[Ellie Bentley]

Whenever I burn a CD using Nero I can skip tracks, fast-forward,
reverse, etc., in all my machines except one CD-player which is 10 years
old. I would like to get round this problem because some people I
share my music work with also have older CD-players.

I did a bit of googling and found one piece of advice which said that
for the sake of older CD-players burn as slowly as possible because that
would make a deeper indentation while the laser is burning and older
CD-players expect a deeper indentation. The recommendation was to burn
x12. Well, I went one better and told Nero to drop from my normal x48
to x8. But it didn't make the blindest bit of difference.

I can still only play CDs (which I make with Nero 6) on my older
CD-player by letting them go all the way through from start of the disc
to the end. Sometimes if I try to skip a track it will play the track
I skip to, but usually the LCD display just blinks and nothing plays.

Any ideas, please?

Thanks.

Ellie.

[Don Pearce]

On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 11:45:37 +0100, Ellie Bentley
wrote:

Whenever I burn a CD using Nero I can skip tracks, fast-forward,
reverse, etc., in all my machines except one CD-player which is 10 years
old. I would like to get round this problem because some people I
share my music work with also have older CD-players.

I did a bit of googling and found one piece of advice which said that
for the sake of older CD-players burn as slowly as possible because that
would make a deeper indentation while the laser is burning and older
CD-players expect a deeper indentation. The recommendation was to burn
x12. Well, I went one better and told Nero to drop from my normal x48
to x8. But it didn't make the blindest bit of difference.

I can still only play CDs (which I make with Nero 6) on my older
CD-player by letting them go all the way through from start of the disc
to the end. Sometimes if I try to skip a track it will play the track
I skip to, but usually the LCD display just blinks and nothing plays.

Any ideas, please?

Thanks.

Ellie.

The obvious first step is to get rid of the old CD player - they cost
almost nothing these days, and there is really no reason to hang on to
one that can't cope with CDRW (CDR should be very easy).

And just to put you straight on a technicality. It is pressed CDs that
have indentations. They are a quarter wavelength deep, and change the
brightness of the returned beam through interference with the
reflection off the front face. A CDR is simply a dye that has its
color changed, and the beam modulation is just through albedo at the
dye surface. There will be an optimum speed for these - slower is not
always better.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[Richard Crowley]

"Ellie Bentley" wrote ...
Any ideas, please?

The obvious one would be to dump the antique player(s).

OTOH, try discs of different brands/colors/dyes. Some
old players like certain types better than others.

[harrogate3]

"Ellie Bentley" wrote in message
...
Whenever I burn a CD using Nero I can skip tracks, fast-forward,
reverse, etc., in all my machines except one CD-player which is 10
years
old. I would like to get round this problem because some people I
share my music work with also have older CD-players.

I did a bit of googling and found one piece of advice which said
that
for the sake of older CD-players burn as slowly as possible because
that
would make a deeper indentation while the laser is burning and older
CD-players expect a deeper indentation. The recommendation was to
burn
x12. Well, I went one better and told Nero to drop from my normal
x48
to x8. But it didn't make the blindest bit of difference.

I can still only play CDs (which I make with Nero 6) on my older
CD-player by letting them go all the way through from start of the
disc
to the end. Sometimes if I try to skip a track it will play the
track
I skip to, but usually the LCD display just blinks and nothing
plays.

Any ideas, please?

Thanks.

Ellie.



Take care on your choice of blank disc. Many look green when blank and
go blue when written - older machines don't like these.

Go for a disc that is silver when blank and slightly goldy when
written - DataSafe or DataWrite (from computer fairs) I find to be
some of the best.

Having said that some machines just will not get on with written
discs - older JVC and Hitachi are notorious for it.


--
Woody

harrogate3 at ntlworld dot com

[Dave Platt]

In article ,
Ellie Bentley wrote:

Whenever I burn a CD using Nero I can skip tracks, fast-forward,
reverse, etc., in all my machines except one CD-player which is 10 years
old. I would like to get round this problem because some people I
share my music work with also have older CD-players.

I did a bit of googling and found one piece of advice which said that
for the sake of older CD-players burn as slowly as possible because that
would make a deeper indentation while the laser is burning and older
CD-players expect a deeper indentation. The recommendation was to burn
x12. Well, I went one better and told Nero to drop from my normal x48
to x8. But it didn't make the blindest bit of difference.

