Old CD player problem

[picunurse]

Several years ago I won a boom box witha CD player. I never used it very much, so it had been stored in a closet for a couple years.
When I got it out a few months ago to test some discs I’d used transfering music from vinyl to CD. I found the sound quality to be poor, low volume, and some skipping. This was with the CDs I burned and commercially recorded ones.
Yesterday my husband bought a lens cleaning disc, so I tried it. I followed the directions to the letter, then put in a commercial CD. It sounded great, good volume, no skipping or hissing.
A few minutes ago, I tried one of the CDs I’d burned. The first one worked, but the second one said “err,” so I tried the first one again. It said “err” too. In fact it wouldn’t stop spinning, so I had no choice but to turn it off. Then I tried a commercial disc again. It worked great, sounded great. It stopped when I hit stop.
I tried a different burned disc, one that has never been played except for the test I did when I burned it. “ERR” and again wouldn’t stop.
Have I killed my CD player? Was the cleaner disc a bad idea? Are the burned CDs to blame? Did I hurt the burned CDs? They work fine in the car, so I’d like them to be ok…ok?
Am I missing something? Have I asked the proper questions? if not, answer the questions I should be asking, please.

Thank you all very much,
nurse

[ticker]

Older CD players were designed to the “Red Book” standard which lays down what a CD should look like. In particular it specifies the difference in reflectivity between the pits pressed into the disk and the surrounding alumin(i)um reflective layer, making up the 1s & 0s of the data. If the player senses that the difference is below some threshold it may confuse data with dirt on the disk and ignore it. CD-Rs and CD-RWs don’t use an alumin(i)um layer, they have a dye layer instead which can be burned into by the recorder. These dyes are less reflective, particularly for CD-RWs, so more modern players need to be less picky if they want to play these new fangled disks. Perhaps your boom box was only designed for Red Book disks, or perhaps the lens is still a bit dirty and can only detect the higher contrast of the real thing.

[fishbicycle]

Newer boom boxes and other CD players have new optical readers designed to read CD-Rs. Older players did not have this functionality, and most, if not all of them, will skip on CD-Rs, or fail to find the track start locations, or not read them at all. It’s not your discs, it’s not the lens. It’s the way your machine works.

[Fridgemagnet]

ticker’s quite right, older CD players weren’t designed to be used with CD-Rs or CD-RWs. These have a lower reflectivity than pressed Al discs, and though you might get a well-recorded example of a CD-R of a particular brand working on an older player, they generally won’t work at all with CD-RWs.

Try different brands of CD-R, and don’t record them at max speed - about half the CD burner’s rated speed is a good compromise. You might get lucky and find a brand of CD-R that works consistently well with your old player.

Don’t worry, you’re unlikely to have ruined the CD player by using a proprietary lens cleaning tool. It’s jabbing at the delicate lens mechanism with a cotton bud that is likely to damage the servo suspension, not being buffed by a fluffy disc.

picunurse, you won’t get a big degrading of sound quality on a dodgy CD, just skipping or dropouts. If the volume is too low, then the vinyl-CD transfer has been done at too low a signal level. You’ll have to re-record them, but at a higher volume level. Use the volume level of a CD as a reference, as often the input level meters on recorders aren’t too accurate. If you have the level too high, loud passages will be distorted. You can see this visually if you play back the CD in MS Media Player and select the oscilliscope visual. The distorted passages are where the signal has run out of headroom, and has been clipped; in effect slicing off the tops of the higher peaks.

Also most amps don’t have very good RIAA equaliser stages in the phono inputs, so this will be a source of signal degradation, as will an average turntable, cartridge, or worn stylus.

Another thing to consider with old CD players is that the laser might be worn out. They gradually lose optical power as they age, and though this optical power is kept constant by negative feedback over the normal working life of the player, once the laser is so old it can’t maintain a minimum power it slowly fades away.

CD players don’t like real air much either (i.e. air with sticky bits and chunks). Not only does it make the lens grubby, it also makes the rest of the optics in the OPU a little grubby too. It’s easier to replace the OPU than to clean all the lenses, prisms, diffraction gratings, polarisers and mirrors within.

