Music CD-R Problem

[Brian L]

I own a Marantz DR 700 component CD Recorder, and I've been having trouble getting it to read and record on recently purchased blank CD-R's.

I've tried three different brands in the last two months: Maxell, Memorex, and Imation. All three are brand new spindles of Music CD-R's (for digital audio). None works.

However, my CD Recorder has never had any troubles in the past, and it still reads the relatively older Memorex and Maxell Music CD-R's that are left over from earlier purchases. This leads me to believe there is no physical problem with my CD Recorder.

I contacted the technical support personnel at Maxell, Memorex, and Marantz. The consensus seems to be that the problem is due to recent increases in the record rates of blank Music CD-R's. Memorex, for example, has recently increased its blank Music CD's to 40X. As one support person speculated, "the media are just too fast for your recorder's drive." But the support guy from Memorex seems to think this shouldn't matter.

Unfortunately, Marantz hasn't created any new "firmware" for the CD Recorder, so it appears that for now at least I've got an obselescent recorder that won't be of any use once I use the last few remaining "old" Music CD-R's.

Of course I can still copy CD's or make mixes from CD's using my computer drive, but my primary interest these days is digitizing my LP's for use with portables or in the car. The component recorder makes this much simpler to do.

Anybody else had similar troubles with new Music CD-R's? Any advice?

[crawjo]

My advice is to seek out and stock up on the "old" Cd-Rs if you still can. Have you tried Verbatim?

[Brian L]

No, I haven't tried Verbatim...At this point I'm a bit reluctant to spend more money on discs unless I'm sure they're going to work. I'll have to poke around online to see whether slower record rates are still available. My own inclination is to call Marantz back and see if I can lobby them to create an update, but it would help if there were some evidence that this problem were more commonly felt.

[Archtop Wonder]

I own a Marantz DR 700 component CD Recorder, and I've been having trouble getting it to read and record on recently purchased blank CD-R's.

I've tried three different brands in the last two months: Maxell, Memorex, and Imation. All three are brand new spindles of Music CD-R's (for digital audio). None works.

However, my CD Recorder has never had any troubles in the past, and it still reads the relatively older Memorex and Maxell Music CD-R's that are left over from earlier purchases. This leads me to believe there is no physical problem with my CD Recorder.

I contacted the technical support personnel at Maxell, Memorex, and Marantz. The consensus seems to be that the problem is due to recent increases in the record rates of blank Music CD-R's. Memorex, for example, has recently increased its blank Music CD's to 40X. As one support person speculated, "the media are just too fast for your recorder's drive." But the support guy from Memorex seems to think this shouldn't matter.

Unfortunately, Marantz hasn't created any new "firmware" for the CD Recorder, so it appears that for now at least I've got an obselescent recorder that won't be of any use once I use the last few remaining "old" Music CD-R's.

Of course I can still copy CD's or make mixes from CD's using my computer drive, but my primary interest these days is digitizing my LP's for use with portables or in the car. The component recorder makes this much simpler to do.

Anybody else had similar troubles with new Music CD-R's? Any advice?

Brian, new one to me. The "explanations" sound like a bunch of crap. "Fast" CD-Rs (40X) should work as well at 40x as they do 4x.

One thing I have had a problem with, 80 minute CD-Rs vs 74 minute CD-Rs. My PC's CD-R is about 5 years old and cannot go past the "74 minute" barrier.
As long as I don't exceed the 74 minutes, the newer ones work fine.

Do you have any old CD-R blanks, like 8x ones? Do they still work? If not, I suspect you have a laser alignment problem.

[Dennis Gonzalez]

I had a wonderful Phillips CD-R component recorder, and it started doing the same thing. It messed up my most recent CD-R master for a CD that is about to come out. It just wore out, and I had to buy a new one. Any number of things could be wrong, and it would cost as much to fix it as to buy a new one. Save yourself the grief.

The new ones are updated and can read not only CD's, but CD-R's, CD-RW's, DVD's, and MP3's.

[graypencil]

I too have a Marantz CRD500 that has worked quite well for over three years ..WHEN I use good quality music CD/rs Sony , Maxell, etc .

mine is limited to single and double speed dubbing only ..

could dubbing at the higher rates be of some relation to the problem ?

[Brian L]

Thanks Graypencil and Archtop for sharing your thoughts. As I said before, I've only been using good quality Music CD-R's, but my recorder is limited to real-time (i.e. 1X) recording.

So my problem is the opposite of what you'd expect. I'm not running into trouble trying to record too quickly. I'm running into trouble trying to record slowly (1X) using media that should work at speeds up to 40X. The recorder simply won't recognize the newer, "faster" blank CD's.

It still works just fine with the older, "slower" ones. Finding leftover stock from the past may be possible, but it sounds like a wild goose chase.

So when I run out of older blank CD-R's, I may just have to follow Dennis' advice and simply buy a new recorder, even though I'm not convinced there's anything wrong with the one I have or that the customer support people I've talked to have given me reasonable explanations.

It certainly won't be the first time I've had a piece of electronic equipment that has become outdated.