QuestionI burned a CD that is rejected by my CD player. It will play on my wife's 2006 Forestor player and on my daughter's CD player. The CD was burned on a CD-RW. I have burned CD's in the past that worked just fine in my car, but they were burned on audio CD-R's.
Any help you can provide would be appreciated.
AnswerIn a regular CD, a "read laser" scans the mirrord surface of the disc reading tiny digital pits and flat sections.
In a CD-r/RW drive, there is actually a second laser that can "burn" information into a layer of polarizing ink crystals - one way makes them dark to read as a digital "0" and the other they are clear for a "1".
A CD-RW's ink's layer is different from CD-R's in that a certain amount of exposure to the read laser writes a dark spot, and more exposure will clear it again. There is some slop there - CD-RW's are somewhat prone to darker "1"'s, more translucent "0"'s, and fuzzy borders between the two.
Unfortunately not all CD-RW's are made to the same quality and not all CD-player laser optics can pick them up. Somewhere between those two margins is where your 2003 Subaru CD player issue lies.
Frankly, I wouldn't consider this much of a defect - especially considering how cheap CD-R's are - I don't think I've ever tested my luck with a CD-RW in a automobile CD player because I wouldn't expect it would work on any of them. I would suggest you burn a new copy onto CD-R if possible, it sounds like that should work.
I wish you luck! Here's a little more material for your research:
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question655.htm
http://www.pctechguide.com/33CDR-RW.htm
