Sound Stuttering on Audio CDs

Two drives, E: & F:. F works fine.

E: stutters continuously when playing an audio CD. There is no problem with data, .MP3 etc, graphics/photos, only with audio CDs.

Device Manager tells me the drivers are up-to-date. Rebooting doesn't help.

Drive is a TSST CDDVDW SH-S223C ATA. Sound is on-board.

[Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, 4GB RAM]

Any ideas?

ignatzatsonic said:

Do you have another DVD drive you can swap in to see if the issue disappears?

Thing is it's less than a year old and came with the machine, so still under warranty.

Have you done a system restore to a date before the problem began to see if it disappears?

I've switched that off in favour of the Acronis image system, but I'm reluctant to restore before I've exhausted all other options.

Any recent software additions or changes in configuration?

Quite a few software additions, no changes in config.

DVD drives are commodities now. I don't know how long they can be expected to last, but I understand your reluctance to assume it is a bad drive.

The other drive, F: works perfectly so it could well be the drive. I don't ever remember playing an audio CD on E: before as I tended to use the F: drive for just about everything as it's faster.

Any chance you were multi-tasking at the time and putting a good load on the processor while playing the CD?

Not the case as far as I know. It stuttered in a ripping programme as well as in Winamp. May be worth looking at what the CPU load is while playing audio.

ignatzatsonic said:

OK. All I can suggest at this point is to start playing a disc, get it stuttering, then take a simultaneous look at processes in Task Manager to see what is loading up the processor and memory at that time.

Did that earlier, processor is relaxed during playback between 1% and 4%. At the moment, with nothing much running except Firefox, it's using 1.4GB of RAM out of 4GB. Seem a bit high? Goes up 1.46GB on the stuttering audio CD.

I don't normally multi-task when I listen to music, but something else hogging the CPU and RAM is all I can think of at this time.

I assume this happens regardless of what playback program you are using?

That is so: Winamp or VLC Media Player, same stutter. Actually more of a flutter than a stutter, i.e. a fast stutter!

I'm increasingly inclined to suspect the drive. Unfortunately I don't have a spare, short of taking one out of the Linux machine to swap and try.

fireberd said:

The other drive, F: works perfectly so it could well be the drive. I don't ever remember playing an audio CD on E: before as I tended to use the F: drive for just about everything as it's faster.

Sounds like it's the drive. Look for a firmware update for the drive, if there is one. Swap data cables between the two drives and see if the drive works OK and/or the other drive now has the problem, in case it is a cable problem or a port problem. There are no drivers for CD/DVD drives other than the built in Windows drivers thus both drives are using the same driver.

I think what I'll do is buy another (and faster) drive and keep the present problem one as a spare and to experiment with it in another machine to determine if it really is knackered.

I fitted a new Sony AD-7261S which solved the problem.

Thanks to all who responded.