Mr. Ed's rx-8

well here goes...

i buy a $30,000 car and i get a CD player that skips on every little scratch or bump. Aslo when i put in a burnt CD it will play the first few tracks and then you will start to hear more and more static sound as it progresses throught the CD.

so my question is has anyone else experienced this? should i take it in and have the dealership look at it.

thanks for any feed back and info!

czr

iTrader: (3)

Some members have complained about this. One that I know of has had it replaced(stock single cd for stock single cd) and no problems afterwards. I had the same problem with mine but I ended up buying an MP3 player and putting it in myself and the same cds that skipped in the single cd headunit no longer skip. I'd go to the dealer and complain if I were you, but make sure your cds are clean. I didn't want to argue and needed a reason to buy the mp3 player.

mazradiodoc

Finger print a worst then scratches. If the car is still in warranty then take it to the dealer, they should make it right.

JeRKy 8 Owner

No it hasnothing to do w/finger prints or scratches. Most people w/single disc CD player on their Rx8 will notice it has a VERY low tolerance against vibration/bumps (I forgot the term theyuse for this its some typeof buffer or something) and because of thatit will skip while playing anysong if you go over any bumpy/rough roads or train tracks. I dontthink there is anything the dealership can dofor you/cant fix this problem b/c its just the nature of the cheap hardware Mazda isusing for the single disc CD player.

I dontworry about it anymore though b/c I justgot the MP3 CD player installed which is great (though thats 270 bucks I couldbe using for gasoline) and nowI have redone all my CDs and turned theminto 100+ track CDs instead of 18 a piece sonow Ive only got 3 or 4 CDs in my car plus it displays the track informationon the head unit screen. This CD player doesnt skipat all on bumps.

Mr. Ed's rx-8

ok...looks like i might be going with the MP3 player. what does it look like in the car and where does it mount??? i saw the install on it earlier but what cosmetic appearences does it change???

p.s.-and my CD's are pretty clean with basic swirl scratches on it.

G8rboy

Mine hasn't skipped once in the first year I've had it... and Chicago roads aren't exactly smooth... although I do have the 6 disc changer.

The Mazda MP3 CD is a direct swap for your current CD player- the only cosmetic difference might be a small mp3 logo on the bezel for the player. It's not an MP3 player in the sense of an iPOD or other mp3 storage device... it simply can play mp3's burned to a CD as files (something Mazda should have done with the CD/6CD players in my opinion...).

slllygrl10

I have a single disc cd and I never had a problems with it. Just take it to the dealer they should replace it

Vaillant

I've had mine for several months now (single disc) and it hasn't ever skipped that I can remember. Take it to the dealer and get a new one under warranty!

~ Matt

robe619

Mine doesn't skip on original CDs. Nor does it skip when I burn CDs on the Verbatim brand CD-Rs. However, I recently burned some discs on Imation brand CD-Rs and those skips like crazy.

Snoochie

I'm glad I saw this thread cause I've been really pissed off at my player skipping all the time. Do you think the dealer would basically let me pay for the difference in price for the mp3/cd rather than them just getting the cd player for me. I dunno I hope so cause I want that mug.

Gargos

I just did a quick search and found this old thread that's describing my own problem to a T.

After wrestling with the latest version of NERO which was causin it's own skipping sound issues I was finally able to burn a decent working CD. But now when I play it in the single CD unit I have, I hear static that sounds just like an FM channel on the later tracks of the disc. Of 16 tracks the first 8 or so play fine and then as you get to 9 you can hear a faint static near the start. By the time you reach 16, the static now sounds like a vinyl record player where you can hear constant, intermitant static throughout the entire song.

Now I've only burned 2 or 3 discs since I've got the car and like I said before, the others skipped due to non-car issues. This latest disc I burned at a slightly higher speed as well. I think I went up from 24X to 32X. Is this what's causing the problem? Has anybody had any similar experiences? It's not that burning just one more disc at a slower speed is any loss to me. Discs are quite cheap, but I hate to keep burning the same thing over and over if it's not going to fix anything. I brought the CD into the house and I'm not hearing the static on my PC. So I'd say it's definitely a head unit issue this time around.

Gargos

I may have figured out the other half of my problem. I finally have a working CD, but there's still a ridiculous amount of static and potential skipping on the tracks near the end of the disc. It's got to be the outside temp. It's pretty cold here nowadays and I noticed yesterday after driving around a bit and warming up that it got better as I neared my destination. Each way was about 25 minutes. By the time I got there, the last track still had a noticable amount of static, but no longer skipped like it did when the car first started. Of course, my car also warmed up for a good 5-10 minutes BEFORE I left, giving the player a full 30-35 minutes of time to heat up and it still didn't play right. The ride home was about an hour or so later and the car was still slightly warm from the earlier trip, didn't require as much time to get to operating temp and the home trip ended with the last track almost completely perfect sounding. It's pretty sad that the head unit requires that much time and that much heat to operate at an acceptable level. I believe this problem is mostly only evident in burned CD's, but regardless. My old Civic had the same problem which I just remembered from a few years back, but that one fixed itself after only a couple of minutes. My ride to and from work is only 15-20 minutes on average, with an 8 hour cool down time inbetween. This essentially means that my player will never get up to an "operating" temp to make it useful to me on a daily basis. Fortunately, I was planning on upgrading to an MP3 unit in short time once I can get the other components I'll need like the PIE adaptor, XM unit and Roady mount. Hopefully the MP3 player is a little more forgiving with files about 8-12MB in size compared to an audio CD.

