Not sure if this is the right forum for my question but I'll take a stab.

It has been a long time, perhaps even a decade, since I burned a CD, and at that time I had no problem with it, it was easy as falling out of bed.

But no more.

My wife recorded a Christmas CD (I'll post more about that later elsewhere) and although it's online we wanted to have a single CD to play in the stereo downstairs in the living room.

So far I have destroyed 10 CD discs using four or five different computers running either Windows Media player or an older program like Cakewalk pyro to just try and burn a simple audio CD.

I've done it a million times in the past.

But now it fails every time.

Some of the computers are the same ones that I used beforehand.

I will pull the mp3s into Windows Media player, line them up, it will say preparing CD for burn, I will see it "preparing"all the tracks for burn and then when it gets that far it stops. No specific error message, it just stops. Same thing with Cakewalk pyro on a older computer that used to work like a charm. It gets all the way through the preparation stage and then just stops with no error message.

It does exactly the same thing for my wife on her computer in her office which is running Windows 10 and Windows Media player.

I have maybe five other computers that I've tried it on and that I've used before successfully and they don't work there either.

Nothing about my process has changed.

Does anyone have an idea or can maybe suggest a simple 19.95 software program that we can buy at Best buy that will allow us just to burn one CD without throwing 20 away???

Thanks if you have any tips. I'm stumped.

(P.S., We are using MP3s exported via Audacity at 320 that work fine in every other environment.)

This may or may not help ... I've had issues where the CD-writer drive and the CD itself appear not be compatible. The write process would appear to work, but the CD after writing wouldn't play. "Stuff" was definitely written to them, because I could see where the data was, but they would not play. I tried a different CD type and then had 100% success. I can't promise that that will necessarily work for anyone else.

David, I use CDBurnerXP with no problems:

https://www.cdburnerxp.se/

It is free. The only time I have had a problem with CDBurnerXP is when I go brain dead and try to burn a CD onto a DVD. Actually it is not a real problem as the program tells me the wrong disk is inserted.

Of course this a assumes that you CD burner is actually working. Maybe it needs cleaning?

FWIW - I also use Audio Converter Plus to change formats:

https://www.abyssmedia.com/audioconverter/

Thanks guys, we will try these 2 ideas

I use Studio One Pro in the Project page to burn my CD's but years ago I have made cd's with windows media player and also Nero burning software.
Burn an audio CD
Open Windows Media Player: ...
In the Player Library, tap or click the Burn tab, tap or click the Burn options button. ...
Insert a blank CD-R disc into your CD burner. ...
If you see the list from your last selection and want to start a new list, tap or click the Clear list button to remove the previous one.

I am not sure if you tried this one or not?

My first reaction, seriously, was that you wanted to ignite it. Glad I read on.

Bud

Ideas in no particular order, particularly after reading the clue that it aborts when ready to write the CD:

Clean the CD drive +1. There are cleaning CDs that have a little brush on the surface and you run a short routine when prompted by the auto-play instructions.

Are you by any chance using blank DVD discs instead of Cd?

I never tried to burn MP3s, only WAV files because the CD red book standard is WAV 16-bit, 44.1K sampling.

Ten years is a long for for changes in OS. Did you check for updated or compatible drivers for your CD burner hardware? Updates to the burning software?

Sunspots? Squirrels chewed some cables?

I have NO idea if this could be the issue but I had something similar at 2 different points.

One time, the type of disc I was using was a CD-RW. Because of it's re-writability it could only be played using a computer. Does your disc play on your computer?

The other time, somehow the disc was being "burned" as a data cd. Again, could be read by a computer by not your average cd player.

Just throwing it all out there. Hopefully one of us gets it figured out. I never like it when technology gets in the way of the listening experience.

Best of luck David

Thanks for the input everyone.

The issued seemed to lie in the issue of .wavs as opposed to mp3s to burn the audio cd.

It has been so long I guess I just forgot.

But I used Windows Media Player again with .wavs and not MP3s as source material and created an audio CD and got no errors and a CD that plays in the old school CD player in the living room.

Who knew!

Thanks for your help!

David, actually some of those old CD players would not play MP3s. I have one of them here!

David, glad to help. I don’t actually know if you can burn MP3s to an audio CD (you can to a data CD) because 1) I wouldn’t and 2) I assumed the software that assembles the files to burn converts (upsamples) to CD quality.

But assuming you used to burn CDs with MP3 files, then perhaps the current failure lies in one of the upgrades I mentioned.

Matt, yes you can burn MP3s onto a CD. I have done it. The catch is you need a CD player that can read MP3s. I have burned a number of CDs with MP3s as my car CD player can play them. I use them when I am in an area were radio reception is poor, like in the mountains. I refuse to pay for XM radio.

I have not done any other tests guys because I don't want to trash another CD but I *THINK* windows media player won't create the proper audio CD file and extension unless you start with a .wav, and that audio CD file format is what you apparently need if you want to play it on everything.

That is what I surmised after my last search, so I tried it and it worked.

I can't remember what I did 10 years ago but I must have used .wavs.

Right. I think we are all dancing around the same facts, just identifying them differently. A CD burned with MP3 files is either a data CD, which some players can read as music and play, or a CD burned to the red book audio standard where the MP3 files were upsampled to CD quality before burning.

Well done. I burnt a few CDs a couple of weeks ago. I used Nero and the express option in it...I had to select AUDIO CD and it converted MP3s to .wav on the fly. I don't normally use MP3s but was making the discs for my mother who's blind at the moment, (cataracts), and the audio books were all MP3 based. It took a few minutes to get my head around the process again...it's used to be THE way of moving music files.
Glad you had success!
Glad the village helped you get there.