Burning CD's - This is a Good One!

[cdogg]

Fellow posters, this one will get you thinking! Believe me, I'm completely stumped...


Problem:
A friend has an old factory CD player in his car that dates back to '91, the good 'ole days for CD players. It has problems reading burned CDR's. It can read any CDR, but usually after Track 5, you cannot skip to other tracks. The laser loses its place (or so it seems like) and the CD continues to spin in spurts endlessly until you eject it and put it back in. Store bought CD's work without a hitch.


What He's Tried:

First impulse is that you think it's the media. Well, we've tried Sony, Imation, Maxell, Verbatim, Fujifilm, PNY, you name it. They all have different dye tints - green, blue, gold, and even silver.

- tried different burn speeds (1x, 2x, 8x, 16x)
- tried "track at once" and "disc at once"
- tried checking the option to "copy to Hard Drive" first under CD-to-CD copy
- have tried at least 5 different burners (Acer, Plextor, Samsung, HP, and Iomega)
- tried different software (Nero and Roxio)

Nothing seemed to make a difference. No matter what, after track 4 or 5, you could not skip to say track 10 without the problem occurring. We do realize that the CD player is part of the problem as old as it is. However, this next piece will really mess with you...


We're not trying to find a solution - we already have one. Want to know what resolves the problem? Ripping the tracks to either WAV or MP3 on the HD, then burning them to CD. What I want to know is why. Using various software that allows for CD-to-CD copy, there are options to copy to HD first. This option doesn't work. But if we manually go in and covert the tracks to WAV or MP3, then it works.



It's driving me nutz! Does anyone out there understand why this conversion to WAV or MP3 makes a difference? What's different about converting the format before the burner actually writes the CD? Is it doing something extra to make it more efficient? Your thoughts/suggestions would be much appreciated...


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[mudskipper]

Wow. This IS a good one. Forgive the obvious question, but it has to be asked--well, because it's obvious.

When doing all of this, is it possible that you are closing (or not closing) the session when you burn it a different way? Mudskipper
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Groucho said it best- "A four year-old child could understand this! Quick! Run out and find me a four year-old child: I can't make heads nor tails out of this!"

 

[Redbird400]

lol thats funny. There was a few computers at my old job that did the same thing. I guess the cd player was so old it didnt reconize the new format of how burned cds are made. They are probably only set to understand the way the use to make them back in their own time.

You didnt want one but here is one
Solution = Baseball bat and a new cd rom

 

[cdogg]

No need to forgive...it seems like this would have an obvious answer, so the obvioous questions are welcome!!

Actually, that was the one of the first questions I asked my friend. However, he informed me that even going into Easy CD and using Disc-at-Once, which creates only one session and closes it, didn't help. I wasn't aware of this, but apparently you can do Disc-at-Once even though you're not burning from the HD (as long as your burner has burnproof technology).

~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[cdogg]

Redbird,
Thx...I agree that getting a newer CD player for his car would be the ultimate solution, but the factory one is integrated into the controls of his steering wheel, so that's not really an option! Besides, he already has a workaround that works...


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[mistanapesis]

I know you have a solution cdogg, But out of curiosity have you tried Clone CD? Just a thought. If your unsure....Dont do it!

 

[Mulga]

The fact that it will play the CDR but not allow skipping from track to track makes me think maybe the problem is in the way the file allocation table is being written to the cdr... could this also explain why it works when you are working from Wav or MP3 files? a difference in the FAT? at this point I am lost, maybe somebody with more knowledge could take this idea further. All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

 

[mudskipper]

I, also, hope that somebody with more knowlege will post here! I'm very curious now!

The only thing that I can think of is....well, when a new track is put onto a CD, and pointer (of sorts) is put onto the CD at the start of the track. Is it possible that this pointer is created different with MP3 than other formats? Coupled with any settings for silence on intro/outro, perhaps the player confuses itself? Okay, I'm really stretching for something here LOL Mudskipper
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Groucho said it best- "A four year-old child could understand this! Quick! Run out and find me a four year-old child: I can't make heads nor tails out of this!"

 

[crwpulsar]

I know when burners where being increased in speed the manufacturers had a problem with the crystal inside the burner retaining the heat , this caused the 1's and 0's became a bit out of shape(for want of a better discription)as the burner didnt switch off immediatly(like a capacitor) and when these disks were put older c.d roms it could pick up the FAT ok but there was intermitent problems reading.
Maybe when you do a c.d to c.d copy the CPU is processing the data so fast in and out of memory that the burner is running at its max speed more often and hence more temperature inside the burner than when you have an image on the harddrive and the processor is "just" reading the info from RAM!
This would explain the problems at mid session when the temperature would be rising
The only other thing I can think of is the DMA addressing when you are doing a cd-cd copy but i dont know enough about it to make a "guess" about the problem.
hope i made even a little sense!!!!
David

 

[crwpulsar]

Sorry not the crystal inside the burner as the crystal is in the c.d!!!the laser inside the burner!

 

[mudskipper]

Okay, so far crwpulsar gets my vote. I'll reserve my final decision until all of the candidates are announced! ;-) Mudskipper
___________________________________________________________________________________

Groucho said it best- "A four year-old child could understand this! Quick! Run out and find me a four year-old child: I can't make heads nor tails out of this!"

 

[cdogg]

Well, that was the final conclusion I drew. However, when using CD Copier from Roxio, there's an option to "copy to hard drive first" before data is actually written to the CD. Even with this option checked, the same problem occurs. I don't know what kind of data it is moving to the hard drive, but I'm guessing it is data still in CDA format (not WAV or MP3).

That's what puzzles me...why would that make a difference? It's still going from CD to HD back to CD, right?


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein