Poor sound CD sound quality with burned iTunes

Thanks for the reply ed2345. I had recorded CDs at slower speeds before but did not have consistent success from CD to CD.

I recently uncovered a whole series of discussions on the web revolving around this issue and saw that some people had success in eliminating poor playback quality from a burned CD-R by Unchecking the Sound Enhancer feature that can be accessed in the Playback window from the Preferences menu under the Edit column in the tool bar. I did that and decided to also Uncheck the Sound Check feature shown in that same window.

Not satisfied with my work I reviewed my library and noticed that almost all of my downloaded iTunes were made at the 256 kbps rating. So I went back into the Playback window and changed the "Bitrate for Audio Playback" to the maximum available on the drop down list: 192 kHz. Previously I had always had that setting at the factory preset of 44.1 kHz. I figured...why not? I then changed the "Bits Per Sample for Audio" to the maximum: 24 from the factory preset of 16.

I began to question whether my Equalizer settings were possible interfering with the best Playback audio experience. I decided to ditch my settings. So I went to the "Show Equalizer" option from the View drop down menu in the Tool bar. I left it in "Manual" mode then Unchecked the "On" button for the Preamp, and finished by restoring all adjustable settings to their "0" dB positions. This may or may not have contributed anything to ridding Playback skipping and scratchiness, but I learned quickly that those neutral settings enabled a brighter sound than what I was previously hearing.

Now, as someone with a process engineering background I realize that I changed too many variables at one time to make a good assessment of what would be the right change or changes. But I just wanted to throw a hammer at the problem given the fact I've been dealing with this frustration for a while.

With that in mind I went ahead and burned a new CD at the Maximum allowable speed.

The CD audio quality came out beautiful. I repeated the process with a second CD-R and same playlist. Same excellent audio quality.

At some point I may go back and do a Design of Experiment to establish what really made the difference. For now I am happy with my results. Please share with the community. Maybe someone else can dial in on the solution sooner.

Thanks.

REB1956