Big CU error in Cd Burn

I'm burning some final copies of an album for a friend to take for duplication.  Plextor 716A burner.  I've tried burning it 3 times.  Twice with plextools once with AA.  All three discs have a big CU error spike at exactly the same spot.  Could this be caused by something in the audio content?  C1 & C2 errors seem to be within the normal range.
John

Well, this has become more and more curious.  It seems to be directly related to the content of the second track on the album.  When I remove that track the disc burns with no C2 or CU errors.  Leave the track in and the big CU error spike, along with a bunch of c2 errors, (over 200 in less than one second) occur in exactly the same spot every time regardless of burn speed.  Further, if I shift that song to track three the error moves in time a corresponding amount.  What on earth in the audio content of this song could be causing this repeatable burn error!??

Well, this has become more and more curious.  It seems to be directly related to the content of the second track on the album.  When I remove that track the disc burns with no C2 or CU errors.  Leave the track in and the big CU error spike, along with a bunch of c2 errors, (over 200 in less than one second) occur in exactly the same spot every time regardless of burn speed.  Further, if I shift that song to track three the error moves in time a corresponding amount.  What on earth in the audio content of this song could be causing this repeatable burn error!??

Hmmmm.....

CU in Plextools terminology implies uncorrectable C2 errors. In general terms this means more than 4 C2 errors in a block, I think (although it is their own terminology). The one thing I can think of that might cause this is a missing or impossible code change in the audio - like a missing sample. You might think that's impossible - but I've seen it! (or rather, not seen it...) and this will seriously screw the CDA coder in a way that it does not like at all.

Your best bet is to go through the entire track at a level where you can see individual samples. Whatever is causing this should show up at that level, however weird it is.

Has the 716 got the latest firmware? - there were big changes through the history of that unit.

Paul

I think I'm a version or two behind in the firmware but I've never had any problem like this before and I've burned hundreds of discs in this drive.  I will zoom in further to look for a sample level error.  Unfortunately I can't zoom the horizontal axis in plextools so I only have a rough idea of where the problem is in the track.  Maybe within a 30 second window.  Meanwhile I've asked my friend (the client) to save a new copy of the mix out of his DAW to rule out any corruption between there and here.  Thanks for listening, will update as I know more.
John

Update: Well, I seem to have solved it.  Though I don't quite know the origin of the problem.  By using plextools to scan C1/C2 errors on the suspect track alone I could see that the CU error was at the very beginning of the track.  I couldn't see any obvious fault zoomed in to sample level at the beginning of the file.  I deleted  about 0.2s of silence at the beginning of the file and re-saved.  Burned the CD again and the error is gone.  I'll be interested to see what the file does after it's been re-saved from the source DAW.  Having read what Steve said I can only guess that there may have been a missing sample at the beginning of the file, throwing off the sample count for the whole file.
John

Having read what Steve said I can only guess that there may have been a missing sample at the beginning of the file, throwing off the sample count for the whole file.

That would be enough...

Are you using a recent version of Plextools or the one that came with the drive? Occasionally certain combinations of data could cause strange problems in older versions but hopefully most of these bugs were ironed out by the time Plextools' development was virtually stopped in 2006.

Cheers

James.

Are you using a recent version of Plextools or the one that came with the drive? Occasionally certain combinations of data could cause strange problems in older versions but hopefully most of these bugs were ironed out by the time Plextools' development was virtually stopped in 2006.

Cheers

James.

I updated the firmware and software when I bought the drive a couple years ago.  So it is neither the oldest or newest available.  I'm on the road right now so I don't have access to check and see exactly which versions I have.
John

Last firmware for the 716A is 1.11, which is less than a year old, and which has a Vista compatibility element.  I don't think Plextools could affect this; but the last version that can easily be found is 2.35 of about two years ago (but I have a copy of the Japanese 2.36 release that was never internationalised).

Paul