[chaos]

Ok, I've now had problems with two discs. So I'm trying to figure out if it's a warranty issue or not (or if they'll even take me seriously). This is the stock single-CD player (not the 6-disc changer).

First of all, aside from the two discs I've had problems with, all other CDs I've tried in the player have worked perfectly fine. It's just these two. And the two problem discs are both the actual official audio CDs--not burned, not MP3-CDs, not CD-Rs. And both are (or were) in perfectly good condition--few, if any, scratches or anything on the surface of the discs.

The first one was 'At The Soundless Dawn' by Red Sparowes. You know how some CDs will count down (-0:03, -0:02, -0:01) leading into the next track? This CD has long gaps (sometimes over 1:00) that contain interludes. The CD player will randomly just completely shut off in the middle of any one of these gaps, making it impossible to play the album all the way through. Just turns off, and I have to turn it back on. I figured this was an isolated case with a unique CD, and figured I'd live with it.

The second one, however, is the new P.O.S. album 'Never Better'. This one is a normal CD--no gaps between tracks, nothing. And I bought it brand new, perfectly clean, from the label themsleves. Within the first couple spins in my car, I noticed a ticking noise as the disc was spinning in the player, for the whole duration of the album. Didn't think much of it (again, figured it was just an anomaly I'd live with). However, tonight the CD started skipping on me. So I pulled it out and looked at it, and it was clean, but now had numerous light circular scratches over most of the surface. So obviously that ticking was something making contact with the disc itself. I wiped off the disc, put it back in, and now it won't even play--just says "check disc". So it appears that it essentially ruined a brand new CD.

So my questions are: Has anybody ever had any problems with their CD players, or even heard of this? Should I bring this to the dealership under warranty? Will they take me seriously, and believe my stories? Is it worth it to maybe have them take apart my whole deck and replace it just to get a couple CDs to work? Thoughts, ideas, anything welcome.

 

[geewhizbang]

I would suspect that you have scratches or flaws in these disks. Try cleaning the disk. If it is scratched you can use one of those disk smoothing machines to fix it. Record stores that sell used CDs have a professional grade machine to do this for about $2 per disk.

Unfortunately, if the label has even a tiny pinhole in it, it usually means that the track containing the hole is unreadable. Small scratches in the disk don't usually matter, because the data is about 30% redundant, so data dropouts from dust or a small scratch gets restored by the error correction algorithms.

If you can hold the disk up to the light and see bright spots coming thru it, the disk is unrepairable. You can barely see thru some disks with translucent labels, but a pinhole will still show up as a bright spot.

 

[icspots]

Being that it did this with a brand new CD that was immaculate I'm leaning towards this being a warranty issue. Of course you're going to have to get it to reproduce the problem for the dealership for them to cover it.

 

[chaos]

[quote author=icspots link=topic=136268.msg2936515#msg2936515 date=1234625600]
Being that it did this with a brand new CD that was immaculate I'm leaning towards this being a warranty issue.  Of course you're going to have to get it to reproduce the problem for the dealership for them to cover it.
[/quote]

That's the problem. I don't think I could reproduce the first one, because I doubt they're going to sit there and wait through several minutes of the CD just to see it *maybe* randomly shut off. And the second one, I guess I'd have to go and re-purchase the CD in order to reproduce the problem, since the one I have no longer even works. Might have to do the latter, despite the waste of money.

 

[geewhizbang]

On a second reading of your post with more sleep, I suspect that there is a problem with the drive that scratched the disks.

 

[chaos]

[quote author=geewhizbang link=topic=136268.msg2936829#msg2936829 date=1234639442]
On a second reading of your post with more sleep, I suspect that there is a problem with the drive that scratched the disks.
[/quote]

What I can't figure out is why it did it to only that disc. I play other discs, even now (after the fact), and they still work fine--no ticking sound, no scratches. It's just that P.O.S. disc.

I did re-order a new copy of that CD (the P.O.S. one), so I guess I'll see if it does it again. If it does, I'll bring it to the dealer to show them and see if they'll cover it.

 

[chaos]

Update (for anybody who cares):

When I got the new copy of the P.O.S. disc, it worked fine. So I think there was just something wrong with the first disc I got, and not the CD player itself. That still doesn't explain its malfunction with the Red Sparowes CD, but now I'm back to "I can live with that", if it's just that disc. So no dealership consultation, no warranty crap.

 

[mmmkay]

Mine sometimes chokes on some burned CD-r's and won't eject them, saying NO DISC until I give it a bit of a SMACK on the top where the buttons are.. then it ejects :\