Solved Audio CD's no longer playing

[spottydog10]

Here's a funny one.
Part of my job is to burn audio cd's for use around work, I use WMP 12 for the burn.
They are played on various players, old cd players, boom boxes etc as well as pc's.

Recently, a couple of the older cd players have a problem with the audio.
They recognize the tracks on the cd and start to play but no audio comes out, but a commercial cd plays fine.One of the older cd players DOES play it OK.

I used a different batch and brand of CD with the same results.
I then replaced the burner and it still does the same thing.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[fireberd]

The burn speed is the problem with older Audio CD players. They will either not play the CD or skip.

I have a recording studio and also have audio CD production for creating and duplicating audio CD's. My Audio CD Burn Speed "Standard" is 8X. Above 8X its iffy. 8X is compatible with almost all Audio CD players.

However, most SATA interface CD burners (what is used on most PC's in the last 6 or 7 years) will only go down to 16X speed. I have a bank of 5 USB connected PATA (IDE) interface CD/DVD burners and they will burn at 8X.

New burner drives that will burn at 8X are mostly non existent. I have one reserve space burner drive but if more than 1 dies I won't be able to replace it.

But, try the audio burn at 16X and see if the users can play that. I don't know if WMP allows selecting burn speed. For a free CD burner, download the free "CDBurnerXP" and it will allow selecting burn speed. Caution, look for any crapware when downloading or installing and make sure you uncheck anything you don't want (you only want the CDburnerXP program not the other junk).

I use Nero BurningROM application for my audio CD burning. It allows selecting burn speed and burning to multiple drives at the same time. NERO is not free.

 

[spottydog10]

Hi Firebird,
That all makes sense and I was thinking along those lines, nice to have it confirmed.
WMP 12 doesn't allow for different burn speeds as far as I can tell and I cant see within Alcohol 120
the option (mine is an old version)
I'll trawl around to see if I can grab a program that will allow me to choose the speed.
Thanks mate,
Mike

 

[fireberd]

I posted a link for CDBurnerXP. Give that a try.

 

[spottydog10]

Thanks mate, I'll give it a go.

 

[spottydog10]

Fireberd, I knocked the speed down to 16x in CDBurber XP and it worked a treat in all the old cd players.
Thanks,
Mike

 

[fireberd]

Great. Those "old" players are not "real old" or they would have had problems. When we were testing burn speeds, we tried many different CD players and many old ones had problems above 8X, and we even had one that would not play 8X burned discs.

I have a JVC XL-F264 5 disc CD player (at least 12 years old, maybe more). It plays 8X OK, but won't play anything burned above 8X.