Car CD player skipping tracks

[rickt96]

I still have a car audio player that uses CDs. I have been for past 10 years using CD-RWs (Rewritable CD) in my car audio system and never had any issues.
Some of my old media (CD-RWs) are failing so I bought a brand new HP CD-RW.

I first tested it in my portable DVD writer. It worked fine. Then I did a Quick Erase and then used Burn Aware Free app to write some 30 MP files on to it. All seemed fine.
But in the car audio player 'Pioneer DEH'(Play set to Random shuffle), it started skipping tracks and randomly settling down to what it could play.
e.g. Say it played track4 then it tried 25, skiped to 16, then to 20 and then finally it was able to actually play track 6 like that. I was clueless why it was happening. I tried my old CD-RW from Princo (Which is nearly 10 years old) and it worked just fine.

Then I decided to do a full erase of that new HP CD-RW and after subsequent write it all worked just fine. It has stopped skipping tracks and plays each and every track fine.
I used MP3 CD option in burn aware free which I believe sets filesystem to ISO9660.
I am clueless what is wrong with quick erase.

 

[Aeacus]

But in the car audio player 'Pioneer DEH'(Play set to Random shuffle), it started skipping tracks and randomly settling down to what it could play.

Compared to PC ODDs, car CD players are very capricious. Age also plays a role and might need to replace car audio deck at some point.

I too like to listen audio CDs when driving with my cars. And my cars have factory CD players since they aren't that new vehicles.

E.g one genuine audio CD i have (Depeche Mode - Playing the Angel), will work without issues in one of my cars. But when i put the same CD into my 2nd car, the player reads it quite a long time and then spits it out, displaying "Read error" as message. (Both cars have same production year.) And every time with this specific audio CD. While when i use 2nd genuine audio CD, it plays just fine in both cars. Go figure.

As of burned CDs, those "die" faster. I too have many MP3 CDs, that i've burnt myself and like to listen in-car. At some point, car's CD player doesn't play all tracks, instead skips some. Until it doesn't read it at all. But ODD in my PC, reads the burnt CD just fine, with 0 issues.

I am clueless what is wrong with quick erase.

Quick erase (including fast format for SSD/HDD) doesn't actually remove any of the data. All it does, is marking the media as "free to overwrite". So, when you still have data on there and you overwrite it with new data, the writing process on CD, isn't that in-depth. Thus, some players can pick up the old data beneath, making the playback of new data (or part of it) corrupt.

 

[racecar56]

Above is very good information. I'd like to mention that there are laser lens cleaning discs that can help, I've been able to revive many a player with those. It's a CD that has brushes built into it. I have a very old Endust disc probably from 20 years ago that still works great, but you can also still buy them on Amazon for dirt cheap today. Definitely worth trying if you haven't already.

EDIT: I'd also like to add that as far as I know, CD-RW is a little harder to read than a CD-R as it requires more laser energy, and CD players generally expect CD-R (if not only a premade CD). (Please, if I'm wrong, someone let me know!) But regardless of reading format capability, if I'm right on the laser energy detail, then I'd expect an aging and thus weakening laser will sooner struggle with a CD-RW than a CD-R.