I am burning CDs of Bible lessons for our church. They get played in many different places including car stereos. I know some older stereos simply won't read a computer burned CD, but I've been having a lot of people say that some of the CDs "skip" or cut out part of the time. What could I do to prevent this? I'm open to buying new hardware if necessary. Currently using Maxell CD-R 700MB, burning WAV files. Thanks.
1) use better discs as Taiyo Yudens 2) burn at 2/3s of disc rated speed 3) don't multi task while burning
Burn at 24x or 16x.. 2/3 rated speed is too fast for most older players which like a strong set of pits to read. Some really old players will not read a disk burned at above 4x.. most modern burners will not go that slow. You have to face up to the fact that some players just don't like burned disks. They will skip about and freeze at the first excuse. That's outside your control. Suggest to people having problems that they clean the laser in their player... which may never have been done since the machine was new With cd-r disks brand is pretty much irrelevant.. I see no difference between premium price ty's and bargain bin datawrite cmc's in day to day use. By all means get some top dollar ty's.. and watch them come back because they skip and stop from the same people who are having problems with the cheap disks. One thing which may have an almost magical effect is using a proper cd burner rather than a dvd burner. It's been my experience that many dvd burners don't do a good job of cd burning... Like it has been added as an afterthought almost.
Thanks for that bit of knowledge varnull. I was not aware of that being a problem, could explain why I have had some issues with some of my cd burns.
Varnull's advice is exactly right. CD-R disc quality is all fairly much the same among known brand names. (Taiyo Yuden is excellent quality, but their dye will not last as long as the others. If the difference between 50 years and 130 years makes a difference, that might be significant.) In summary, and to add another point: 1) Choose a brand name CD-R rather than bulk products that are often B-grad rejects. 2) Record at speeds no faster than 24X (all CD-Rs today are tuned for 52X speed, but 24X is safer) and no slower than 8X. 3) Use a CD-R burner. Varnull makes an excellent point because the diodes and often the lenses in a DVD burner are different from those used for DVDs. CD-Rs use infra-red light; DVDs use ruby-red light. 4) Record "disc-at-once." "Track-at-once" leaves small breaks that some CD players, particularly car stereo players, have trouble linking to the previous track. That's often the cause of skipping. It's better to have the laser operate continously at a single operating power level throughout the disc than to alter its power levels from track to track.
So Ty's don't have the rated life of the others?.. hehehe.. Didn't know that. Thanks for the run down on the dvd burners Joe.. I know they don't burn cd's well, but I just thought it was firmware rather than hardware based.
