Unable To Play Burned CD's in Car Player

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Well, my carefully crafted msg just mistakenly disappeared! Very frustrating.....

Trying to make an audio CD to play in the sled's OEM 3-disk player built for them by Alpine. Tried it twice now and no joy.

I'm burning it on the slowest speed possible, the files on the burned CD are .cda files, showing I selected "Audio CD" rather than dataCD.

The disks are Memorex Music CD-R's, 700Mb, 80min, 40x in various colors: Red, yellow, blue, green, purple and black. When I bought these > 10yrs ago, I thought they were specific AUDIO CD'S made for players that wouldn't recognize a DATA CD. (Guess I was wrong).

However, the same disk will play fine in a Panasonic DMR-E85H DVD recorder, a Sony DVP-NS700P CD/DVD/Video CD player and even an old CAL Icon Mark II CD-only player from the mid 90's! I'm very surprised the CAL unit does this, besides the Volvo's unit, it's the only CD only player I have that will only recognize the red-book format.

Any ideas what's going on here?

My other option is to add an AUX input to the Volvo's unit to feed a signal from an MP3 player.
 
CD-R's don't have as high optical contrast that regular factory stamped silver disks have. Some older players cannot pick up the low-contrast signal. When CD-R's became more popular, gain control systems were added to the electronics to boost gain on CD-R and CD-RW disks (which are really low contrast). Most of these players are labelled "Multi-Read".

Bottom line: try a different brand of blank disks, that might have higher contrast. You also could try 650 MB disks if you can find them, they have a wider space between the tracks that older players may like.

"Audio (or "Music") CD" only means that the CD can be recorded in a standalone component CD recorder. This was a compromise with the music industry which of course did not want such devices on the market. A licensing fee is added to the price of the disks. Standalone recorders will reject ordinary blank disks that don't have the license bit set in the pre-lead in area that CD recorders look at to confirm it is a recordable disk and what type. Once the recorder has agreed to record the disk, the license bit makes absolutely no difference during playback. CD-only players do not look at that area of the disk at all and are not aware of the license bit system.

Bottom line: You don't need "music" blank CDs if you are recording them on a computer drive.
 
Last edited:
Program: WMP
Speed: First attempt: default (probably 'fastest') when that didn't work, I chose 'slow'. No joy there either. The 'fast' disk worked even in the CAL Icon....go figure.
 
CD-R's being low-contrast...OK..that makes sense. I do have some silver (standard, no color) CD-R's I'll try.

I do have an old stand-alone CD recorder deck made by RCA I think and I do remember it took special disks and that a license fee was added to each blank CD to account for that. It was built on the original red-book standard before that standard was later dropped/significantly loosened.

I'll look to see if I have any older 650MB disks I may have bought for the RCA.
 
There's a chance of success burning TAO vs DAO-- Track at Once vs Disc at Once.

Whichever you did, do the other.
wink.gif


DAO is slightly more elegant; TAO could lead to a 1/75 second gap between songs. The horrors! But if you copied something like "Dark side of the Moon" that plays seamlessly it would be annoying.
 
My 3000GT's Infinity factory cd changer was the exact same way. Back in the day,I always burned them as wav's (I'd make cd comps from my record collection). What was weird,is that it would play some and some it wouldn't.
 
If you're burning with a CD/DVD writer drive, you may want to replace it with one built specifically for CD's.
 
Originally Posted By: alcyon
seriously, go for mp3, its a [censored] lot more convenient, at least 10X more storage capacity and does not skip.

Agreed. I stopped burning music CDs some 10 years ago.
 
The whole "burning CD" craze passed overhead while I was dealing with other things. Tried doing one a couple of decades ago and it didn't work...just like now. Other things arose and I never went back to it.

At least now I know they will play on other players, even a CD only, so there's something squirrely about the sled's unit.

Thanks ya'll for chiming in!
 
Originally Posted By: sleddriver
Well, my carefully crafted msg just mistakenly disappeared! Very frustrating.....

Trying to make an audio CD to play in the sled's OEM 3-disk player built for them by Alpine. Tried it twice now and no joy.

I'm burning it on the slowest speed possible, the files on the burned CD are .cda files, showing I selected "Audio CD" rather than dataCD.

The disks are Memorex Music CD-R's, 700Mb, 80min, 40x in various colors: Red, yellow, blue, green, purple and black. When I bought these > 10yrs ago, I thought they were specific AUDIO CD'S made for players that wouldn't recognize a DATA CD. (Guess I was wrong).

However, the same disk will play fine in a Panasonic DMR-E85H DVD recorder, a Sony DVP-NS700P CD/DVD/Video CD player and even an old CAL Icon Mark II CD-only player from the mid 90's! I'm very surprised the CAL unit does this, besides the Volvo's unit, it's the only CD only player I have that will only recognize the red-book format.

Any ideas what's going on here?

My other option is to add an AUX input to the Volvo's unit to feed a signal from an MP3 player.

Original Red Book CDs were 650Mb, 74 minutes, so your early player cannot cope with the closer pitch of the later 700Mb, 80 min CD-Rs.

Btw, just let the CD writer write at its 'best' or 'optimum' speed rather than forcing it to write too slow. It checks itself as it goes...
 
Last year I tried burning CDs with WMP and I got a LOT of pops and chirps. The mp3s were error free.

I just finished burning three CDs of mp3s with ImgBurn and so far have had no issues. ImgBurn is free, BUT, if you install it, do the installation slowly and read what you are prompted to install. You have to manually opt out of some adware garbage. Other than that, it seems like a great program.
 
Originally Posted By: eljefino
DAO is slightly more elegant; TAO could lead to a 1/75 second gap between songs. The horrors! But if you copied something like "Dark side of the Moon" that plays seamlessly it would be annoying.

Or The Wall....
wink.gif
 
Ah, those were the days. Just like mixed tapes (I don't go back farther than that). Kids these days will never know...

My mom's house has a rotary phone that's older than me. Cool to see my nephew knows how to use it.


I'm past mp3 player and just use phone now. Mostly for podcasts. Definitely get an AUX input or bluetooth...
 
I DO have an old Sansa MP3 player. Loaded the playlist onto it and played through the cassette adapter. MP3 music quality though it rough...played same back through a high-quality tabletop system: Still ROUGH.

So I need to redo the "rip" at a higher Q level and try again.
 
I had an 89 Accord for 23 years. In the end, it's easier to just replace the unit with one that has an AUX jack or Bluetooth capability. Since mechanical parts (CD player) are no longer needed you can go "mechless" and not even have to spend much money.
 
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