Overwhelming static on CD burned from MusicBee - both on PC and in CD player

[Buridan]

Primary issue: I'm burning an album I just bought that had a FLAC download code. It plays beautifully in MusicBee, but when burned (at any speed) the resulting CD is unplayable on either PC (through MusicBee or VLC) or a CD player.

Secondary issue: I can burn the CD by dragging and dropping the files from Windows 10, and when doing this I can make CDs that show titles on my CD player's display, which never happens with MusicBee CDs. I'd prefer to do it all through MusicBee, so does anyone know why this doesn't happen?

Thank you.

[sveakul]

First check to see that the CD-R itself isn't bad;  had the same "overwhelming static" experience with a 3rd-party burner when I inadvertently picked a blank CD-R that was 17 years old, the dye layer was shot.  New batch, no problem.

[frankz]

If it's a FLAC you downloaded, make sure it's 16/44.1 (i.e. not HiRes) or being converted to 16/44.1 for burning. I haven't used MB for burning, so I don't know if it's something that happens automatically or whether you have to feed it 16/44.1 files.

[Buridan]

Thanks for the replies.

sveakul - I tried it on 3 CDs from a stack that until now has been used only for burning music CDs from MusicBee with no issues in a number of CD players and PCs. So I think in this case the media are all right.

frankz - I would attach a screenshot of the properties of the first track of the dodgy album, but can't work out how to. It's a "24 bit FLAC Audio file" encoded with "reference libFLAC 1.3.0 20130526". Bitrate 1187k, sample rate 48kHz.

How do I go about checking what the files are being converted to for burning?

[sveakul]

frankz - I would attach a screenshot of the properties of the first track of the dodgy album, but can't work out how to.

Try the steps in this post for uploading images, it's not hard at all:  https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=27359.msg153162#msg153162

Like frankz I don't burn with MusicBee so I'm afraid I can't be of any more help.

[frankz]

Thanks for the replies.

sveakul - I tried it on 3 CDs from a stack that until now has been used only for burning music CDs from MusicBee with no issues in a number of CD players and PCs. So I think in this case the media are all right.

frankz - I would attach a screenshot of the properties of the first track of the dodgy album, but can't work out how to. It's a "24 bit FLAC Audio file" encoded with "reference libFLAC 1.3.0 20130526". Bitrate 1187k, sample rate 48kHz.

How do I go about checking what the files are being converted to for burning?

I think the fact that they're only static when you try to play them is verification that they're not being converted.  You can't burn hires audio files to audio CD, and I guess MB doesn't automatically convert them. Not being a burner, I couldn't tell you one way or the other. But at least the 'why is this static' question is diagnosed.

Your easiest course of action is to convert them to 16/44.1 wav files and then burn those. Google will offer many different conversion methods.

[Buridan]

Thanks sveakul - I've not used third party uploaders for some time so that was helpful.

frankz - the music is there, but like it's being played on a shingle beach in a storm. It's not just static but static with very faint music underlying it. If what I detailed to you shows that it is a 'hi-res' type of FLAC (I'm not a digital format expert as I mostly listen to physical media) then it sounds a logical possibility that MusicBee is not converting it to be read properly. It's a download from an insert with an LP, and available in other formats so I'll see if I have better luck with that.

To trespass further on your time: do you have any ideas about my secondary point, which was about metadata showing up after burning on CD player displays? None of my MusicBee burned CDs show track names...

[frankz]

To trespass further on your time: do you have any ideas about my secondary point, which was about metadata showing up after burning on CD player displays? None of my MusicBee burned CDs show track names...

Sorry, no. I haven't burned a CD in probably a decade and never with MusicBee.