SAAB CD player designed not to play CDRs?

googler

I've got a SAAB 9-3 with the factory-fit CD player.

Also in the household are a Smart Car with Grundig CD changer, and a Beetle fitted with an Alpine CD changer.

In the SAAB audio manual, it warns against using home-made CDRs or CDRWs, because these 'may cause overheating' and other problems.

Sure enough, if I take a CDR burned on my PC, or on a stand-alone CD recorder, it will play for 30mins or so, then either fails to read, showing 'CD ERROR 02' on the display, or starts making crackling noises, rendering it unlistenable. Shop-bought, manufactured CDs all play fine.

Similar home-made CDs will play fine on all the home CD machines, the PCs, and on the CD changers in the other two cars

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Why would this be so, other than SAAB deliberately designing their CD player this way? I've never encountered any other CD player which rejects a CDR in this way.

Thoughts, anyone?

KillerWatt

There are quite a few cars out there with CD players that struggle (or fail completely) to read CDR media, so it isn't just SAAB.

Use branded CDR media (eg, Verbatim, Taiyo Yuden, etc) and burn at no more than 4x.

googler

KillerWatt wrote: »

There are quite a few cars out there with CD players that struggle (or fail completely) to read CDR media, so it isn't just SAAB.

Use branded CDR media (eg, Verbatim, Taiyo Yuden, etc) and burn at no more than 4x.

I'm using Maxell - do they qualify as 'branded'?

HO87

Definitely poor quality media rather than anything else. I've been using MP3 discs for a couple of years now and found with my new car that it periodically spat out some of those discs - they were all cheapy unbranded discs. Swapped to Verbatim and TDK and had no problems since.

googler

Lara_Tagliamonde wrote: »

well saab my husband used to work for and lol they are manufactured by ford so really it must be your car playing up hun
xx

If it's the car 'playing up' (i.e. a fault in the player), then how did the printed warning about this get into the maker's audio manual?

googler

HO87 wrote: »

Definitely poor quality media rather than anything else. I've been using MP3 discs for a couple of years now and found with my new car that it periodically spat out some of those discs - they were all cheapy unbranded discs. Swapped to Verbatim and TDK and had no problems since.

As I say, I'm using Maxell - I would have thought they're on a par with TDK.....?

tronator

googler wrote: »

I'm using Maxell - do they qualify as 'branded'?

NO, not in the sense KillerWatt meant. There are only a handfull of manufacturers in the world and all the "brands" like Maxell, TDK, Sony, ... buying from them. The important thing is what's written in the ATIP code of a CD/DVD, not what;s written on the box. You can't be sure that the Maxell you bought today is the same CDR you'll buy in one month. A good source for CDR/DVDR is svp.co.uk. They state the ATIP with every product they sell.

Taiyo Yuden are known as the best on the market, but they don't come cheap. Verbatim (MCC) are good as well.

Edit: Just checked at SVP and they don't seem to state the ATIP code anymore, only the manufacturer. Might be good enough for your purpose...

weegie.geek

I'd class TDK as cheap discs too tbh. Verbs are cheap.

HO87

Definitely poor quality media rather than anything else. I've been using MP3 discs for a couple of years now and found with my new car that it periodically spat out some of those discs - they were all cheapy unbranded discs. Swapped to Verbatim and TDK and had no problems since.

Spank

I don't use CD's any more, but dvd identifier tells me the manufacturing info of my DVD's. This program CDR Media Code Identifier 1.63 1.6.3.0 seems to be the CD equivalent.

davester

Apparantly if you link the CD player to the Smart car drive shaft it can travel at a faster speed.