Playing CD-R discs in factory system??

[FusionFishGuy]

Does anyone have any advice on the reason why burned CD-R discs will not play in my factory CD player? I've tried several brands and they play on other audio equipment just fine. What needs to be done so that the factory system can read the disc? It just spits it out and says "Check CD."

[AKLGT]

hmm... mine play just fine on my 6 disc system. they are not mp3 files, right? if not, then don't know what it could be. have you tried your friend's cd-r's in there and not your own? oh, and welcome to genvibe.

[FusionFishGuy]

I am burning the files in .wav format using Roxio. I have tried other older Cd-R 650MB disks and they play fine. Have you been able to play 800MB CD-R audio disks in your factory system?

[Caretaker]

yeah, I get the same thing. A friend told me that it was because my Panasonic CD player in my car was too old. I'm not sure I'm buying that. What I have to do to overcome the problem is to put the CD in, and immediately toggle the up/down (forward/reverse) button repeatedly. That seems to get the laser to understand that there is written code to be read. I know it is a pain, but give it a try until someone comes along in this forum and gives you a more technical answer.

[FusionFishGuy]

I completed the cd burning in one session and finalized it at the end. I have used several brands as well and none seem to work except older 650MB CD-Rs that I had given to me. The ones I have tried have all been 800MB disks.

[johnsoax]

I currently have 3 650MB (74min) Cd's and one 700MB (80 min) in my six disk changer. They all work fine. I've never heard of an 800 Mb CD. Are they new?

[FusionFishGuy]

My bad!! The ones I have tried are 700MB (80 min.) CD-Rs. Sorry to lead you on there

[MrRich]

Are You sure they are not CD-WRs?

[VibeSalsa]

Quote, originally posted by MrRich »Are You sure they are not CD-WRs?Or CD-RWs?

[Jahntassa]

Quote, originally posted by FusionFishGuy »I am burning the files in .wav format using Roxio. I have tried other older Cd-R 650MB disks and they play fine. Have you been able to play 800MB CD-R audio disks in your factory system? Uh, curious, but are you making sure you select "Audio CD project" and not "Data CD project" when you go to burn the discs? The stock headunits cannot read data CDs, only music CDs..I was just using the quote as a reference, I wasn't referring to anyone in particular..

[FusionFishGuy]

Of course I selected the Audio CD option.

[Jahntassa]

Quote, originally posted by FusionFishGuy »Of course I selected the Audio CD option. Just checking! I've had a lot of people ask me why it wouldn't work, and that was their downfall. I just always look for the "Duh" factor.. It does seem very odd that you're having so many problems. Especially across brands, and finalizing the discs... I'm not sure else you could try..

[cdFxer]

The capacity of the CDR does not make a difference to the audio player-I would not recomend burning to full capacity on anything over 650MB due to mechanicals in the car unit. Some CDR's will work better than others. Some burners will not make an audio CD that will play in some players. You can try burning them at a lower speed, with some burners this gives better definition to the "pits" and "lands" and could make the CDR easier to read. I'd buy a new HU that plays MP3/WMA's. Its laser and pickup assembly are made for the rigors of recordable CD's.

[JustinVGT]

Here's an old thread that has some info that may be helpful. http://forums.genvibe.com/zerothread?id=7010 It seems like only some blank cds work. I have successfully used several brands such as Memorex, TDK, Philips, and some cheap ones that I forgot the names of.

[FusionFishGuy]

Quote, originally posted by cdFxer »The capacity of the CDR does not make a difference to the audio player-I would not recomend burning to full capacity on anything over 650MB due to mechanicals in the car unit. Some CDR's will work better than others. Some burners will not make an audio CD that will play in some players. You can try burning them at a lower speed, with some burners this gives better definition to the "pits" and "lands" and could make the CDR easier to read. I'd buy a new HU that plays MP3/WMA's. Its laser and pickup assembly are made for the rigors of recordable CD's.Thanx for the advice. I'll give that a try. I think it may have to do with the spacing between the spirals on the CD. A full 80-min disc may be spaced to closely so the unit cannot read it. I'll try just burning 74-min on an 80-min disc and see if that works! It's a good thing discs aren't too expensive!!

