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Audio stutters when played on a Super drive
Monday, October 29, 2007 / Hardware, Intel Macs
Jacob, My Super Drive on my G4/933 desktop is acting flaky. It “flutters” when playing a recorded disk, The disk sounds fine when played on my “Boom Box” but when played on the desk top I get a stutter. I took the same file and uploaded it on a flash drive and it sounds great on the desktop. Do I need a replacement drive? Would you recommend going to a dual layer at this time?
Stuttering audio playback can certainly indicate a failing optical drive. Sometimes you can bypass an intermittent problem through software. In iTunes, you have the option of using error correction when encoding from a CD. In the current version of iTunes, that option is in the preferences under Advanced. Mark the checkbox for “use error correction when reading Audio CDs” that you find under the “Importing” tab. Now try encoding that audio CD and see if the playback is OK. If everything plays back fine, you could keep that drive going as-is for some time. But if it fails or you want to replace it with a fully functioning drive, then a MCE super drive is the way to go.
MCE drives have all the features of a modern Super Drive, and the compatibility for older versions of the Mac OS.
