Making audio CD's for the Clarion autochanger

[Doggy]

Hope someone can point me in the right direction here - seem to be having a serious case of brain fade............
Can't seem to make a CD that'll work, despite the fact it happily plays CD's I made 5 years ago.
The ones I can make using Win Media player v11, wont work in the car, (but play on the PC or my home CD player OK).
Older ones, (made with Nero Burning Rom, on my previous desktop m/c), play OK everywhere.
Downloaded free trial version of Nero, but that generates an error & spits the disc out everytime I try to burn one.

As far as I can tell, there is no difference in the file system or format of CD's that play, or won't, but obviosly something's different / missing as the car's player loads them, doesn't find anything it understands and moves on to the next one.

Any clues, people?

[steve_earwig]

It might be a combination of ageing writer & ageing Clarion, the pc and cd player a good enough but the Clarion's seen better days.

Also, I had a DVD writer a while ago that made dvds that only it could read

I've never used mplayer to burn disks, always Nero, but I've been giving this one a try http://download.cnet.com/CDBurnerXP/300 ... ag=mncol;1 and it seems ok, might be worth one more try on the burner before you think about cleaning the lens or binning it...

[lozz]

Have you tried Burning Audio cds, by using the Windows Media player?
worked for Me Anyway,

All ido is right click on the Music iwant to put on disc, Right click send to drive D:

[Doggy]

I've never used mplayer to burn disks, always Nero, but I've been giving this one a try http://download.cnet.com/CDBurnerXP/300 ... ag=mncol;1 and it seems ok.

Result! Thanks, steve.
Wierdly, the combination of CDBurnerXP and 'fresher' Morrisons media, instead of Asda's seems to be working, (though the car player does occasionally hesitate a second or so at the start of some tracks).

Is cleaning the lense a sensible option, or is it a bit like having the back off a watch?

[steve_earwig]

Kill or cure I reckon. If it's ok now leave it until it isn't. I guess you could try a cleaner cd but I don't have much faith in them.

[highlander]

I see you've had some success, which makes this next suggestion a bit late or unnecessary, but I wrote it before I noticed it's fixed so I'm going to post it anyway

Try burning at a slower write speed - some CD / DVD writers can write at up to 52x normal CD-ROM read speeds, but that can cause problems on older equipment. These Clarion CD readers are already 10 years old. Try changing the write speed down as far as your drive and CD burning software will allow it, and see if that helps.

[Busman]

I had similar problems which I cured by cleaning the interior of the changer and its lens. It's quite a simple job if you're carefull, and armed with cotton buds.
Take the changer out of the car and place it on the kitchen table. You will see the cover is held on with several little machine screws. Remove these, and keep safe in a little pot as they will try and run away. You can then take the cover off, and be amazed by the amount of dirt inside. I do remember thinking, wow, how did this ever work with this much dirt in it? Now it's a simple clean up job using a small brush and lens cleaner on the lens. It should take about half an hour to do. Reasemble and refit. I did mine about three years ago, and it's not skipped a beat since.

[Doggy]

Thanks for all the replies, much appreciated.

Having got most of my stuff crammed onto a few less CD's, I'll probably err on the side of caution until I come back, then try cleaning it.

[dieselink]

i use a program called express burn,works in my cd changer fine m8,think i got this program free on a site called c-net,a very trusted site,hope this helps u mate.