Warner Music CD's sound is distorted on Dell Windows 7 computer

I have a very similar problem, but reading through this thread the single common factor seems to be that the CDs are distributed by the Warner Music Group (an AOL Time Warner Company).

I have an HP Mini netbook, running Windows 7 Starter.  Being an HP Mini, there's no room for an internal optical drive, so I have an external USB2.0 Lacie portable DVD/CD +/- RW (click here).

I ripped a lot of CDs to M4A using iTunes, and uploaded them to my Nano.  Over time I noted that some albums had a terrible crackling sound and were essentially useless (like really bad static on a long-wave radio or something).  This was only on a small number of CDs, so I figured that something may have gone wrong with the rips.  I picked one CD (Jet, "Get Born", distributed by guess who...Warner), and tried to re-rip it.  That failed.  Just to check my sanity, I played the CD in my good-ol'-fashioned stereo, and it worked fine.  Then I simply tried playing the CD directly using Windows Media player (so without ripping, just playing the CD) and noted that the problem still persisted.

I then did some research on apps that might be able to fix CD errors and decided to try EAC (Exact Audio Copy), which seems to be well regarded as a rock-solid ripper when it comes to correcting errors.  I cranked up the "error recovery quality" to it's highest setting, and then left EAC ripping track 9 (because I felt the track title was appropriate ;)) to "FLAC" format.  So that took about8 hours!!!!  And it didn't work!  Note that EAC took 8 hours because it was trying very hard to correct what it was seeing as errors.  For other CDs (that don't have the Warner-crackle problem), it takes about 30 seconds to rip a track.

I figured that this must be some DRM jiggery pokery on the CD, so I did some more research to establish what that might be.  The only stuff I could find was on theSony debacle with the XCP rootkit back in 2005, but Sony recalled loads of CDs and nobody (Sony included) appears to do that anymore (see here).  Nonetheless, I still did quite a bit of research and troubleshooting to verify that I definitely didn't have any malware associated with the XCP rootkit on my PC.  AFAIK, I'm clean, so I haven't tried to use any removal software.

So my final thought was that the only thing I hadn't verified was whether I had an issue with my Lacie external DVD drive.  So, I decided to fire up my work laptop; a Lenovo Thinkpad T400 running WinXP Pro.  I put my Warner CD in the internal optical drive, and played the disc directly from Windows Media Player.  The CD played perfectly!

That left me thinking that either my external Lacie drive was at fault, OR that it could be a Windows 7 problem (since my work laptop is an XP beast).  So, my final test was to plug my external drive into my work laptop and try to play the CD on that.  Guess what?  The sound quality was terrible again.

It would appear to that my external Lacie drive doesn't like Warner Music Group CDs.  I checked the discs and their covers and none of them have the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo on them anywhere.  This means that they don't conform to the "Red Book" standard.  I can only assume that means that Warner are pushing out non-standard format discs, so all bets are off with regard to what drives they will play in!  I've tried finding some updated drivers and firmware for my Lacie drive, but I haven't managed to find any...everything seems to be on the latest available release.

At this stage, my frustration is targeted at Warner, and as I said at the start of this post...looking at everyone else's comments throughout this thread, they appear to be the one common component.  If there are any law-talking-guys out there who think there's any case to bring against Warner, I'm happy to provide testimony ;).

ATB, Chunky

Still, you should return it to HP and ask them to replace the CD drive with a different brand and model that actually works.

Otherwise they will never care and continue shipping these pieces of krap. Burn a copy of the Warner CD so they can test the new drive. Other posters in this thread returned their computer to Dell, they switched the CD drive, but with the exact same model, which of course didn't work any better.

I have just bought an HP Easynote TJ68. Same problem - Warner CDs only. HOWEVER, they WORK on the same laptop when played on an external cd drive plugged into the USB port. So, it's not any of the software (Windows 7 etc); it must be the optical drive. I am in sense relieved it is a Warner CD specific common problem, as I like the laptop and can now see no point in taking it back.

I have the same problem on a 1 year old Mesh running XP Professional so its is not a Windows7 problem. Gnarls Barkley St. Elsewhere (WB) and a TSSTcorp CDDVD SH-S223B CDDVDW drive.