I have a friend who occasionally burns CDs for me directly from his old vinyl LPs. Usually they turn out great because his LPs are in good shape. Also, I have never had any problems with them playing. Recently he burnt me an old LP of the Diamonds and at first it played fine. After one full play with no problems it has suddenly started to skip like crazy whenever I play it in the car. It still plays OK in the house, but not in the car. I have a theory: Since it was transferred directly from LP to disc it may not be burnt well enough to withstand the bumps encounted while moving in a car. The laser may not be as locked in on this type of track as it would be on a digital to digital transfer. That's my very unlearned guess. What do you experts think. The car CD player is 100 times better than the one I have in the house, but it plays on the CD player in the house. What do you think?
What do I think? I think your car cd player needs a cleaning and the cd might have some static build-up on it. Years ago when I got my first cd player I know that some discs would play fine in some players and skip in others. I zapped them with a Zerostat gun and they'd play fine in everything after that.
I've made hundreds of CDRs. I've had some go south over time. I suspect the recordable CD's recording layer might be chemically unstable.
At this point, it could be anything. Obviously, the first thing is to try other CD-Rs in your car to see if it happens again. If they work fine, the problem is probably not your car deck. Besides the possibility of the car player acting up, the problem could be the way the disc itself was burned: Perhaps your friend used a brand or batch of CD-R that was bad. For a long while, when I was still using an HP with a Sanyo drive, I found that for some strange reason, I could not burn a good TDK blank. The disc would play in my Sony changer, but not in my wife's, or anyone else's player. After getting a newer burner, and trying out my wife's Plextor, it turned out that I was burning the disc at too low a speed. Most blanks today are rated for higher speeds. That could have also gone hand in hand with the burn strength of the laser itself. Add that to the possibility of the end player not being able to correct the errors as a result of all the above. The same thing applies to standalone burners. So, we're back to square one. I suggest you ask your friend if there is anything he may have done differently this time, or if there was anything different he used. Maybe his burner is starting to show signs of failure. Perhaps your friend used a different burn method than he had used in the past. Some players cannot play discs recorded with TAO very well. Again, this can apply to both computer and standalone type burners. Oh, one more thing: some CD-R dyes go south FAST when exposed to direct sunlight. This another reason it's important to use good blanks and burn them well.
I'd transfer it to your hard drive with EAC and burn a new one. Worked great for me when I had a disc start skipping on one player.
There isn't a stick on label on it is there? Those cause problems in a lot of cd players, even very good ones. Also, cdrs are a bit thicker than cds so some players could have problems, although it's very rare unless there's a label stuck onto it.
I talked to a fellow from Crutchfield today and he says that my Pioneer shouldn't be able to play burnt cds in the first place! My Pioneer was bought in 1997 and he says that it lacks the proper laser configuration to be able to play burnt discs. However, it suddenly started playing the disc in question perfectly again! Figure that one out!
Skips (and clicks) tend to happen either when the player's lens is dirty or when the disc the material was recorded in has a lower quality (or maybe incompatible) surface. Discs with scratch resistant surfaces and the like tend to be more stable. In my experience, Verbatim and TDK do their job well.
I made the mistake of buying a Jensen Car CD player back in 1999. While I tested it in the store wall display with a home-burned CD-R, and it worked there. When it was in a rolling car that was another story. That Jensen was the biggest piece of crap, and since that time I avoid ANYTHING with the Jensen logo on it. So it could be that your older model player doesn't handle CD-R's either.
...was the CDR a PRINCO BRAND?...that cheap brand CDR is the only CDR brand that will play on my Toshiba SD-3109 that's not supposed to play CDR's...and it will not play any other brand!
