CD Changer

I would be surprised if they can read anything else than an original CD.
I use to have an E46 cabrio, year 2000, with cd changer and it was not even possible to read a copy of a CD. Only the original was working...

I am not a specialist but seem to remember there was a protection against copy. Probably the reason why those self burned WAV or AIFF do no work on earlier CD players.

I have the original Business CD from 1997 in my car and I can play self burned CDs.
I am sure, it is just a matter of the right Format (and maybe also the right Medium).
You surely need a proper CD burning program...

Yes, the CD player will play CD copies (WAV files) - but only if they are burned at slow speeds - any higher than 4 x and you will get a Disk Error - even then, they are more prone to skipping

Hi

If you use Itunes (Apple application) you can burn CDs very easly, I can copy like 15/20 songs on one disc.

Cheers.

The CD players and CD changers from the E31 era support only the original CDDA specification (Compact Disc Digital Audio or Red Book but usually called just "Audio CD").

When you have MP3, WAV,... files on your CD you are talking about the CD-ROM specification (Compact Disc Read-Only Memory or Yellow Book). This will not work! Even when the audio format is the same (like a 16-bit stereo 44.1 kHz PCM WAV file) the main problem is that the CD players and CD changers cannot read the ISO9660/Joliet file system. Only CD-ROM drives can read it (note that many modern CD players and CD changers actually use CD-ROM drives in order to be able to play MP3, WAV, FLAC,...).

But do not despair. Most applications that can record CDs can also write CDDA but you probably have to select it explicitly. Your MP3, WAV,... files will be converted on-the-fly to CDDA while recording. Naturally this means you cannot benefit from the compression advantage that formats like MP3 offer. While a CD-ROM can fit over a hundred MP3 files, CDDA only fits 74 minutes of music (80 minutes on a 700 MB CD).

A second issue is that the old CD players and CD changers do not work well with CD-R (CD-Recordable) and even less so with CD-RW (CD-Rewritable). The media is supposed to be fully backward compatible but due to the physical differences with a pressed CD the information is "harder to read" on recordable and rewritable media. Also, over the past 20-30 years the laser lens probably collected dust and the laser diode lost some strength making it even harder. I wouldn't bother with CD-RW - that's unlikely to work, but a quality CD-R recorded at low to medium speed should work fine.

Nifty50: Your problem is most like that you did not select "CDDA" or "Audio CD" in your recording application.

Zitat von Nifty50;148192

I do use iTunes on a Mac desktop

This is probably a screenshot of an older version of iTunes (I don't use it) but it clearly shows an option for CDDA (Audio CD):

(taken from How to Burn a CD Using iTunes)

Zitat

PS, is there any way of erasing a CD-R on a Mac? I have followed the mac forum ideas but never get the option to erase?

CD-R is write-once. It cannot be erased, nor can extra audio tracks be added if you still have time left on the CD after being recorded.