I take offense to one of the previous posters regarding nearest suitable landing area and ValuJet 592. The ValuJet fire was already underway during taxi out. They even heard a loud pop (recorded on cvr too) and they wondered 'what was that?' (also on cvr). What they didn't know was that the fire was already so intense it ruptured a company tire in the cargo bin,. causing it to blow. Hence the pop noise heard by them. By the time they took off, a very bad situation became worse when the smoke creeped through the entire floor. Despite initial requests for MIA airport, they accepted any landing field/area that they could make it to. Prior to hitting the swamp, the flight control wirings and controls running through the floor were burned. They plunged with no control. For these pilots, their fire started on the ground, made worse during taxi, and their fate was sealed the second they hit V1.
Please don't take offense at what others remember anymore than I would take offense at your seemingly wrong memory of Value Jet's CVR.
The Valujet facts are as published in the report complete with timeline etc. (even my memory today is fuzzy so I'll be happy to go with the report if used as a reference)
As I recall the CVR provided no conclusions about time line for pops relative to fire initiation be it on the ground or in-the-air. The CVR group could only determine a single audio anomaly in-the-air followed immediately by the crew resonse "whatzat? ...... dunno for shure ... are we about to lose a bus or somethin?. Which is the first inkling that they had of something amiss. Afterwards there were many CVR dropouts and returns so the quoted words are about the only reliable part of the CVR.
The thought about the intiation on the ground were deductions made in the analysis phase of the investigation and of course unknown at the time to the crew.