My CD Player is quite old and I was wondering if anyone can tell me why it will play a CD for a little while and then just suddenly stop playing it and the disk will spin round a few times seemingly not able to read the disk successfully enough to play it. The CD player also stops sometimes if there are small vibrations such as walking about in the room. Why does it do this as it is so frustrating if you are trying to listen to a CD.

because cd palyers have shit parts in them that wearout, sounds lik your lazer is F*&^ed. do yourself a favor and buy a MP3.

Not neccessarily killersnowman. You'll probably be noticing that older CD's will still play quite well, but newer CD's will be a lot more dodgy. This is because the method for writing CD's has changed dramatically since CD's were first introduced, and because of this, older CD players are very tempermental to what's played inside them. Usually they'll self implode just thinking about playing a burnt CD.

Scratches, or foreign substances on the CD surface will also add to the 'unplayability' of CD's, once again especially in the older players. Dont buy any of the so called scrathc repair/disc cleaner kits- they're useless. Run a CD under warm to hot water and dry gently, and you may very well find that a once unplayable CD now plays.

And with the vibrations, older CD players did not compensate for any shocks disrupting the normal rotation of the CD, and because the players nead a constant stream of data to play, any indescrepancies in the set rotation will result in skips. Newer CD players compensate for this by ensuring the CD is held in the most secure way possible (with clamps, suction, glue, heh, whatever), and most incoporate a buffer function, so the constant stream of data is harder to disrupt.

My CD player is a Hinari 6 Dsk with a CD player and two tapes decks. It also has a radio. I don't think it really has anything to do with the actual CDs themselves as I keep them clean. Even a newly bought CD put into the player now usually doesn't play first time. Do you think it has a problem reading the disk? The digital red display stopped working last year so now you can't even know what track it is on or the length of a particular track from the machine itself. Do you have any idea what age it would be? It was bought for me in a lot at an auction five years ago and really hasn't got much abuse. The digital display had parts of the digits missing when I got it but I think it may have played better at a time.

as frogi said, the new cd's probably wont play because of the way cd's are written today compared to twenty years ago.
it sounds like your player is not suffering abuse, just old age!

You can pick up a newer CD player for under $100 quite easily. Depending on what inputs your stereo has, you may be able to run your newer CD player through your old stereo's speakers.

my cd player just won't read some of the cd's. it's no difference between older cds and newer cds, as it is able to play the two new cds i just bought.
i will put the cd in and it will sometimes just spin around and not read it. eventually, it will stop but it won't be able to play (E for Error comes up on the screen).
If it is able to play when i put it in, i can press play and sometimes it will just keep spinning and not play anything, or it will skip the first track and skip parts of the rest of the cd. it's a shitty old player, i tell you!

well, the problem you described is similar to my little cd player(2 year old). and I came to realize that the problem is that when the cd player doesn't have enough juice in the batteries, it would not recognize any CDs/CDRs and give me E for Error. so as soon as I replace it with new battaries or use the wall outlet, it would work fine.

and my other 14 year old CD player just won't play some of the CDRs I burnt from my CD recorder or from a computer. it may play them but would skip the first 2 mins of every song...

Aahhh, fair enough, but my CD player is plugged in to a power-point, so I don't have that explanation for my CD player! lol

what CDs are they, barely legal?

I have heard stories about newer CDs not compatible with certain CD players/computers because of the softwares on the CDs to prevent consumers from making digital copies. if that's the case, you may be able to get refund of them or something.