On a separate note, for those who have the stock MP3 unit, how's the load time inbetween tracks? My previous car had a SONY unit in it that would require a ~2 second buffer inbetween songs. If I had an album with continuous music or sounds inbetween tracks, there was an awfully long, awkward pause inbetween each track. Does the Mazda unit behave the same way?

G8rboy

Have you tried different brands of CD-R's? I used to have that problem with cheap discs on previous cars. As for the temp issue, I don't think it's widespread- I've listened to CD's well below zero many times (both storebought and home-burnt)... I know because I don't feel comfortable using my MP3 jukebox that cold and always listen to something in my CD changer until the car warms up a bit.

Gargos

Well, but you're talking about the 6-disc one though, right? At the moment, I only have the stock single-CD player. Most threads I've searched on seem to concur that the 6-disc has fewer issues. I only had 1 brand of CD-R for the time being to test it with, but I can probably leech a few from somebody else to try a different brand and see what happens. I'm using TDK discs right now which I've had no problems with for any use to date.

vectorwolf

I always use Fujifilm disks (no brand preference, really... they're just what I usually end up with). Pretty much all the CDs I use in the car are burnt, and I've yet to have a problem.

Also, I use the latest version of RealPlayer to make the disks... Might give it a shot? I also recall if your CD-R drive doesn't have Buffer Underrun protection, or something of that sort, you can occasionally end up with errors if you do ANYTHING else while making the disks.

truemagellen

A huge reason why burned audio discs sound like crap is they were burned too quickly...the reality is high speed burns lead to poor audio quality as the error correction can not fight vibration

with my new burner I burn no faster than 12x for audio CDs and that is when I'm in a rush...on crappy or nice discs (although better discs will yield better results)...

when I want the best quality i burn at 4-6x depending on the burner

I don't use my disc drive anymore though

JeRKy 8 Owner

Just get an MP3 CD player already. It's the holidays and if you burn CDs as much as it sounds like you do, you'll enjoy being able to put 120 songs on each CD, and you'll never have to worry anymore skipping while you're driving.

Oh by the way if you let the MP3 player go from track to track by itself, there isn't a very long pause. But when you manually switch from one track to another, there's a 2 - 3 second pause.

Gargos

I'm using NERO 6.3 at the moment. Was using 7, but it didn't seem as stable as 6 was yet, so I backed up. I have an HP DVD640i, supports burning of all the latest of media types and certainly has buffer underrun protection. Like I said, the disc I just burned last here works on everythign else just fine. My PC, a walkman, a BOSE standalone player, and none of those devices play the disc with any hint of static. It's most definitely something with the Mazda unit itself. Considering it gets better the further I drive, that's why I'm assuming temperature has to be the culprit. The static sounds like a record player, just like it. If you picture how a movie uses the scratching sound effect for a record when somebody places the needle on it, it sounds EXACTLY like that in my car: a very regular, On/Off pattern.

I'll give another type of medium a try in the burner, but I'm getting the impression that it won't matter what I burn it on, only how cold it is outside that will determine how well it works.

truemagellen

get it replaced under warranty

be careful as it may not be a problem with the drive but rather the head unit

they'll probably replace the whole thing anyhow

Gargos

I could try, but like I said, I planned on upgrading to the MP3 player regardless. The replacement would most likely be a waste of time and still have the same issues. I wish I had the ability to drive down to Florida or somewhere warmer to test the theory out. I also missed your earlier post too, but in response to that, the CD in question with the static was burned at 8X, the slowest my burner will allow me to burn it.

truemagellen

what I'm worried about is you have the mp3 unit installed and there is still static, maybe the connector for the cd drive module is damaged

then you'd need to get the HU replaced anyhow

can't hurt

Gargos

True, well, we'll see. I'm not planning on waiting long before going ahead with the MP3 install.

Rotary Rasp

iTrader: (2)

My single skipped all the time, I swapped it out for the six disc which never skipped. Now I have a 120 gb hard drive which doens't skip either. However, if it does, i'm SOL.

Gargos

What if it wasn't the circuits though? Couldn't a really cold unit cause the lens to fog up, or perhaps the disc itself? I don't know, I'm just throwing theories out here because like I said, it will get better over a long run. There's obviously some issue with the medium itself too since it doesn't seem to skip on retail CD's. It could just be that the retail disc of obviously higher quality can still be read despite any handicap of a fogged lens or condensation on the disc. It's always happening towards the end of the disc though. By the time it gets to the end the lens is further out on the disc and has to read the information over a greater length. I have no problems at all with the first half of the disc and that's where the lens isn't movign as much and just sitting near the center of the disc.

This just reminds me a lot of the days in my Civic. That unit though only required a 10 minute pre-drive warmup though and usually the unit would work fine no matter what disc I had in the player. Today my player didn't work too good even by the time I got home 20-25 minutes later, but it's also already/going to be one of the coldest nights of the year.

I think I'm going to start looking into buying the parts I need for the MP3 player/XM Radio/external MP3 player hookup this weekend. Let me try to get this unit installed as fast as I can and if I still have issues, then Mazda can answer for it.