My car CD/mp3 player hates iTunes??

[GanChan]

I don't have an iPod, but I do have a (cheap Jensen) CD/CD-R/mp3 player in my car. I figured I could just burn CDs of .mp3 files and play the discs in the car. No such luck. The player recognizes some older CD-Rs I made using a third-party mp3 encoder, but not my iTunes stuff. I can't figure it out -- I've tried burning different file types (audio CD, mp3, even data fies), I've tried renaming the files, and nothing.

Am I stuck with spending lots of money on a new player (or an iPod), or do you folks have any other troubleshooting thoughts?

Thanks much.

 

[PlaceofDis]

are the songs in your iTunes collection .mp3s or are the .m4p (a.k.a. AAC)?

your songs have to be encoded as mp3s for the mp3 discs to work with your player. the default though in iTunes is the AAC codec because of its 'superior' compression algorithm. (notice: its in quotes because not all agree).

 

[GanChan]

are the songs in your iTunes collection .mp3s or are the .m4p (a.k.a. AAC)?

your songs have to be encoded as mp3s for the mp3 discs to work with your player. the default though in iTunes is the AAC codec because of its 'superior' compression algorithm. (notice: its in quotes because not all agree).

No, I always encode and burn as .mp3 format. I tried switching to a fixed bitrate, thinking that maybe the VBR was screwing up the player, but it didn't make any difference.

 

[PlaceofDis]

then that is odd. if your files are .mp3 and you put them in the playlist, make sure the burn settings are to an mp3 disc and it should work.

if not, if you have toast you could try that.
otherwise i'm at a loss.

 

[calculus]

Are you using a different brand of CDRs from before?

 

[GanChan]

Are you using a different brand of CDRs from before?

I'm not sure. Currently using TDK and Fuji, which shouldn't be a big deal. Maybe a 74-minute vs. 80-minute thing?

 

[rjphoto]

Burn speed

What is your burn speed?

I had the owner of a local Apple dealership tell me a while back that his car CD player would only play CDs burned at 1x from his Apple computer.

Give it a shot.

 

[m-dogg]

Sounds like an issue of AAC vs. MP3. But if you checked that in your settings already, I'm really not sure...

 

[IJ Reilly]

Try playing the CDs in another player. Some CD players can be intolerant of CD-R discs. That doesn't explain the iTunes music issue, but you should eliminate this as a possibility anyway.

 

[garfield2002]

I hope that I've understood your problem, please forgive me if I've got it wrong.

Are you burning the MP3 CD from inside iTunes? I've found when I tell iTunes to burn an MP3 CD it burns it with all of the directories intact. When iTunes imports your music it puts the song in a folder with the artist, and then a folder with the album trying to organize your music collection. The result is that on your MP3 CD, the files are in not in the root directory. On my car player I have to navigate through this disc to first get to the directory with the music in it. It's a real pain, especially if there is only one song on my disc for a particular artist. Some cheaper MP3 players may not recognize this directory structure (folders) at all. In this case the CD won't play. The solution that I use, if this is indeed your problem, is to create a new folder on your desktop and drag your selected songs from the iTunes window into that folder. This will create a copy of just the MP3. Once you've collected all the songs that you want then burn these files to the CD. No extra folders. If all goes well the stereo should see the songs and they should play. Good luck.