How to burn Audio CDs for maximum compatibility with standalone CD player

valve90210 · 26 Nov 2009 at 15:12

Does anyone have any advice for burning audio cds for maximum compatibility with stand alone cd players.

The reason I'm asking, is quite simple, my Marantz CD player (a CD6000OSE which I love) plays some home written CD I made many many moons ago with an old external CD burner (before the days of burnproofing etc etc - and a maximum write speed of (i think) 4x speed) and does so perfectly.

However, when I want to play CDs I've burnt more recently, it's not very happy about it. Sometimes it'll completely refuse to recognise the discs, other tiems it'll play but if I try to directy access a specific track it'll fail and come up with an error.

I am using Nero to burn with and wondered if anyone has any tips for burning audio cds that might make them more compatible with my CD player?

Could it just be the increased burn speed (the slowest speed my curner will do these days is (i think) 8x or maybe 12x speed) that causes the problems?

Any help much appreciated.

Geek. · 26 Nov 2009 at 21:20

as nero is burning the discs ok i would say it more a problem the cd media i have seen some early cd rom players not work with burned cd's i think it's something to do with the lasers in the cd player i think the blue dye ones are the worst try some ones with a silver layered disc this i found helps a bit! and changing the speed of the burn makes no difference from what i have found! i hope this helps

theheyes · 26 Nov 2009 at 21:35

Burn speed does make a difference, I always move it down to the next setting if I have problems with discs. And it could easily be the discs themselves - I've got more coasters than cups.

Maybe try imgburn?

memyselfandi · 26 Nov 2009 at 21:37

I'd have to disagree slightly with Geek.. Whilst I would agree with the comments about some dye colours working better than others I have also found more that I get more compatible burns for CDs if they are burnt at a slower speed.

At the end of the day, maximum burn speed is something you can normally configure in whatever software you are using so you may as well try it and see if it makes a difference.

valve90210 · 27 Nov 2009 at 10:54

Well, I gave it a go yesterday, Using nero, set to burn as slow as possible, 8 X speed, I turned off CD text just incase that was causing problems.

I burnt two discs, the first using Disc-At-Once. Stuck it in the CD player and hit play. It seemed to be ok, I skipped from track 1 to track 2...all ok. Left it playing for a bit and then decided to skip to the next track....ERROR

I then burnt a second disc, using Track-At-Once (I remembered that the old burning software I used to have on my first ever CD writer - HP Record Now - used to report how many tracks it had burnt and how many were remaining, so I figured it might be worth trying). Gave it a whirl and it seems to work better, skipping tracks pretty much fine, and playing from track to track with no clicks or pops or errors between tracks as I have heard can be the case sometimes when using track at once.

It's not quite perfect, it didn throw up an error after I tried skipping tracks really quickly but if I'm careful and let the CD player keep up with what I'm doing it seems like it's ok.

Oh and I only ever use the best CD-R money cn buy....yeah right, cheap spindles from wherever they are on offer more like!!

That said I don't go for the totally un branded unmarked ones I always have something like Datawrite or verbatim etc

theheyes · 27 Nov 2009 at 16:23

I've used most brands over the years and to be honest found them all pretty similar. I just buy them in 100 packs out of which I probably throw about 5 away give or take.

IAmATeaf · 27 Nov 2009 at 17:16

Have you given the player a clean? My car CD player used to skip and error so I changed media and same results so invested in a CD/DVD cleaner and it fixed the problem for me. I also find Verbatims to be the best for compatibility by the way.