Playing Burned Discs

[lga5824]

Hi - i am learning that some people's stereos/cd players aren't playing the discs that i've burned. i'm wondering if it's their players or the way i've burned the songs. i have the songs recorded in garageband. i export to itunes, not compressed. in itunes, i click on burn disc and i insert a blank disc (either cd-r or cd-rw) from there. when i test the discs at my place on different players, they work fine. two people have contacted me stating they can't get them to play. any suggestions or advice?

thanks!

 

[mjbphotos]

What format are the songs you are burning? .mp3 or .wav (or something else). If they are .wav, what speed are you burning at? CD-Rs burned at a high speed may not play on an older CD player that reads at a slower speed (IE burned at 48X, player at 8X).

 

[doctorfungi]

A lot of older players won't play duplicated (burned) CD's. If you want CD's to play universally on all players, you'll have to get them replicated (stamped) by a professional company.

Ask your friends for some information regarding their players. If they're old stereos, that's probably why. If they're new stereos, or a PC, then it's probably an issue with your burner.

 

[Seafroggys]

Our DVD player from 2001 won't play burned discs, but everything else, from my brother's 1995 boombox to my 1999 discman will play burned discs. Age does have some to do with it, but there is variability in there.

 

[Outlaws]

CD-Rs burned at a high speed may not play on an older CD player that reads at a slower speed (IE burned at 48X, player at 8X).

I have never heard that. Infact I don't understand how that could be possible simply because of a drives read speed.

 

[Massive Master]

It's my understanding that iTunes *will not* burn to (Red Book) specs. No way, no how. Hit or miss at best if anything will play it.

 

[lga5824]

So, Massive Master, if that's the case, than what choices do I have for burning discs? Garageband only lets you burn one song on a disc at a time. Otherwise, you have to export to iTunes to burn several on one disc. Surely people use garageband all the time, so I wonder what they do?

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[Seafroggys]

I have never heard that. Infact I don't understand how that could be possible simply because of a drives read speed.

It was my understanding that music CD's are read at 1x speed, regardless of the drive's actual speed.

Otherwise, if it read it at 8x, your music will play at 8 times the speed.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

It was my understanding that music CD's are read at 1x speed, regardless of the drive's actual speed.

Otherwise, if it read it at 8x, your music will play at 8 times the speed.

This is absolutely correct. Here's what's needed to ensure the best playback compatibility:

1. Stay away from CD-RWs; use CD-Rs only. While the quality of rewritable disks and burners has improved over the last couple of years, one is still better off using rewritable discs only for non-critical scratch purposes; if you want to make a keeper disc, use CD-R.

2. Pay attention to what the burner's manual says about CD-R brand compatibility. If there is something on their "NOT recommended" list, it's there for a reason. Don't use it.

3. Match the disc's capacity and speed rating to the burner's capacity and speed rating, and vice-versa. Just because a disc is rated at 700MB/80min doesn't mean you can fill it up reliably if you have an old burner rated for 640MB/70min, and vice versa. Also make sure the speed rating on the disc at least covers the speed at which you burn, and preferably can handle the maximum burn speed of your burner.

4. While this can vary from burner to burner, a good general rule of thumb is to select a burn speed of about 20-25% the maximum rated burn speed of the burner. Often 8x-16x turns out to be a sweet spot on today's drives. Though there are exceptions; I had a couple of TDK drives a few years ago that actually had a lower error rate at 48x than they did at 8x. Experiment and see what works best for your burner.

G.

 

[Outlaws]

...and buy good CDs. Sony works for me. 99% of problems disappeared when I started using them over whatever was on sale.

 

[mjbphotos]

I have received burned CD-Rs form others, burned at higher speeds (16X +) that would not play in a cheap portable player. Copied the same disc , burning at slower speed (8X) and the CD-Rs played. If it isn't the speed it was burned at, what is it?

CD players read at their best speed - they play back at 1X - DUHH!!!! Reading at a faster speed allows "pre-sampling" of the data (music) so there are no 'skips' as power varies. the player gets banged or moved, etc.
take a look at the listed speeds for a burner/player - it is always 3 ratings: ie. 48x/16x/2x. The first number is the maximum read speed, the second number is the maximum burn speed on a CD-R, the last number is the maximum burn speed on an CD-RW.

Very old CD players will not play CD-Rs, it is true - my old player was first generation, from around 1986, and it won't.

 

[Massive Master]

So, Massive Master, if that's the case, than what choices do I have for burning discs? Garageband only lets you burn one song on a disc at a time. Otherwise, you have to export to iTunes to burn several on one disc. Surely people use garageband all the time, so I wonder what they do?

