So I was listening to some CDs on the way to work this morning, and I noticed what I'd consider to be an odd behavior from my clubbie's CD player. Doesn't seem the sort of thing that you'd expect after decades of CD player usage, but I figured I'd pop on here and ask if this is just normal or if mine's freaking out. You never know what car manufacturers think is a good idea these days!

So, any time a CD has a scratch or smudge on it, the CD player - rather than just bleeping and blooping like a CD player does - starts playing the CD over from the very beginning.

EVERY time, no matter how minuscule the scratch is. If it would make a normal CD player make a noise, I get to start my whole CD over.

Is this the intended operation? That's REALLY odd...

 

83 views and nothing?

Am I the only MINI owner still listening to CDs?

 

I've only used the CD player once and didn't have a problem. I only use the USB port since I can take much more music on the road! You should try it

 

lol sorry haven't ever used the cd player. I'm almost always just listening to the radio or streaming pandora.

 

I thought the stock stereo was REALLY bad. Then I figured out it was my FM mp3 adapter. Now I play mp3 CDs and it sounds 100x better, although still not great. I haven't had any trouble with it restarting though.

 

I just burned my first MP3 CD for my MINI last night. When playing it on the way to work this morning I was bummed that the Nav display wasn't used for the artwork (embedded in the MP3s) like with the iTunes interface.

Am I expecting too much?

 

Yeah, I use my aux connector for that, and almost always find myself listening to pandora/mp3s on my phone, or radio/satellite. I got an itch to hear something I only have on CD though, and was a little disappointed to see the problem so easily replicated on any CD I had a scratch on.

It's not a deal breaker or anything, I'm just curious if this is how other people's CD players behave or if I should add it to the list of things to have the dealership check out once I get some time to be able to go get them looked at.

 

The artwork isn't embedded in the mp3s, it's downloaded by itunes and displayed alongside the music but the pictures are seperate files. WMP and Zune software do the same thing and I imagine most any other mp3 player does so that's probably why you expected it.

 

I can't speak for anyone else but my MP3 files do have embedded cover art.

Yours could too if you wanted: http://www.richardfarrar.com/embeddi...-in-mp3-files/

I'm fairly certain that all the MP3 files I've bought from Amazon.com have the cover art embedded.

The MP3 players I use the most (JRiver Media Center, iTunes, Windows Media Player) all recognize and use the embedded images. I prefer this to relying on the player to find and download the correct image (iTunes in particular gets it very wrong and not too infrequently).

 

Huh, well I stand corrected. If I had known you could do that, I'd be disappointed too.

 

But unfortunately there is not a "CD" MP3 player on the market that I know of that can read picture files. Now some but not all DVD players can do this but i doubt you will find one in a car but I could be wrong.

 

You're probably right. I suspect my expectations were too high.

BTW, my apologies to SkaBob for hijacking his thread.

 

and to SkaBob You may want to find a CD Laser Cleaning Disk. if the laser lens is dirty it will be MUCH more sensitive to scratches.

 

I just hit 6000 miles - if it's dirty, it's got something on it from the factory that isn't likely to come off with a spinning brush... I'm dealing with it in a modern fashion - I'm just ripping all my CDs to mp3 and putting them on my phone. Just kind of a pain 'cuz I had some great mixes that I'd like to still listen to, and they play fine (allowing for a few skips and burbles) in everything other than my car.

 

Did you try actually polishing the problem cd? There are polishing kits/devices available at most electronics stores & computer supply stores (Staples, etc.).

A CD surface is just clear plastic...the data is located on the reflective mylar layer well below the outer clear plastic layer.

 

I hadn't polished any of the CDs that were doing it, but the problem seems to just be how the head unit reacts to some types of scratches. Other CDs I have with scratches (yeah I really don't take that good care of my CDs...) just skip normally, or get a little bit of stuttery static in them. I've written off the "jump back to the beginning" as just what it does when it finds a particularly confusing scratch.