[cdFxer]

That is true, the spacing can be different on the longer CD's, but there are pressed CD's that use that same trick. Like the Beetles 1 CD. We had lots of trouble with that in the plant due to that and the data actually goes beyond the normal length. On some longer CDR's they allow the data to be written further and/or with shorter lead in/outs. The shorter lead-in is often a big reason an audio only player can not read a CDR, or like you mentioned the track spacing differences are a close second.

[FusionFishGuy]

Quote, originally posted by cdFxer »That is true, the spacing can be different on the longer CD's, but there are pressed CD's that use that same trick. Like the Beetles 1 CD. We had lots of trouble with that in the plant due to that and the data actually goes beyond the normal length. On some longer CDR's they allow the data to be written further and/or with shorter lead in/outs. The shorter lead-in is often a big reason an audio only player can not read a CDR, or like you mentioned the track spacing differences are a close second.Well, I tried burning just 74-min. (I'll try a few more and see how they work. Thanks for the tips!!

[PhiDelt]

I have used 700MB in my car daily and no problems. My brothers radio had that problem in his 2002 Cavalier and the Dealer changed out his radio. It was also skipping other CD's really easily

[Jahntassa]

I'd have to wonder if it's because of the DVD-RAM drive..I haven't used these particular drives, so I can't say, but I know I haven't had problems with CD-R's in my Nav system...See if you can burn some discs on another burner, maybe a friends?

[cdFxer]

That could very well be part of the problem. As Jahntassa recomended, try another burner if ya can. Maybe even get a cheap CDR burner off of ebay or even new you can get them for under $40.

[cdFxer]

Kind of did not want to go this far in depth but if someone is interested:A CD player uses an active feedback servo driven and focused (sort of) laser head. There is a servo that controls the actual focus of the laser by either moving a lens up down or on some really oddball readers, it moves the entire laser diode up assembly and down. So you have a system that "tracks" the data on the CD and also another system that tracks the data as the CD "wobbles" up and down. The CD spec (orange book, green, etc) allows for a certain amount of "wobble", eccentricity, tilt, warp, etc. CDR's are harder for any system to read since the data is not as clearly defined as a pressed CD, the pits and lands have "softer" edges. Add to this mix the normal jostling of your car, the heat in the vehicle causing slight warp, tempratures, etc and you have one hard working servo system in your head unit! My personal preferences is to NOT run CDR audio discs in my vehicle OEM CD player. I play only pressed CD's in my OEM unit in my other vehicle. I guess I know too much of what goes into CD/R/RW/DVD and the players so I go a bt over board on this. But then I dont like paying $20+ for a new pickup unit. If you are handy and your head unit is kinda old/well used, you might also open up the OEM player and VERY lightly lube the tracks the head moves in/out on. This can help. Id use a light machine oil like turbine oil or the equivalent. Do NOT use WD-40-it is a dust magnet!

[ebslopp]

Depending on the age of your CD Burner, you may or may not have buffer underrun protection. If it's an older CD burner, you should try burning at 1X to prevent buffer underrun. If it still doesn't work, you should try using a friends CD Burner and see if that makes a difference. Good luck!

[cdFxer]

True, older burners did not have much (or any at times) buffer under run protection, but every CD burning software package Ive dealt with would not finish an audio disc either w/o reporting the failure or just would plain stop since a buffer under run on an audio CD is an unrecoverable error and so the player would choke. I am not counting pre-@ 1995 era CD burning software.

[OutLaW]

All my CD-R's work fine.. It's my CD-RW's that I'm having problems with..

[ebslopp]

Quote, originally posted by OutLaW »All my CD-R's work fine.. It's my CD-RW's that I'm having problems with..I doubt you'd be able to play a CD-RW in the factory system. It's a miracle that they play CD-Rs. CD-RW technology won't create a good enough image for a standard CD player to read. Use CD-R's, they're practically free anyways.

