I've had great success in the past ripping and burning to and from my music library for playback in the cars, until recently.
When it was working, I was using WMP11 (Windows Media Player version 11) lossless. All files were in mp3 (several meg per song), all located in "My Documents" in the PC's harddrive, and would always rip/burn at the slowest settings.
Worked fantastic.
Then, I introduce EAC, FLAC, and Slimserver to the mix. Also, the music is now stored on a remote USB harddrive, no longer "in" the PC. No real problems on this end but I can no longer make CD-R's that will play in the car. Both of my cars radios display an error message when I insert a burn CD-R. I can insert the disc back in my PC and the music plays just fine, and track tags are intact (obviously unnecessary for use in the car).
I check the settings on WMP11 and nothing seems to have chaged for rip and burn settings.
When I go to Windows Explorer and check the vitals of the burnt CD-R, the first odd thing I find is that they are now "Musicmatch" files. I've never used MusicMatch, always WMP. So 'somebody' changed a default there. The next odd thing I notice is that the file size is a couple dozen bytes, not several meg like it should be. Being a couple dozen bytes, this sounds to me like the CD-R contains tagging information and directory locations for the track, not the actual track. So when I'm replaying the disc on my PC it's actually playing from the harddrive, not the disc. Right?
Also, in "proporties" of the disc, it is labeled "Audio CD" as opposed to "Data CD".
Now, when I want to burn a copy of a CD, I have to rip it to WMP, then burn it to the CD-R. Should I not worry about what's going on here, and learn how to "translate" FLAC into something that will play in the car and never use WMP again?
Any ideas, or thoughts?
Bob