[picunurse]

@Fridgemagnet

Another thing to consider with old CD players is that the laser might be worn out. They gradually lose optical power as they age, and though this optical power is kept constant by negative feedback over the normal working life of the player, once the laser is so old it can’t maintain a minimum power it slowly fades away.

Would this be true even when the CD player hasn’t been used, remember, its been stored probably 75% of its life.

@Fridgemagnet

picunurse, you won’t get a big degrading of sound quality on a dodgy CD, just skipping or dropouts. If the volume is too low, then the vinyl-CD transfer has been done at too low a signal level. You’ll have to re-record them, but at a higher volume level. Use the volume level of a CD as a reference, as often the input level meters on recorders aren’t too accurate. If you have the level too high, loud passages will be distorted. You can see this visually if you play back the CD in MS Media Player and select the oscilliscope visual. The distorted passages are where the signal has run out of headroom, and has been clipped; in effect slicing off the tops of the higher peaks.

The volume difference I spoke of was on a pre-recorded CD, so I think that was a dirty laser. The cleaner disc made a huge difference.

@Fridgemagnet

ticker’s quite right, older CD players weren’t designed to be used with CD-Rs or CD-RWs. These have a lower reflectivity than pressed Al discs, and though you might get a well-recorded example of a CD-R of a particular brand working on an older player, they generally won’t work at all with CD-RWs.
Try different brands of CD-R, and don’t record them at max speed - about half the CD burner’s rated speed is a good compromise. You might get lucky and find a brand of CD-R that works consistently well with your old player.

The very same CDs played fine on this CD player the day I burned them. Some have been played in the car many times, and some have only been played that one time on this CD player.
Today, most gave me an immediate error message. The CD still spins and the stop and pause controls have no effect. I had to power down to stop the CD spin.
Now the stop and pause are working about half the time. One in of ten of the CD-Rs worked, but the sound quality was bad. The sound quality with the commercial discs is good, but not great, it seems to be getting worse. That’s why I did the cleaning disc. They sounded better shortly after, but they still hiss and skip. One in of 5 of the pre-recordeds also gave me an error message, but that particular CD is my husband’s and its been ill-used. Still, everything works in the car.

@Fridgemagnet

CD players don’t like real air much either (i.e. air with sticky bits and chunks). Not only does it make the lens grubby, it also makes the rest of the optics in the OPU a little grubby too. It’s easier to replace the OPU than to clean all the lenses, prisms, diffraction gratings, polarisers and mirrors within.

I’m guessing that besides not liking the CD-Rs, the CD player is going South.
Thanks for your answers… Anyone wanna gently used Boom box with Cassette tape player and CD?

[Fridgemagnet]

@picunurse

Would this (laser ageing) be true even when the CD player hasn’t been used, remember, its been stored probably 75% of its life.

Not really, semiconductor lasers mostly age with use, and the ageing is accelerated if the laser is run hot, or close to its maximum rated power. All semiconductors experience some gradual change in characteristics over time as the dopant molecules migrate, but this usually takes decades.

I’m surprised that you experience a marked degradation in sound quality over and above the skipping/blanking. I guess the CD player is working overtime trying to interpolate missing information, and it’s a bit of a hopeless task if there’s too much corruption.

Alas CD-Rs don’t last very long - maybe 10 years if you keep them in a cool dark place, maybe only a couple of years of ordinary use. Use proper music CD-Rs for valuable recordings; they’re more expensive as you’re paying extra royalties on top of the extra quality premium, but they’ll last longer.

Here’s a quirky anomaly: My nice Marantz CD player is fussy about CD-Rs, and behaves very weirdly. If I load up a CD-R by pressing the (tray) Close button, it will read the table of contents no problem, and I can then press the Play button successfully. But if I load up a CD-R by putting it into the open tray and then press the Play button, the disc will invariably be rejected. Bloody technology - at least you know where you are with a bit of fluff on the stylus.