I'd recommend that you attempt to locate CD-R blanks which are more
rigorous about providing full CD-player compatibility.

Modern-style blanks tend to be optimized for high capacity (720 MB /
80 minutes) and for fast burning. The former means that the pits and
lands burned into the groove are relatively close together, as are the
spirals in the track (right at the lower limit of the Red Book spec).
The latter means that the dye layer is relatively thin, requiring only
a short exposure to the laser.

Older CD players often have difficulty with such blanks, once burned.
The close track and pit/land spacing can (I believe) present
difficulties for the tracking servos, and the thin dye layer has a
lower reflectivity at the read-laser frequency and results in a weaker
RF signal being detected by the photodiode. Older CD players may lack
an automatic gain control in the RF-read circuit, and as a result they
don't get a strong enough signal for their servos and data-recovery
circuits to process reliably.

If you hunt around, it's still possible to locate a few brands/types
of CD-R blank which are specifically optimized for low-speed burning
of audio material and for CD-audio playback compatibility. These
blanks will be of the "650 MB" type (good for up to around 70 minutes
of audio) and will specify a relatively low maximum-burning speed.

They'll also be more expensive than the mass-market stuff, since
they're being made for a niche market by a relatively small number of
companies who are more concerned about product quality.

Another thing you can do, is to try a batch of standard (higher-speed,
data-grade) blanks made by some of the first-tier companies. Mitsui,
and Taiyo Yuden have very good reputations for disc quality, and I'd
trust their products (if genuine - there seem to be some counterfeits
around) over blanks made by the second- and third-tier companies (CMC,
Ritek, and so forth). Try getting yourself a few Mitsui or TY discs
from a reputable on-line supplier, burn them at a relatively low
speed, and see if they work any better than the ones you have been
using.

Be aware that a lot of the consumer-brand-name discs sold in the US
are simply OEM'ed from other companies. A well-known brand name is
not a guarantee of quality, alas.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

[Colin B.]

Don Pearce wrote:

(snip)

And just to put you straight on a technicality. It is pressed CDs that
have indentations. They are a quarter wavelength deep, and change the
brightness of the returned beam through interference with the
reflection off the front face. A CDR is simply a dye that has its
color changed, and the beam modulation is just through albedo at the
dye surface. There will be an optimum speed for these - slower is not
always better.

Question of the day here, Don. Is there any way of determining which speed
results in the best burn for a given CDR (other than finding a borderline
CD player)?

Thanks,
Colin

[Dave Platt]

And just to put you straight on a technicality. It is pressed CDs that
have indentations. They are a quarter wavelength deep, and change the
brightness of the returned beam through interference with the
reflection off the front face. A CDR is simply a dye that has its
color changed, and the beam modulation is just through albedo at the
dye surface. There will be an optimum speed for these - slower is not
always better.

Question of the day here, Don. Is there any way of determining which speed
results in the best burn for a given CDR (other than finding a borderline
CD player)?

I understand that there are some CD-R burners (e.g. some Plextor
models) which have the ability to read back a burned disk, and present
a summary of the amount of low-level error correction required to
recover the data. The higher the number of C1 errors, the poorer (in
general) the quality of the burn.

Another approach is to use an oscilloscope or spectrum analyzer to
monitor the strength of the RF signal being detected by the laser-read
mechanism (or, equivalently, monitor the behavior of the playback
unit's RF automatic gain control). The stronger the RF signal, and
the cleaner the "eye" pattern, the better the burn is.

You'd need to run this experiment at various burning speeds, on a
given CD-R burner, to figure out which speed produces the
highest-quality burn with that batch of blanks on that particular
burner.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

[Jeff Findley]

"Ellie Bentley" wrote in message
...
Whenever I burn a CD using Nero I can skip tracks, fast-forward,
reverse, etc., in all my machines except one CD-player which is 10 years
old. I would like to get round this problem because some people I
share my music work with also have older CD-players.

Burn as slow as your burner will let you. The best burner I have will burn
Audio CD's at 4x. The next best I have only goes down to 8x.

