Originally posted by Johnny Lunchbucket:
After years of burning my own CD's (mostly on the Masterlink), and without any problems....this inconsistancy ...I have also used and gotten the same inconsistancies from Fugi, and Sony CD's. What's up with this??????

:) Johnny, Saw your post, I am thinking wear and tear. Bearings, perhaps something with clocking, alignment, bad lazor ??? Have you tried another burner?

--Rick

yes, Man. My SCSI glyph/urner died after 2 years of moderate use...

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Stupid question, but just to make sure... You're using "Disc-at-Once" to burn your CD's?

And yeah, CD-R drives do age... Try loaning or pawning one to see if the problem persists on another drive.

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Ya know I would have never suspected "The aging of the Masterlink"...Guess it's no differant than the rest of us...
Gettin Older :-)
A great suggestion!!...I will try another (plan B) and see what happens. Thanks for your responces!!

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It does still strike me as strange that a CD would play on some players, and not on others if in fact the CD is not being properly processed by the Masterlink. It would be my thinking that a bad CD is a bad CD. I guess anyhting is possible. :-)

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Bits are bits. No doubt about that... However, the physical representation of bits are still grays, not strictly black and white. ;)

Grooves in the dye can be too deep, too shallow, misaligned, not timed right, etc. Some players are sensitive (especiall y older players) and even tiny deviations in a CD's surface will make them go bonkers, whereas other CD players, especially computer CD-ROM drives, are pretty gung-ho when it comes to reading poorer quality burns.

So concerning the Masterlink, if in fact it's not performing up to specs( as I now strongly suspect thanks to the responces), does this mean "chunking" the Masterlink, or is there a fix or refurbishing possible to restore it's (correct) burning abilities?

Thanks..

Are you having trouble playing back the CD's on the same CD players or are they new cd players? Because not all cd players are the same. My new DVDA player will not play CDR's.

Johnny,

I bought a used Masterlink (factory upgraded to 4 gig) last year and had trouble with other CD players not being able to read the last couple of songs on an almost full CD written on the Masterlink.

It turned out it was due to bad tolerances in the CD drive inside the Masterlink. I e-mailed their customer support and got a very quick response suggesting I replace the CD drive. I don't have the information in front of me, but I do remember that that there were only a couple of drives (manufacture & model) that have been tested with the Masterlink and they were getting hard to find. So, I ordered a couple of them and upgraded the hard disk drive to a 40Gig at the same time. It turns out it was a fairly easy fix.

I'm sure if you e-mail them, they will give you current information on replacing the drive. If you can't do it yourself, I'm sure any computer repair store in your local area can do it in half an hour or so.

Joe Crawford
Stony Mountain studio
Shanks, WV 26761

I am having problems only with a couple of outside (my studio) CD players. I burned some discs for a client and they seemed to have problems with the disc. The disc did play once, but then would not again. These (the clients) are relatively new CD players.

Like I said..no problems in my place..and for that matter I have never had any problems with CD's period. This might be a new problems for me...or there still remains the possibility...
It just won't play on their player. It is nice however to get all the feedback as to the possibilities.

Thanks!!!!

Masterlink compatibility problem

I have a 1-year old Alesis Masterlink with O/S version 2.19. None of the CD-R's that I burn in the Masterlink will play in my 3-month old relatively cheap stereo that has a Sanyo CD player in it. [Note that the stereo is made by another company (not Sanyo), and the manufacturer told me that there is a Sanyo CD player in the stereo unit that I bought.] The puzzling thing is that I have tried CD-R's burned in 5 different relatively cheap computers, and all those CD-R's played fine in the stereo. This made me suspect that the problem was with the Masterlink, and not with the stereo.

I then performed the following test:

I removed the CD burner from the Masterlink and put it in my computer. The Masterlink has the same ~$30.00 CD burner that you find in any PC, so this is easy to do. I then burned a CD-R using Nero Express at 4x speed with my computer and the burner from the Masterlink. The resulting CD-R played perfectly fine in the stereo without any problems at all.

In summary, a CD-R burned in the Masterlink won't play in my stereo, but a CD-R burned with the Masterlink's burner installed in a PC will play in my stereo. The only real difference is the software that is controlling the CD burner. The only conclusion I can reach from this is that there is something wrong with the software in the Masterlink that makes the CD-R's incompatible with some CD players.

I have had extensive email correspondence with Alesis regarding this problem, but they have ignored me ever since I pointed them to this posting and suggested the above test. I interpret their unprofessional and unbusinesslike behaviour as an admission of guilt, and as an indication that they don't intend to do anything about the problem. I think Alesis should be concerned about this problem because Sanyo sells quite a few CD players.

Have you tried going back to a previous rev of the OS... like 2.18 ? Don't know if that will help... but it might.

Oh Yeah... back up your hard drive first !

I have upgraded the OS twice since I purchased the Masterlink. The Masterlink had 2.17 when I purchased it, and that didn't work. I upgraded to 2.18, and that didn't work. I upgraded that to 2.19, and that didn't work either. Also, one of my friends has a Masterlink, and the CD's burned in his Masterlink don't play in the Sanyo either.

I am 99.9999% convinced that the software in the Masterlink is doing something that makes the CD's incompatible with some CD players. I also asked Alesis if they had any certification from Philips, or any other independent test lab, that the CD's conform to the Red Book spec, but Alesis ignored my question (which says to me that they most likely don't have any independent third party certification).

Philips, for example, has various certification services:

http://www.licensing.philips.com/services/cdr/

I contacted Philips by email, and they said they can verify whether or not a CD-R is burned properly, but they normally only do that for licensees, not consumers (except in legal cases), and it is expensive.

Note that Alesis is not a licensed manufacturer, but Sanyo is:

http://www.licensing.philips.com/licensees/database/licensees.html

Good post,

I've had many problems with my masterlink playing in other players. i no longer try to do it. i now only use it to play from and use as a go between when using different sample rates. I usually hardware SRC either to or from it. the CD24 software is useful for this. If I get a project that was done by many houses and at different rates, I create a CD24 on my computer that i pop into the masterlink, process, then SRC into the DAW. Works great for this. But redbook CD's from the masterlink sucks. i wish they would update their software to support a DVD writer so i can create large CD24 disks to play from or write to. I only bought mine for $300 and threw in a bigger hard drive for $30 so I can't complain too much.

I use the Masterlink for the CD24 format only also. I find it very practical in that matter. I can't imagine myself doing all the work on it and burning an entire CD project in a redbook. Not that I did not trust it (guess I should have now :shock: ) but it is so much more accurate to build the CD project in the DAW.

Me too, for $350 (used) it is a practical recorder. Would be great if Alesis would go further in the update of the Masterlink and DVD!

Richard