Expert help burning mixed-format audio CD, I get skips (on some players) - argh Options

[realish]

Okay, so, every year I burn a year-end mix CD and send it out to friends for Christmas. At this point it's going out to about 60 people. I spend waaaaay too much time picking and editing songs.

Some of the songs I have in FLAC but some, unavoidably, I can only find in MP3.

It's a two-disc set, and every year both discs clock in at almost exactly 80 minutes (like, um, to the second -- I'm obsessive).

I use the best media I can find -- Taiyo Yuden 80-min CDRs.

My drive is a Lite-On SOHW-1633s.

Traditionally I've used Nero to burn the CDs. First I create an ISO and then burn the ISO to discs.

Here's my problem: Every year, no matter what I do, the %$@! CDs skip on some people's players. I always get multiple reports of skippage.

It is maddening.

So, I'm coming to you for advice: Is there anything I can do to reduce the chances of skipping?

Put less music on the CD? Burn at lower speed? Use different software? Is there some sort of error-correction software out there? Anything?

Any (serious) advice or tips welcome.

[Never_Again]

For better Red Book compatibility you could reduce the lenght of your mixes to under 74 min. A Plextor would be a better choice for audio CDs as well.

[herefornow]

Burning from wave files fixed this problem for me. Car player did not like audio cd's burnt from image files. Don't know why, but it did.

cheers,
h

[cliveb]

Here's my problem: Every year, no matter what I do, the %$@! CDs skip on some people's players. I always get multiple reports of skippage.

Playability of CDRs depends on four things: media quality, writing hardware, write speed, and playback device. The relationship between these four factors is complex, and the best media, burner and write speed varies depending on the playback device. You have no control over the last of these, and it is inevitable that some of your recipients will have playback devices that simply can't cope. Some of their CD players might be old and have drifted out of alignment, or have tired lasers. CDRs are somewhat more difficult to read than pressed CDs, so they may not experience any problem until they try to play one of your CDRs.

Changing any of the other three factors (media, burner or write speed) might solve the skipping problem for some and create it for others. You are already using good quality media, and as far as I am aware Lite-On is generally regarded to be decent stuff. Reducing the write speed isn't necessarily a good thing: modern media is optimised to be written at high speed. But if you're currently writing at the maximum speed (eg. 48x), then it's probably worth reducing this down to 32x or perhaps 16x. With modern media, it's probably not a good idea to go below 8x.

As Never Again says, limiting the length of the CDRs to 74mins may well improve matters for some players. In addition, if you can find genuine 74min blanks instead of 80min ones, it would be a good idea to use those, as the spiral pitch will be closer to the mid-point of the allowable range, making the CDRs easier to track by borderline players. But 74min blanks are getting very difficult to locate these days.

It may be worth confirming that you do have genuine Taiyo Yuden media: there is a lot of counterfeit TY around. The good folks at the CD Freaks forum
will be able to help you figure out if your TY is genuine.

[realish]

Ah, cliveb, thanks -- that's just the kind of stuff I was looking for.

I ordered a new burner -- a Plextor Premium -- just in case. Otherwise I guess I'm just going to lower my burn speed a bit and hope for the best.

[A_Man_Eating_Duc...]

have you tried updating the firmware on your liteon ?

http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_firmware.php?download_id=1934

[realish]

[quote=A_Man_Eating_Duck,Dec 7 2005, 01:23 PM]
have you tried updating the firmware on your liteon ?

I did a month or so ago -- I suppose I'll do it again.

UPDATE: Actually, scratch that -- looks like there hasn't been a new firmware released since 12/2004. So I've got the latest.

This post has been edited by realish: Dec 7 2005, 23:46