I did a bit of googling and found one piece of advice which said that
for the sake of older CD-players burn as slowly as possible because that
would make a deeper indentation while the laser is burning and older
CD-players expect a deeper indentation. The recommendation was to burn
x12. Well, I went one better and told Nero to drop from my normal x48
to x8. But it didn't make the blindest bit of difference.

Can you go slower than 8x? If not, then your CD player is likely so old
that it simply can't read today's silver, high speed, CD-R's. For that old
of a player, you might be able to use older blue CD-R's and get it to work,
but those would also need an older burner (I used to use a 2x burner with
blue CD-R's).

I can still only play CDs (which I make with Nero 6) on my older
CD-player by letting them go all the way through from start of the disc
to the end. Sometimes if I try to skip a track it will play the track
I skip to, but usually the LCD display just blinks and nothing plays.

You're burning "Disc at once", right? If you're burning "Track at once",
I'd change that setting.

Also, make sure you finalize or close the CD. Don't leave it "open", which
would let you write more data to it later.

If none of that works, replace that ancient CD player! You can buy a home
DVD/CD player these days for $30. Portable, walkman style, CD players can
be had for $10.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

[AZ Nomad]

On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 11:45:37 +0100, Ellie Bentley wrote:


Whenever I burn a CD using Nero I can skip tracks, fast-forward,
reverse, etc., in all my machines except one CD-player which is 10 years
old. I would like to get round this problem because some people I
share my music work with also have older CD-players.

I did a bit of googling and found one piece of advice which said that
for the sake of older CD-players burn as slowly as possible because that
would make a deeper indentation while the laser is burning and older
CD-players expect a deeper indentation. The recommendation was to burn
x12. Well, I went one better and told Nero to drop from my normal x48
to x8. But it didn't make the blindest bit of difference.

I can still only play CDs (which I make with Nero 6) on my older
CD-player by letting them go all the way through from start of the disc
to the end. Sometimes if I try to skip a track it will play the track
I skip to, but usually the LCD display just blinks and nothing plays.

Any ideas, please?

Replace it with a player capable of reading CDRs

[Don Pearce]

On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 18:38:08 GMT, "Colin B."
wrote:

Don Pearce wrote:

(snip)

And just to put you straight on a technicality. It is pressed CDs that
have indentations. They are a quarter wavelength deep, and change the
brightness of the returned beam through interference with the
reflection off the front face. A CDR is simply a dye that has its
color changed, and the beam modulation is just through albedo at the
dye surface. There will be an optimum speed for these - slower is not
always better.

Question of the day here, Don. Is there any way of determining which speed
results in the best burn for a given CDR (other than finding a borderline
CD player)?

Thanks,
Colin

Normally there should be an optimum burn speed on the pack somewhere.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[Jeff Findley]

"Don Pearce" wrote in message
...

Normally there should be an optimum burn speed on the pack somewhere.

All of the blank CD-R's on my shelf say 1x-52x on the package. I usually
burn Audio CD's at 4x or 8x. I've found that slower seems to be better for
my older CD players. These are all "silver" CD's. I gave up on trying to
burn for very old equipment (machines that won't take silver CD-R's). To
me, it wasn't worth the hassle trying to buy the old style blue CD-R's and
burning them at 2x.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

[Eeyore]

Ellie Bentley wrote:

Whenever I burn a CD using Nero I can skip tracks, fast-forward,
reverse, etc., in all my machines except one CD-player which is 10 years
old. I would like to get round this problem because some people I
share my music work with also have older CD-players.

I did a bit of googling and found one piece of advice which said that
for the sake of older CD-players burn as slowly as possible because that
would make a deeper indentation while the laser is burning and older
CD-players expect a deeper indentation.

This merely illustatrates how bad a source of info the net can be.

Graham

[Ellie Bentley]

Thank you very much everyone for so much helpful advice!

Well, two months ago I bought 400 discs which are all of the type which
you advise are of the 80-minute variety and unresponsive to a slow burn
and I am sure as hell not going to dump them and fork out for the better
ones, so, as you all suggest, anyone with old CD-players who gets hold
of my discs will just have to move up to a more modern player! And I'll
keep my fingers crossed for no complaints from them!

Thanks,
Ellie.