I got a new cd burner for xmas. I’ve been happily burning onto cd all the stuff I downloaded off of Napster(please, no flames, that’s a whole other subject). Anyway, I’ve noticed that if i put more than app. 50 minutes on a single cd, when I play it on my cd player in my stereo, it starts skipping,(again about the 50 minute mark). The cd player in question is about 7 years old. Is the likelihood of my problem more with the burner (which is, in effect, brand new) or do I need to get a new cd player?
I would guess it would be either your cd’s (they are meant to hold over 50 minutes, right?) or the CD player. I’m not an expert on the subject, so I’m just guessing here.
Are they CD-Rs or CD-RWs? Rs sometimes don’t cooperate with old CD players (especially 80 minute ones), and RWs usually don’t work with old players because the lenses can’t focus on the special ink used to re-write. I would suggest trying 74 minute CD-Rs, and if they don’t work, buy a new CD player.
I’ve noticed a similar problem when using cheap media with my HP 3100 IDE CD-RW drive at 4x. If I use better media or burn at 1x, the problem seems to disappear.
I’d always attributed it to the fact that my computer is a fossil of a Pentium 233 with a mere 64 MB of RAM.
I’m tempted to say it’s the CD player. I have a friend who I occasionally burn CDs for that has problems with some of them. In my CD players, however, it works just fine. Her CD player in question is also about 7-8 years old.
OTOH, like Grither noted, these problems go away when the CD is burned at 1x speed. Go figure…
Do you have a Kenwood CD player in your car? Earlier Kenwoods have a real problem with CD-Rs. If they are not of the highest quality (I use either Ricoh Platinum or Imation 16x discs), my Kenwood will get scratchy after about an hour of play. Try playing the LAST half of the disc right when you get in your car and see if you still have the problem. Mine seems to be purely a product of the unit heating up. But since I use the good CDs, I don’t have much trouble with it any more. Newer CD players shouldn’t have this problem.
It could be a few things. For one, recordable CDs are fragile things; often times for whatever reason an attempt to burn a CD will fail, thereby ruining the CD; other times, the CD will play in certain CD players and not in others. Furthermore, maaany of these CDs have a problem with how much information they can handle. Once you get to around an hour, the ability for the CD player to recognize individual tracks and play them is greatly diminished; the information is too much to handle. Or perhaps it is the CD player.
Handy, you post this in every thread, and I correct you in every thread.
Do NOT purchase these cds. The only difference is that they contain special encoding which activates circutry in standalone “stereo system” cd recorders, and include a surcharge for the RIAA. These cds offer NO advantage in recording quality on a PC based CD recorder.
I have observed that different types of standalone CD players have different success rates with different types of CDR media. Each type (blue on silver, green on gold, etc) has different reflectivity and contrast and this can affect how well the laser can read the tracks. This problem is worse on older CD players.
there are a couple factors that could be causing this
[list=a]
[li]You are burning on bad CDs, or cheap media, and this is not good[/li][li]The CD player you mentioned is too old[/li][li]You are burning to fast. If you are burning at 8x, try 4x. Sometimes audio doesn’t work as well at those higher speeds.[/li][/list=a]
The question was regarding recording music to CD and why it wasn’t physically working. I can only assume he was copying music that he composed or otherwise has the rights to. Using music CDRs will do nothing to solve the problem that he is encountering, and may cause him to pay a surcharge that he has no legal responsibility to pay.
::hijack::
I write and record music with my band. I have a CD burner, but I do not keep my music on my hard drive for space reasons. Often I download my music and my friends’ music off of Napster to burn CDs for people. We have the rights to the music. Napster can be used for legal purposes, pure and simple.
Do you have other (licenced) CDs that are over 50 min? Check (most don’t, since all the good music is at the beginning of the CD, not track 27) If the problem occurs with them as well, then the problem could be the lanes tracker. After some time (or a nasty bump), one of the lens tracks bends, making the lens get stuck and start skipping.
Just one idea.