Got a question for any of yall with mp3 enabled headunits.

About 2 weeks ago I installed an Alpine CDA-9815 in my truck, love it, works great, but.......

One of the reasons I chose this unit is because its able to play mp3's burned onto a data cd. Letting me burn 100+ songs a cd so I won't have to change discs so often.

Heres the problem. Everytime I burn a CD the tracks stall or are of very bad quality after about a 1/4 way through the disk. (say after track 25 of a 100 track disc).

All the files are standard mp3's, and dont contain any virus's. They also work fine playing on the computer through winamp etc....

Ive also tried different burner programs. HP's "record now" (crappy one, came with the computer) and Realplayer.

Anyone one have any ideas or experience with this?
Sorry about the length of the post

Thanks
Jeff

 

Does the CD you burn, work ok on your PC?

There are lots of things that can mess up your recording procedures. Be sure to turn off your screen saver and any other programs that might access the hard drive while recording.

It can be anything from program conflicts to driver issues. I used to have problems with mine until I installed Windows XP. The only way I could get a successful recording was to turn off as many processes running as I could.

Also some burners do not like certain brands of CD-R's. There are some major quality issues between the differing brands. Slowing down the recording speed can also help in some cases.

Sorry I can't just name the one magic bullet here, but now you have some direction to look in at least

 

I agree. I take down all unnecessary processes prior to a burn. Even still, I've found burned CD's to be hit or miss. I use Plextor burners on a SCSI bus and I still get bad ones. Burn another, and it works just fine. What I whan to see is a head unit with a direct flash card input. The company I work for is playing with removable "media", but I can't say what kind.

 

Whoops, guess I didn't include everything in my original posted that I wanted to.

Lemme try again, lol. I guess its sorta a 2 part problem. Sometimes the burner screws up and only gets about halfway through the process before spitting the disc out and reporting errors. Other times, it will complete the process but wont work well in the headunit.

Ive tried shutting down just about everything possible while trying to burn them and it still doesnt work. Top, I tried playing one that worked (kinda in the computer and it wont even recongnize it.....

and heres the kicker.....it will burn them as plain old audio cd's (can play in any cd player)

Thanks again guys.
Jeff




edit: just tried it in my dad's computer and it worked fine. I hope its not a problem with my headunit

 

Most burner programs I have tried are very poor. If it's a shareware type HP program, it could be a limit in their software. Try something else. I have used musicmatch jukebox and it works (but I'm not all that hot on it).

Is it recording from the Hard disk or memory? Maybe there is an option to look, if it is trying to load it all into memory you could have a problem with this.


try the option to test as it writes (it should have this option).

check to see if there is a "cache" size limit. Set this higher, maybe 10 MB

Maybe there is an option to cache to the Hard Disk.

Also, don't try to record this many files from one CD to another. First record them as MP3s on your hard disk. Then burn them from your hard disk to the MP3 disk.

Hope this helps.
also, I've found that some burners have a "sound leveling" very useful as the recordings do not all play back at the same volume unless you have this feature.

 

I've got a program that burns MP3's. I upload a CD, convert it to MP3, and then burn it. I've got over 4 hours of music on one CD. The name of the program is My MP3 Pro. The CD's sound great in my headunit. I've got the 9807 Alpine. The songs sound crisp and clear.

 

Try Roxio EZ CD Creator. I've used this program since my first CD writer 4 or 5 years ago. Version 6 is the latest. It's pretty fool proof. There is a MP3 CD feature which works well for me. Works in my Pioneer head unit perfectly every time.

It also has a program called Audio Central. You can convert music to about any format under the sun.

What brand CD writer do you have? I have had bad experience with cheap brands. I have a Sony and it works like a champ.

Also, what type hardware do you have in your computer? I an old Pentium with a 166 mhz processor and it would never burn a cd--can't do much at all actually, which is why I made it a server.

 

what brand of CD are you trying to record to. what speed are you recording at what operating system are u using specifically what software are u using to burn the cd? what brand recorder?

Dan

I have found that different media makes a big difference!

 

Some headunits may be really finicky with certain types of CDR media. I would try several brands of high quality CD R and CD RW media and see what works the best. Also, slow down the recording speed, slower the better. I find the Roxio CD creator is pretty good at recording mp3s and audio CDs. I also use Maxell audio quality 80 minute CD RWs.

MikeyB

 

I've had the best luck with Imation CDs in my Clarion head unit. The ones I have are rated at 12x and I've been burning them at 28x with no problems using a Lite-On 52/32/52 burner and Nero 5.5. The machine is an Athlon XP 2500+ with 768 meg of RAM and a 7200 rpm hard drive, running Windows XP Pro.

 

Thanks for all the responses guys. I think Ive finally gotten it to work.

I ended up getting the upgraded music match jukebox (mainly because I already had the free version on the computer) and after changing some of the settings Beavermike suggested it seemed to burn fine, go figure

Glad it was just a software problem as this is a brand new computer and the Alpine head is one of their top of the line types

thanks once again
Jeff