a new Mac Mini and is anxiously awaiting it to arrive.
Happy Macs to all.
13" Core 2 Black Macbook Mac OS X (10.4.9) 14" Core Duo HP Notebook XP SP2

Rebuilding library after hard drive crash AND sound quality of iPod files?

Hi all,
I had a hard drive crash and hadn't done a back-up in awhile. My iPod was up-to-date though. I used third-party software to grab the music off the iPod. So now I a good portion of my library back up to another hard drive AND the entire library pulled off my iPod. Should I just direct iTunes to the files I pulled off the iPod or direct it to the backup and add the missing files from my iPod files? Clear as mud?
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If you copied the files from the iPod to a folder on your computer then open iTunes and go to File>Add Folder to library and add the songs back into iTunes (or simply drag the folder from it's location to the iTunes Source pane, - the long pane on the left. They should sound fine since they are simply copies of the originals. Before you add them check your iTunes preferences, go to Edit>Preferences>Advanced and make sure the boc "Copt files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" is checked.

Optical drive sound quality bad?

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