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[Severian]

Just a sort-of FYI for those of you who may be contemplating doing this...to wit, buying a head unit that's MP3 capable and then using MJ as the manager and the feeder of it.

I've got a Kenwood KDC-X859. My intention when I bought it was that I'd be able to just have a few CD-RWs around and recycle them the way I used to recycle cassette tapes (just way cooler), making mixes and then reburning them at will.

This does happen...sort of. What I've found is that if I burn a fresh CD-RW for the first time, with MJ (and I would guess with anything else), when the CD gets put in the Kenwood, it's good. Also, any and all regular CD-Rs I've burned in MJ are perfectly good as well.

However, and this is what I'm writing to give y'all a heads-up about, when I rewrite that CD and bring it out to the car the second time, life isn't nearly so good.

Although other CD-ROM drives read the same disc no problem, clearly the laser in the Kenwood has a much tougher time with it. If I 'erased' the disc inside of MJ before I rewrote it, OR I erased it in Nero by doing what Nero calls a 'quick format', then more often than not the Kenwood won't read it at all.

If I go to Nero and do a 'Full' format, which takes about 8 minutes, and then rewrite it in MJ, the Kenwood will read it, but barely--there will be looooong pauses between reads, some songs won't read at all, other songs it will just die on while right in the middle. Kind of a bummer.

Doesn't really bum me out too much though. If need be I'll just use CD-Rs only. With, on average, 120 songs on a disc, it's not like I'm blowing through discs one a day or anything.

If any of you fine ladies and gentlemen have any suggestions related to this, such as a piece of software that might do a more competent erasure, or a brand of CD-RW that might possibly make the Kenwood happier, I'm all ears. But I thought this was an interesting enough experience to warn others about...if you had plans to use MJ and a car stereo in this way.

[DeathRider]

I baught the Aiwa MP3 player last year and have not had any problems like yours. Sounds like the one you have is a bit to touchy. or maybe the brand of cd could be an issue.

[Alonso Nefarious]

Severian:  I don't have any answers for you, but the R3mix Forums http://66.96.216.160/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl are a place where you are likely to get some.  

There are some good, knowledgeable folks there.  Check out the "CD-R Media Forum".  The search function is good.

[Severian]

Alonso: Great tip. I went there, I read, I profited. I think I'm gonna try some other brands based on what I read. It seems probable that crappy disc brand could be responsible for some poor performance in the car stereo, according to some posts I looked at.