MP3 CD Problems

theseaend 2009-03-18 01:53:10 UTC #1

I've made a few MP3 CD's up, to play in my car (the MP3's are from different places and none protected.)

A couple of the CD's I've made are fine but most of them skip or jump or just skip track randomly and it's driving me mad because I dont know why!

Anyone got any ideas as to why I am getting problems? I use branded CDR's and burn at the slowest speed to try and avoid problems.

Many thanks!

Sean 2009-03-18 04:19:02 UTC #2

Welcome to CD Freaks

Before flash and HDD MP3 players came down in price, I had a portable Goodmans CD MP3 player which was very picky with what discs it played. In my case, it would only play CD-Rs written by certain writers and was even picker with CD-RWs.

As you have a few CDs that play fine, see if you can find out what’s different with these to the CDs that skip: If the CDs that play fine are a different brand to the discs that give trouble, it would be worth sticking to the brand that works well with your car stereo. If like in my case the discs that play fine were written in a different writer to the discs that skip, try going back to that other writer (if possible).

If you have a CD-RW handy, it would be worth trying one of these also, just to see how it gets on with this type of disc.

theseaend 2009-03-18 05:06:41 UTC #3

Ive just tried converting my MP3s to MP3 LAME with dBpowerAMP and the MP3 CD I made seems to be fine, I am no expert but could this have been the problem? I also used a CD Drive in my laptop for the first time rather than my PC so dont know if it is the drive or the LAME conversion which has helped?

AllanDeGroot 2009-03-18 12:07:50 UTC #4

Try burning the CD-R’s at a faster speed.

“slow” isn’t always best.

attempting to burn T-Y CD-R’s on my NEC DVD+RW drive
at the slowest speed my software will allow results in semi-playable
mp3-CDs with VISIBLE burned spots.

with most burning software you are usually given a choice of burning speeds, just like you NEVER shoose the fastest speed never choose the slowest speed either.

Try that FIRST before you burn much brain sweat worrying about it.

I’ve seen several issues with burning discs and playback quality if the files that are being burned to the disc are on a drive that is “fragmented”

So while I personally do all my playing from my F drive my G drive
is the source for any burning.

the files on my G drive went on in alphabetical order and numerical order in a single “clean” write to an already established directory structure.

For some reason burns from that drive never have playback issues.