Why does my DVD player read (play) a hard to play music CD better than my CD player?

baretta

baretta

Active Member
I have a music CD that someone else burned. At least I think it was burned and not factory made. Anyway my new Marantz CD player (CC 4001) has a hard time playing the last song, (track 12) while my Pioneer DVD player (DV-275) plays it without any distortion whatsoever. Any ideas why this might be?
 
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Different optical assemblies, combined with different servo alignments and design can all contribute to disc compatibility issues. Some heads are simply better than others. Some designs are better than others. Or, you might simply have a marginal head in a particular sample.

CD-Rs work by "fooling" the laser head into thinking it's reading pits and lands, when it really is not. Compatibility is always dicey with CD-Rs, even on modern players. But your chances of being able to correctly and successfully play a CD-R is higher on a newer player, because the heads and electronics are designed with them in mind.
 
PacificStereo said:
Different optical assemblies, combined with different servo alignments and design can all contribute to disc compatibility issues. Some heads are simply better than others. Some designs are better than others. Or, you might simply have a marginal head in a particular sample.

CD-Rs work by "fooling" the laser head into thinking it's reading pits and lands, when it really is not. Compatibility is always dicey with CD-Rs, even on modern players. But your chances of being able to correctly and successfully play a CD-R is higher on a newer player, because the heads and electronics are designed with them in mind.
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FWIW, the early CD players can't read CD-Rs at all.

Bobby D.
 
In my experience the older the player the more often it cannot read a disc. It does not matter what kind of player (CD, DVD, SACD, HDCD, or BD). When my 8 years old DVD player cannot play a movie, I try it on my 4 years old DVD player, if that fails then the new Blue ray player never fails.
 
botrytis said:
Not true - again big statement that has no basis in reality - Early Denons could even read black CD-R's before and they were made before CD-R's even exsisted. Has to do more with laser power than anything else.
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Correct.

DVD pickups have a lot more power than CD pickups.

However, basically ALL the early philips swing-arm pickups read CD-R's better than most 3 beam "newer" pickups. Most quality pickups in the 80's could.

THEN they went through a period of making nothing but crap. Nowadays the best transport to read pretty much ANYTHING is a pioneer PC DVD burner.
The older pioneer DVD slot load drives had FANTASTIC optics.

A blueray (crap) drive uses 2 lasers, 2 lenses....usually. Pity they die so soon. The laser is such high power that it lives a short and eventful life. Really cool for the money they cost. :scratch2:
 
My Marantz CD player is brand new. I just got it about two weeks ago. The Pioneer DVD player I bought about five and a half years ago. I guess the DVD opticals are just better.
 
Yeah, my old Sony CDP-70 (circa 1986) has absolutely no problem with CDRs, nor do any of my later Sony Carousel units (CDP-200, 500, 700). Where did this rumor that they were intentionally crippled out come from?
 
A lot of second generation DVD players can't read CD-Rs because they only had a red laser (instead of a red one for DVD and an IR one for CD). They did this as a cost cutting measure. The red laser manages to play pressed CDs, but not CD-Rs. Fortunately, as technology improved, they went back to using two lasers (now 3 lasers with Blu-Ray).
 
This test CD is my best tool for evaluating CD-DVD players on the spot. Its factory defects are hard to read on lesser players. You can test for tracking errors, drop outs, HF detection levels etc. The player that passes the most test tracks wins. :king:


PICT0002.jpg

PICT0003.jpg
 
Hokieman said:
Where did this rumor that they were intentionally crippled out come from?
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It's true. The idea of Music CD-R's was for them to cost slightly more with the proceeds form the sale going to someone in the recording industry (I forget who) to "offset the cost of piracy". They had a special little code on the disk telling the player if it was a music CD or not. And this just isn't Sony players. Many CD recorders can only record on Music CD-R (there are ones that can use regular ones) and some of the earlier DVD players are the same. (my friend has one).
 
I've found exactly the opposite! I have a Sony and a Philips CD player - both from 1984 - that play CDR without ever skipping. My Akai DVD player (2 lasers) is pretty useless as a CD player it is so fussy.
 
I have had problems playing Music or audio CD-Rs on older CD players burned on my Pioneer standalone but no problems with data CD-Rs burned on my PC.

The problem can vary with batches within a brand. Early TDK music/audio CD-Rs seem to play ok on all my CD players. I noticed the TOC finalization time was ~4:14 - not sure if that is a factor)

Then it seems they had a new batch (toc finalization time ~ 4:04) and my old Kenwood DP-700 and Ford Explorer factory CD player had problems not being able to read music/audio CD-Rs at all burned from the Pioneer. Other vintage players had no problem Sony CDP-CA70ES, Onkyo DX-705.

But if I burned a copy of the music/audio CD-R onto a data CD-R it played ok on all.
 
Bastek: That Pierre Verany disc is pretty useful. Pretty sure one of those is in the collection somewhere around here. I routinely use the Philips 5A defects disc, but that's mainly out of habit. Use it enough and one gets used to how particular misalignments cause players to fail in particular ways. Based on how a particular player behaves in various spots on this disc, it's easy to zero in on a specific misalignment.

There are a number of compatibility problems when it comes to CDR recording. For example, the burner in this laptop makes CDRs that play perfectly in most players. Yet, a friend has a Philips-based Musical Fidelity CD player that will not recognize discs made in this burner. Period. Doesn't matter who makes the media.

As far as Music CD vs standard CDR, there are two differences. One is that the Music CD was originally supposed to meet all Red Book standards, particularly for reflectivity. That no longer appears to be true with recent blank media. The only other difference is the lead-in, which has the bit set indicating that the blank is a Music CD and thus that the royalty is paid. That's why consumer stand-alone CD burners can't be used with CDRs, and that's the ONLY reason they can't. The burner looks for that flag and won't burn if it doesn't see it.
 
I'm not aware of any players that will only play music CD-Rs, and I would need to see some proof before I believed it. There's no reason for players to reject data CD-Rs since it's perfectly legal to burn audio to a data CD-R. As others have said, music recorders are another matter (you can get around this by using a "professional" CD recorder).

The quality of blank CD-Rs varies greatly, and it might be that music CD-Rs tend not to be bottom quality. All of my early CD players play CD-Rs fine (better than many pressed discs).
 
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