Do new car CD players still skip when they're cold?

Factual Questions
1

Being an audiophile & early adopter my first car CD player was a Blaupunkt in-dash unit purchased in 1993. Sounded great but it had no memory buffer (skipped on hard bumps in the road) and it would not play if it was too cold in the car (until the interior warmed up of course).

I then bought an Aiwa MP3 CD in-dash in 2002. Being that it read each MP3 track from the CD into memory first, it would never skip, and it seemed to be more tolerant of cold.

I now have a 2004 Nissan Pathfinder with a factory 6-disc in-dash changer and it abso-fucking-lutely will not play without skipping if its under 40°F. Plus I’m suspicious because, if its not too cold but still skipping, ejecting & re-inserting the disc will often fix it.

Is this typical? Or is mine overly-sensitive (i.e. sorta defective)?

2

My old CD player, about 10 years old, had the same problem. My new one doesn’t. I’d guess you have some memory in there that is temperature sensitive.

I started a GQ thread on this some time back, and never got any good explanation. The only solution seemed to be to replace the player.

3

Just the opposite for me…2 CD players I’ve used in my car (Honda Civic) chronically overheat and start getting glitchy. I suspect the venting in my dash, combined with running the defroster, is just too much for the player. My CDs frequently leave the player near scalding to the touch.

4

Interesting. Mine still works fine when even when it’s so cold that the LCD can’t keep up and does that slow-fade thing.

5

I’ve got the original in my 2002 PT Cruiser, and have never had any problem with it, no matter how cold.

6

I don’t know if this is the same “problem” but I noticed similar behavior with my car’s CD player, but then I noticed a pattern. Disks that I had left in the car or in the player wouldn’t skip, but disks I brought out from the “warm” house skipped.
Sure enough, the skipping disks were fogging up and the condensation rendered them unreadable.

7

When I was having problems, I noted the opposite - disks from inside worked while disks in the car didn’t. I also noted that thick CDs worked better than thin ones. Like I said, I never figured it out.

8

I live in Canada and have never encountered an in-car CD player skip because of anything. I think maybe once or twice I’ve heard a CD player skip in a car and that would have only been due to off-road mayhem. Likewise, I’ve never had a CD player not read a disc because of cold. CD players will be all slow mechanically sounding when you start up on a cold morning, but that is about it.

Funny that so many people are complaining about their car CD players. I’ve always thought wow, they really put quality CD players in cars.

9

I have never had a skipping problem on any of the Volvo players either single or 6 disk due to temp. From -30 to +115 they have always played.

10

Could be the grease on the lens movement rails and rods has hardened when cold.

This, the grease not the cold, was a problem with Phillips CDM-12s in Rowe, NSM and other jukeboxes.

11

I replaced the original AM/FM/cassette stereo in my car a couple of summers ago with a new CD player. In removing part of the dash, I indadvertently ruined the foam gasket between the main ventilation ductwork and the little stubs connected to the dash vents. Seeing that it looked like the way the pieces interconnected would do a good enough job of keeping the air flowing in the right direction, I didn’t think twice about it. A few days later, I was sitting with my air conditioner running and enjoying a CD when it skipped. Then a few minutes later it skipped again, more noticeably. Then it just stopped, and some error code appeared on the player’s screen. I ejected the disk and it was literally dripping wet with condensate.

I replaced that gasket pretty promptly after that and have had no problems since. :slight_smile: