I might be misguided in this assertion, but my understanding is that when CD technology came out, it went through a series of “up-grades” and changes that made the first CDs to be created (okay, let’s be honest, to be copied) not reliably compatible with later machines. Even today, a cheap CD player might have problems with a (usually copied, or “home-made”) CD. The devices have been evolving, but not necessarily in what you’d consider a “natural order” of evolution. The latest model of a CD player might not be able to play an older CD, and vice-versa.
It involves a lot of arcane and hard to follow technological terms that I don’t want to go into on a Saturday morning. Just let me have my coffee, and go to Roxio’s web site, or whatever they’re called now.
Oh, and what Cecil said: if it’s dirty, of course it’s going to skip. Clean it, but not with a circular motion (which many mistakenly find to be natural; if you have something clean and soft (a clean silk tie, for example) to wipe it off horizontally–go across the hole, NOT in a circle.; and obviously, if some particle is clearly there, gently try to get it off with a Q-tip or something. A soft moist material will do. You don’t need to go to Circuit City and pay for unnecessary cleaning fluid. Clean water will do fine, though distilled might be the best, because it has fewer chemicals that might interfere.
Oh, and I’m sure this info has come out on the board before, I just wanted to make it easier to find than by using the lugubrious search engine of the SDMB.
After years of wiping a sound (vinyl) disc with a circular motion and for good reason, wiping across is not “natural” to me, although I do know the reason why in this case, also.
I have found newer CD players to read more variations (burned & pressed discs) than old ones, and this seems logical, as manufacturers have more varieties to test. I’m sure the BSR company that made my 1989 player didn’t have any home-burned CDs to test it with. I have never found a new machine to NOT read an old, otherwise perfect CD.
I haven’t seen any old CDs that won’t play in newer CD players, and I still own and play some of the CDs I bought back when they were first coming out.
I think the reason that some older players have trouble with CD-R (recordable) CDs is that a CD-R is less reflective than a pressed CD, so the differential that the detector sees when it’s over a pit, vs, not over a pit, is smaller, compared to pressed CDs. Older CD players that were designed to work marginally well with pressed CDs would have a little more trouble with CD-Rs.
The lower reflectivity is also the reason that most CD players have trouble with CD-RW discs. The CD-RW has a lot lower reflectivity, so a detector designed to work with a traditional pressed CD will almost certainly not work with a CD-RW. The detector has to be designed specifically to be sensitive enough to work with the lower signal swings for the player to be compatible with CD-RWs.