Today, I have burnt my first test audio CD. The tracks were copied with EAC in secure mode. It's brand new CD, bought just a couple of weeks ago, and has no scratches, EAC had not detected any problems.

For burning, I used Maxell CD-R Pro 80min/700mb CD-R (gold). I used them before many times as data storage, and they proved to be quite reliable.

Then I put a burned CD into my car (Volvo S60) CD-Player. And I did not like what came out: constant glitching, as if the CD is severely damaged. Then I put an original CD, and it played fine. I went back to my PC, and listened to a burned CD - plays perfect.

Then I burned another CD-R (Taiyo Yuden White Inkjet Hub Printable CD-R Media - 700MB/80 Minute Capacity), same songs and everything. It played fine in my car.

So, apparently the CD-Palyer in my car did not like Maxell CD-R Pro CD! And had no problems with Taiyo Yuden disk. Has anyone had similar experience? What are the best CD-Rs to burn and play music?

Don't make the wrong conclusions here. It's more likely that your burner didn't like the Maxell CD-R. Your CD player then only tried to play a CD with too many errors on it. For the same reason, there is no "best CD-R" overall. It really depends on the combination of burner + media. For one burner, one media is better, for another burner, it's a different media that works best. Trial and error. And keep your burner firmware updated at all times.

i socand that.

i woudl alsu suggeste to try diffretn brand media and teste with nero cd/dvspeeed.

dissc qualtiy shoud lbe 95% or higher if you wnna consider the burned media "good"

and there should be NO c2 errors

No, I said that I listened to Maxell CD after I burned it on my PC, and it played well, I used good headphones. I think it's my car's player did not like this CD.

Just listened to the same Maxell CD on another (much older PC), with headphones.
No problems. Of course, it could be that CD-Drives on both PCs do a great job smoothing a bad record, and the CR-Drive in my car does not. But I think the audio system in my Volvo s60 is quite good, and CD-Drive is certainly not worse than one on the older PC. I am sure the record itself is absolutely good, but I am going to give Maxell another try by recording at a slower speed. This one I did at 24X. Will keep you posted.

I have good experience with discs produced by Taiyo Yuden.
They sell under lots of different brand names...

m3dsa,

what burning speed did you use ?

24X, it's in my last post.

It not only could be... that's most likely the case here. You have more errors on the Maxell than on the TY, and the head unit in your car is doing a worse job in reading it properly. I have this happening in my car with bad CDs a lot of times. Some old CD with errors starts to make funny noises towards the end of it. Play it in another CD player, no problems. It's an indication that you made a bad quality burn or that the CD-R is so old that it's deteriorating. Either way, those Maxell CD-Rs don't seem to work well with your burner.

The Maxell CD-R I used isn't old at all, I bought them about 6 months ago, and used (for data storage, not for music) a number of times, with no problems. It's so-called Gold CD-R, archival quality, and supposedy should last for many years. I understand that storing data on CDs is different (there's much more error-corection built) but I did not expect that a new Gold Maxell CD-R will be playing so bad. Originally, the burner offered speed of 48X. I lowered it to 24X to be more sure about the quality. And that's what I got:(

m3dsa, what burner/writer did you use ?
Use CD/DVD speed from http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=do...tml#nerocdspeed and check "Disc Quality" for different burn speeds. Try different (lower) read speeds also. You will surprised at the difference in the number of errors it makes when reading and writing at lower speeds.

I used the CD burner that comes with EAC (CD layout editor). This (second) time
I asked for speed 4X. I noticed that it ignored this setting, burned a CD at a much higher speed (between 22X and 40X). Not sure why.

As a side note, I clicked on "Display CD-R Information" menu, having Maxell CD-R in my drive, and it shows "Taiyo Yuden Company Limited". It looks like this Maxell disk was made by Taiyo Yuden too. I'm lost.. Can it be that two disks by the same manuacturer behave so different?

I think the question is, what burner *hardware* are you using. What is the brand and model of your CDRW drive, that you're using for burning?

I have HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8483B (made by LG)

on a Dell ?
most likely your drive does not support speed settings . It will work on only one speed, and that is maximum, which is typical of most HL-DT-ST (Hitachi/LG/Goldstar) drives on dells. Dont even waste time upgrading the firmware, it wont help.

Just for giggles, do a CDSpeed test and post the results.

Maxell didn't make the Yuden media, they just branded it. Also burning at a lower speed may or may not result in a better burn. I suggest you look for the newest firmware for your drive, update it and try again. Or try another CD manufacture. Most brands don't make their cds, they just brand them with their name. You should do a C1/C2 test on the CD to show if it does have a larger error count vs the other Yuden you burned and that works in your car.

my car player is finicky also, and my older sony cd player can be too.

burning slower and slower does not improve readability.

I found my burner running at max48x will cause the problems with the players AND going to 24x helps some but 40x produces fewest c1 errors and and 0 problems in the players.

Interesting. So, 40X works better than 24X?
In case of my drive (from LG, see posts above) it looks like it always burns at a Maximum speed on my Dell. There's no way to try a different speed.

I will burn another Maxell CD on a different PC, where I have SAMSUNG CD-R/RW SW-252S (it's also on a Dell PC). I hope it will let me control the speed.

Overall, my CD burning is more of an experiment. I guess I will just go with my MP3 player and plug it to a car's cassete player through that ingenious adapter:) That way I don't have to carry CDs, or bother that they will get scratched, even if they are just copies. Well, maybe I'll burn a couple.

P.S. My car CD-Player is much more sensitive to "road imprefections" when it plays these Maxell CDs. A slightest bump on the road causes it to stop for a second and resume. This does not happen with factory made CDs. Any clues why?

I'd still say it is because it burned at max rated speed.

That's a shame dell computers won't allow setting the burn speed. You may find something to fix that if you google the web.