I wonder if someone in this forum recognizes or is able to figure out what could be causing this problem:

Since I moved my PC to a personal studio from my bedroom, I began experiencing problems burning CD’s.

I’ve been using Cool Edit Pro and it’s CD burning add-on, and it was working fine in my bedroom. After I moved it to my studio, the sound was chopped at the end of the last track of the CD’s I created. Regardless of how many tracks I’m burning, the last track of the sequence always becomes chopped. - The chopping is repeating over a couple of seconds length of time, kinda like “modulated dropouts”, if you know what I mean.

I didn’t make any changes to any of the settings in the applications I’m using after the move, so the PC was moved and installed at the new location “as is”.

The steps I have taken so far in trying to resolve the issue is:

Checking ground (single grnd point - mixer’s pwr supply). All equipment are in the same outlet. Tried different kinds of grounding but none of the setups made any change.
Reformatting the computer, reinstalling all applications.
Tried using other burning software (Nero), which resolved the chopping problem but introduced another. (see below)
Moved PC back to bedroom (same issue)
Disconnected audio in/out during burning.
Installed a new CD burner.

All of the above to no avail

The problem that was introduced when trying to create a CD using Nero, is the addition of a high frequency modulation to all audio, which makes it sound distorted. It’s only audible on audiotracks with less energy, like single instruments e.g. guitar/piano intro’s and the like.

As a test I created a CD with a sinustone (1kHz) and ripped it back into CE, to check the waveform and it’s spectrum. I compared it with the original, and I noticed that the overtones of 1kHz –(2kHz-3kHz etc), was distibuted evenly on the original file. ( I’m not sure whether a sinustone should present any overtones at all, however the spectrum analysis displayed one). The ripped version had much more noise in the high end spectrum 10-12kHz and above. The overtones were not exactly 2, - 3, - 4, kHz, but slightly lower, e.g the 2kHz was rather 1.815 and the 3kHz 2.720, etc.

Another thing that may or may not be related to this is that it sounds like the CPU clock is leaking to the audio output, producing a highpitched noise also transferred to the audio put on CD without (assumingly) passing the D/A stage of the soundcard, which I find a little bit strange)

The related equipment:

Fujitsi Siemens PC
Soundblaster Audigy 2 Soundcard
NEC dvd/CD writer