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

They have the same problems you do. I run across it all-the-time including in live situations (I still do FOH for a local performing arts center frequently). Dance competitions are the worst... Get some gal on a stage that's been working on choreography on a piece for the last year only to have her disc fail halfway through... It might stop, it might just jump to another track, it might skip, it might jump back to the first start point.

It might play fine one time... It might fail completely the next.

There's a rule of thumb in that regard -- If you don't know, 100%, that your disc is compliant and written to specs, it's not. If you don't know 100% that the software you're using is writing to specs, it doesn't.

GarageBand won't even export standard-resolution (but if you search around, there's a trick for finding the standard-res 16/44.1 PCM data that it exports from). Then you need some sort of red-book compatible authoring program. Audiofile Engineering's WaveEditor would fit that bill and for some reason, it's ridiculously cheap currently. Was ($350?) then went to $79 and last I saw is on mega-sale for $59.

IME, you'd be hard-pressed finding a player that won't play a compliant disc. I used to test on a 1985 Sony deck (said DIGITAL on it in big gold letters). Never failed to play a compliant burn. Never played a non-compliant burn.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

take a look at the listed speeds for a burner/player - it is always 3 ratings: ie. 48x/16x/2x. The first number is the maximum read speed, the second number is the maximum burn speed on a CD-R, the last number is the maximum burn speed on an CD-RW.

Try and find those specs on a consumer music CD player. You won't find them - not even the read spec. You'll find a spec that talks about oversampling e.g. 24bit/176k SRC, just for example, but that is not related at all to the read speed (48x, for example) you see on computer reader/burners.

Oversampling on CD playback is a method used to help reduce DAC artifacting and aliasing in the converters, and has little to do with read-ahead capability. The read multiplier on computer drives is significant mostly to the reading of data discs and not so much the playing of CDA-format music discs. Perhaps the computer may buffer read-ahead in memory on the computer, but that's not happening on stand-alone CD players.

The main factor of compatibility in playback on consumer machines these days (not counting the old ones that just won't do CD-Rs at all) is how neat or sloppy the burner is making it's etches and the amount of consecutive C1/C2 errors in the burn. This is entirely a function of how well the burner performs at any given burn speed, and has little to do with "playback speed" of the player.

Now, granted, some players can handle sloppier etches and handle greater error rates than others can, which is why one CD-R may be more stable in one player than another, but the key really is to burn a disc that will be equally stable in both, and that's handled in the burn.

G.

 

[lga5824]

Wow, excuse my naivete', but I don't quite get what most of you are saying. I am pretty sure when I burn my discs on my mac notebook, that I am just clicking one thing and I don't know that I have control over speed, or anything else for that matter (except to compress or not to compress). It's a brand new mac, so I'm hoping it's got a higher end type of burning capability? I'm seeing a lot of different responses, gearing towards both people's players and the way it's burned. Seems there could be variability in both then?

 

[Outlaws]

I have received burned CD-Rs form others, burned at higher speeds (16X +) that would not play in a cheap portable player. Copied the same disc , burning at slower speed (8X) and the CD-Rs played. If it isn't the speed it was burned at, what is it?

CD players read at their best speed - they play back at 1X - DUHH!!!! Reading at a faster speed allows "pre-sampling" of the data (music) so there are no 'skips' as power varies. the player gets banged or moved, etc.
take a look at the listed speeds for a burner/player - it is always 3 ratings: ie. 48x/16x/2x. The first number is the maximum read speed, the second number is the maximum burn speed on a CD-R, the last number is the maximum burn speed on an CD-RW.

Very old CD players will not play CD-Rs, it is true - my old player was first generation, from around 1986, and it won't.

I never said that faster burning was just as accurate as 1x, I said that the read speed of a CD player has zero to do with how fast it was written.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

It's a brand new mac, so I'm hoping it's got a higher end type of burning capability?

Unfortunately for us consumers, nowadays often "high end" means "oversimplified before the technology is ready for oversimplification". Often this means making procedures automatic when they really still need human intervention to be done right.

I'm not a Mac user, so I can't comment on specific software titles for you, but you really should move your software out of the garage and into the home studio (so to speak ). I have several pieces of software that will burn CDs, and every one of them gives me some kind of control over burn speed (as well as many other factors).

I'm seeing a lot of different responses, gearing towards both people's players and the way it's burned. Seems there could be variability in both then?

Yep, there is. Go back and read my initial post (along with Outlaw's follow up to it), and Massive's missives on GB. That's 95% of the story right there.

G.