Why do CD's burnt on my iMac skip in the car?

October 24, 2005 2:35 PM

Why do CD's burnt on my iMac skip in the car?

I have a G5 iMac w/ SuperDrive. Whenever I burn an audio CD with iTunes or Toast 6 they skip like mad in my 2004 Honda Accord. These CD's work perfectly in other CD players and other car stereos *and* the car never had a problem with CD's burnt on my Windows XP machine. I've tried different brands of media as well as burning at speeds as low as 2x, but I still get skips. Do I have a bum SuperDrive or a super picky car stereo? Any other tips?

posted by dual_action to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

My car's CD player is also quite picky about burnt CDs. I found that some blank CD brands work better than others. I have some Fujifilm CD-R's that work well, while MediaPro and several other brands do not.
posted by justkevin at 2:49 PM on October 24, 2005

The Superdrive handles a lot of different media, and it's entirely possible that it may not write standard CD-Rs quite the way your Accord wants them.

Does your XP machine have just a CD burner, or does it also do DVDs? And have you tried both CD-R and CD-RW in the Superdrive? Usually -RW isn't as compatible as -R, but it might be worth trying.

If you have access to a USB CD burner, you could try connecting it to both machines to help troubleshoot. Barring that, you could possibly pull the Superdrive and connect it to the XP machine... if disks you wrote that way skipped, that would be hard proof it was some kind of hardware issue. But you'd have to take apart your iMac to do that, which could potentially void your warranty.

Someone else here may have related experience, so I wouldn't get your screwdriver out quite yet. Trying an -RW disk, however, is both cheap and screwdriver-free. :)
posted by Malor at 2:50 PM on October 24, 2005

Response by poster: Malor: The drive in the XP machine was also a CD/DVD burner. Since I got the iMac this summer, I moved the XP box to work and it is no longer available for me to burn music on. :(

I never thought to try a CD-RW, though - I will, thanks.
posted by dual_action at 2:58 PM on October 24, 2005

There's a very good chance it's the media. Factory car CD players are, quite often, finicky. For instance my old car would only play Verbatim discs.

There are online retailers who'll sell a sampler pack of CD-Rs. Burn 'em all and stick with a brand that works.

It's definitely not a problem of format or the burner. All CD players recognize CD-DA format. There is no variation in the specification.
posted by srburns at 2:58 PM on October 24, 2005

My MP3-cd player explicitly said something in the manual about only using Disk At Once or Track at Once. I never burn cds for it so I don't remember, but it implied it would make a difference. Perhaps yours has a similar issue. Any mention in the manual about CDRs? It's pretty common for them to mention them these days.
posted by phearlez at 3:21 PM on October 24, 2005

This happens to me too, and I'm a Windows guy. I'm guessing that homemade CD-Rs just aren't as steady (for lack of a better word) as mass-produced CDs. Although better brands of CD-Rs seem to work better than cheapo ones.
posted by pmurray63 at 6:51 PM on October 24, 2005

I should have mentioned that this is somewhat confirmed by the fact that at least one major automaker says they can't be responsible if the car's CD player skips while playing homemade CDs.
posted by pmurray63 at 6:54 PM on October 24, 2005

Response by poster: Looks like I'm off to try more media. I've tried a couple of different brands before, but it looks like I need to take this more seriously.
posted by dual_action at 8:12 AM on October 25, 2005

the best cdr media is Taiyo Yuden, although I have friends who swear by Verbatim as well. I release music on cdr labels and will not use anything but Taiyo Yuden anymore, because I hate it when people get a cdr with my music on it that they can't play on their players. I haven't had a complaint or request for replacement since I switched to ONLY using Taiyo Yudens.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:04 PM on October 25, 2005

Response by poster: After many experiments, it seems that the most important part of the equation is the speed of the CD-R(W). I dug around and found more different types of media - Philips, LG CD-RW, PNY Gold, and another generic CD-RW. The CD-R's are 24x and the CD-RW's are 10x.

I set iTunes to burn at default (Max. Possible) speed and burnt 4 copies of the same album. They all work great in the car with no skips! I was excited until I realized that it's not very easy finding 24x media.

I'm still not sure if the stereo can't handle anything faster than 24x (who knows, 32x might work!) or if the Superdrive just burns differently at that speed (because it still skips if you ask it to burn a 52x disc at any speed).

So, partial success! Thanks for the help, everyone, you put me on the right track.
posted by dual_action at 2:38 PM on November 10, 2005