Malfunctioning CD player

don't buy any of the Branded CD players i had had plenty of problems just like yours ultimately i hit upon an idea of using CD writers avilable in market which can play all CDs reasonably well at a low cost with modifications (You can take the help of your friends in convertions required)i am quite happy with a system built on available CD writes please note all branded CD players are manufactured not to work as promised by the so called customer friendly companies to empty your pockets.

crm

That's probably because they are all built in China. Does anybody offer a CD player that's NOT built in China?

I've had that problem with CD's before, and it wasn't the player, it was scratches on the CD itself. If sounds like an old record that is skipping.

Memorex and 3M (among others), make DVD/CD cleaners and scratch removers. They cost anywhere from $18-$30 USD, depending on whether you want it motorized or not.

If that works, you might want to make a new copy, while the old one is still in good enough shape.

Slow old poop,

Lasers get weak and the optics get dirty etc. The disks get scratches on the shiney side and worse if the label side gets a ding because that is where the recording was done on older CDs. I have held a bad one up to the ligh and seen pinholes that caused WaaWaaWaaWaaWaa.

If you want to keep the antique take it to a repair center and get it tweaked back to specs. If the cost of getting it tweaked or repaired is 60 percent of the cost of a new one go for the new one and avoid the stress.

Leave the old stuff at the shop for recycling.

Jon

If you are one of the many that believe that it does not matter if a CD gets scratched, and your CDs are in a bad state of repair, that could be the problem.

A scratch on the top of the CD/DVD is even worse than on the bottom....

All CDs & DVDs should either be in a proper storage box in a dark cupboard, or being played, nowhere else....

Take only copies in the car.

Do not let UV or sun light get on them.

Never handle them by either the top or bottom surfaces.....

Clean wet if dirty, not dry. Wipe from the middle to the outside edge only. Not in circles.

Thanks to all, but the disk is not dirty or scratched, and it plays OK in other players, like in the car. It's just old--circa 1986.

1986? You got your moneys worth from it. Chances are the pickup has degraded or the lube on the sled rails is gone. Also could be a bad bearing on the disc motor or other problem. FWIW problems at the start of a disc are pickup or limit switch related and problems near the end of a disc are motor related. Problems in between can be anything. The cost of a new CD player makes repairing an old unit moot.

Tommy, you got it backwards. The DISC is 1986--the Sony CD player is almost new. The problem remains that my old CD player skipped on newer CDs and the new CD player skips on older CDs. I was hoping somebody had an explanation for this or could recommend a non-Chinese-made CD player that was capable of handling new and old CDs.

You are exactly right, I did not read the post correctly. The old player may have problems with new CDs due to sloppy manufacturing. In the 'old' days plants worked very hard to meet the Red Book specs. Now CDs are being made everywhere by anyone. The new player may not like something with the better quality of the old CDs like more mass or a better reflective coating causing the RF amp in the pickup to clip. I never seem to have this problem with my Vinyl.....

Oops, different computer didn't log on. Hate Mondays!

TommyTech

My mother had a DVD (actually a set of 3) and they would not play on her player, all of her other DVDs were okay, except that particular set.

I brought them home and they played on my two Panasonic DVD players and my computer...........no problem.

She had only had her DVD player about 18 months, I took her to buy a new one, a Panasonic........problem solved.

I have had my Panasonic DVD recorder/player about 3.5 years now and no trouble with it, but, I have had trouble with other Chinese electronic crap, e.g. Sony, Palsonic and one other piece, of which the name escapes me at this present time.

On re-reading the thread, I am wondering if you have a dusty environment....you may not even know....there are some special CDs with tiny brushes on them that clean off the dust on the head(s).....try one on both players.

Older players do not sometimes like the finer traces of either copied CDs or of the CD-RW discs either, modern ones should have no trouble. But some of the really cheap stuff does......even with a big expensive name on the front!!!

I agree dust . had that problem myself

Your dilemma is confusing because you are not specifying which "type" of cd's are giving you trouble.

Home burned cd's have a smaller reflective difference between the shiny and the dull spots (the 1's and 0's) than their mass produced counterparts. They are created in 2 totally different ways.

SIMPLIFIED: Mass produced cd's are molded plastic with aluminized flats and pits. Home burners essentially bleach (with a writing laser) a data pit in a color dye layer.

Old cd players frequently choked on home burned cd's because they were not sensitive enough to see and track all the necessary data on the dye layer. Newer players and cd burners have the necessary sensitivity to work for a time. What most people DON'T understand is that home burned cd's WON'T last forever! They will "fade" with time until even the burners that made them cannot read/track the data.

Some say the dye will last 100+ years, some say 5 years. I've personally had a few 5 year old home burned cd's STOP working in ANY drive. NO scratches, no dust, perfectly clean and under ideal storage conditions. Obviously some cd's are manufactured better than others and that may have been a factor. Fair warning for all those people archiving critical data on home burned optical media!

Bottom line, a mass produced cd should work fine in any (functional) drive. A home burned cd should work fine in the newest drives, unless IT gets too old. Hope that helps.

"Your dilemma is confusing because you are not specifying which "type" of cd's are giving you trouble."

Not homeburned--the CD in question is a Dukes of Dixieland CD from 1986, which I bought in N'Awlins at the Music Factory music store.

Thanks for clarification. Since 1985 I have had only 2 mass produced music cd's which were defective out-of-the-box. I've never had one "go bad" unless someone used it as a beer coaster. You stated your cd is clean and scratch free (both sides), so I'm stumped on this one. Hope you find a satisfactory solution. Best wishes.

After reading through the post and your comments to them I'm thinking the trouble likely is a combination of sorts or electronic in nature.

At about the age of your new player some commonality of troubles often occur, the most obvious being a dirty lens; use a cleaning disc that requires liquid added though not acetone, alcohol etc.. Another problem is corrosion of contacts especially of the main power "on" switch, which produces a snowballing effect; in effect the voltage reduced causes other issues which contribute to the problem you experience. Another cause can be dirty brushes in the motor causing the same sort of snowball effect as with reduced voltage.

Short version take it in for a cleaning; which would cost 60% of a new unit or clean it yourself.

I recommend replacement. Off the shelf CD / DVD player about $150 for a decent unit. Using a PC external CD/DVD about $65

This is just an FYI regarding CD's manufactured before the end of 1989.

The laquer coating on the discs to protect the aluminum reflective layer has always been UV based. However, the inks used to print the graphics on them prior to the end of '89 were solvent based.

'Advanced aging' lab tests were performed that showed a very high probability of the solvent based inks eventually corrupting the laquer coating and causing corrosion of the aluminum thus compromising the reflectivity.

The information in the effected areas of the discs tested became unreadable.

So, if you have some very old discs from the 80's and they still play, it would be a very good idea to copy them while they're still readable in case you can't find a newer replacement.

Crikies! I spent a fortune replacing my vinyl records with CDs. Now you are telling me that they may be going bad? Excuse me whilst I emit a long series of curses (many expletives and colorful metaphors deleted). With the record industry, I guess it's always something to force us to update our collections every 10 years or so. 78s to 33s to 8 tracks to cassettes to CDs to better CDs to DVDs--what's next? Probably a gazillion bytes of memory in a one-inch cube capable of holding 10,000 songs, for which one must purchase a new player, recorder and whatnot.