[kostby]

Quote, originally posted by FusionFishGuy »I'm burning these CDs with a DVD-RAM multi-recorder drive on my PC. Just fyi! Don't know if that could make a difference.Pure speculation of stepper motors and such: This is only a wild guess. The higher resolution of a DVD (4.7 Gb vs 700 Mb) requires that your burner is capable of making far more (and hence much narrower) 'tracks' than a CD burner. The low-budget CD player in the Vibe can't read the narrower tracks reliably, if at all.I ran into a similar problem with a notebook computer with a combo DVD-ROM/CDRW not long ago. It would NOT read a certain commercial printer driver software CD I desperately needed to install, apparently because of a scratch on the surface. I took the scratched CD and did an 'exact copy' on the older CD-RW burner of my desktop PC. Put the copy into the notebook computer, and it installed like a champ.Historically speaking, the same type of problem occurred when 1.2Mb 'high density' 5 1/4-inch floppy disks first became popular in the 1980's: They could read 360Kb 'double density' diskettes, but if you wrote to 360Kb diskettes on 1.2Mb drives, some 360Kb drives could no longer read the diskettes.I've had no problem with my factory 6-disc changer playing 650Mb and 700Mb CDRs burned on my PC (It's an HP CD-Writer Plus 24x max, I believe). I've done both 'exact copy' of original artists, and compiliations from .cda'sGood luck!

[ColonelPanic]

I haven't had much luck as of lately with my stock moon&tunes unit and CD-R's. Sometimes they will play... Sometimes it will struggle to read the first track on certain discs, the display just alternates between 'TRACK 1' and '00:00' for a good minute or so. It hasn't kicked the disc out with 'CHECK CD,' instead it eventually decides to play it, sort of. You can advance to other tracks beyond 1 and it plays. Once, it got stuck in this little loop and refused to eject the CD, pressed eject and nothing happened - the motor to eject the disc flat out wasn't running. Had to shut off the car for about 10 minutes, then it coughed up the CD.The most annoying problem however, is this static noise I'm hearing... I get this bzzt/pffft/scratch/crackle/pop spewing forth from all speakers that goes along with the music or the lyrics on *certain* CD-R'S. I've tried different burning speeds, different brands of discs, different color discs, different software (all under Linux, no Windows here, but also tried some burned on a friend's PC with Nero under Windows with mixed results) and two of my computers with two different burners. None were burned at over 16X, some burned as slow as 2X, and have tried DAO and TAO writing methods. Most have ~78 minutes, but I have tried as low as 40 minutes. Even on freshly roasted discs with absolutely no visible damage, I get the noise; OTOH, the more scratches, the more noise, obviously. I burned three CD's last night: 1: Unable to read track 1, 2: full of static, 3: Flawless.These "problem discs" seem to work just fine in every other player I've tried, including one that was around long before there were "CD-R/CD-RW compatible" players.I'm at a loss... I *think* pressed CD's work OK, I've only tried two, but after how bad it was today, I think I may bring a few with me. What's the chance of getting this flaky HU replaced if it's CD-R's that are causing the problem? (And, is the radio warrantied for only a certain period of time, not the full 3/36, like some manufacturers do?)

[cdFxer]

The scratchiness thing is odd, but possible if the CD player is having trouble reading the discs and is losing too much data to create a "decent" data stream. There used to be software to read what is known as E32's ("uncorrectable") and E22's (correctable) errors on discs. On pressed discs you should see no E32's and a few E22's, more so on CDR/RW's.You are right about the tracks on DVD players being closer together, but the CDR or CDR/W blanks have the "groove" so to speak pressed into them when they are pressed at the factory. The groove SHOULD be the same as "normal" pressed discs. I say should because one of the ways they get more time on a CD is to narrow the gap between grooves-even pressed CD's do this sometimes.