Looks like you may have burnt the CD as data instead of music. Odds are your parents’ Impala doesn’t have an MP3 stereo so you’ll have to burn a music CD. Also, it would be a good idea to try normal silver CDs if you used colored ones. I know it shouldn’t matter, but GM stereos can be finicky about little things like that.

Mom’s got an 03 Impala

Make sure you’re using good quality CD-Rs, too. Many older head units will have trouble with CD-Rs, simply because the reflectivity is quite a bit lower. They’ll have similar issues with CD-RW because not only is the reflectivity lower, the opacity of the dye is lower, too, so the whole signal to noise ratio goes in the toilet.

Anyway, less nerdy: Use good quality CD-R discs, those that appeal bright silver with less visible coloration are best for finicky players. Those with highly visible green or blue discoloration are the worst. Gold based discs are sometimes suitable, again so long as the discoloration from the dye medium is minimal.

And of course, as above make sure you burn as audio. See if the discs you’ve already burned play in some other CD player. In your puterboxen, the tracks definately shouldn’t show up as .AAC, MP3, etc.

Possibilities:

1)You burnt as a data disc as said before. Though even as this, the CD should load up and have a single track, which is either nothing; or a terrible sound, something like a demon crawling out of the pits of hell.

2)You burnt the discs as too high of a speed. Little do most know that burning a CD at 52x, will sometimes NOT work in a player designed at a max of 24X. (Those numbers are just an example of what I’ve seen before>

3)You didn’t finalize the discs after burning them. Even if you made them a music disc, if you didn’t finalize it might not play in anything aside from a computer. I’ve rarely had issues with this, but it has happened.

4)The discs themselves might not have been intended for that use. While there are some CD’s with the label “music discs” there really isn’t a difference, but you never really know.

5)The player itself just might not like you.

6)Possibly one of the tracks is corrupted, this could kill the entire disc, though you said you burnt several….chances are slim to none of this issue, just a possibility. (Sometimes I can’t burn my favorite songs or it’ll kill the disc..really annoying)

7)……well I’m not a big fan of Itunes and instead of ranting about why I hate it and so forth, I’ll put it in short. Buy Nero, use Nero, love Nero; Nero loves you.

Uh, I think I’ve posted a wall of text big enough to rival Berlin…I could go for China, but who’d read that much? I wouldn’t even read, knowing it was my own typing I’d know about my maniacal tendency to rant on just because I like the feel of typing..it’s so fluid…and….erm…End.

Hey,

As far as I know it’s quite common for car CD-players not to support burned CD’s (yah-yah, I think if I was a CD player I also couldn’t read CD’s that had been in the fire… You know what I mean)

most of the comment i read could be right…but i would suggest you check your manual or look on the cd player yourself and see what it can play…if you have a 2005 Impala, then the cd player itself should have most of the modern tech installed already…so that mean…it should be mp3 and wma format capble…if not…then maybe you should just burn it as a normal music cd…btw…don’t use iTune to burn music for car…i don’t know what format it use…but as far as i heard…iTune were meant more for transferring music to iPod or burning music for another mac user…

FEAR ME…FOR I AM A MAC HATER…DOWN WITH ITUNE AND IPOD…

Our Impala got totaled while I was driving it (Not my fault) but it wouldn’t run burned cd’s unless tehy were on the really high quality discs.

I have a 2005 Impala SS that will play anything I throw at it, as long as it’s burned as a music CD and not a data CD. I always burn from either iTunes or Toast.

The big thing to check on is the CD error message and look up what it means, I know in some Car CD players I believe error 11 is bad media, so in that case try another CD, and try a professionally made CD to see if the CD Player itself is messed up. Its all I can suggest.

Try Music CD-Rs. While this shouldn’t be a problem on must new CD players, there is some information that is present on Music CD-Rs(from production) that isn’t present on regular CD-Rs that some CD players look for before even touching the data that is written on the CD.

Some cd players wont even recognise copied discs even if theyre burnt 100% correct,
Something to do with the ink they use and the laser in the cd playe means that it cant read the information correctly on a burnt cd,
The best suggestion i can give is to try some really good quality discs…. or check if his stereo has a audio input, then you can do Angus’s solution and plug an ipod into it (he would need an ipod though)

Ok… Check this out.

IGNORE EVERY COMMENT HERE…except for THIS one:

Syntax / June 18th, 2007, 8:55 pm / #

This dude had his stuff together. Everyone else here appears to just want to treat you like you’re some kind of idiot. (OF COURSE YOU BURNED AN AUDIO DISC AND NOT A DATA DISC…) Seriously.

I would type out more specific answers…however the commentary left by Syntax in the entry that I’m citing is pretty much what I would be telling you.

I would first settle on the theory that your burning speeds are too high. Burn the disc at between 8-16X and you should get better results. I often have to scale down the burning speeds on discs when I make discs to install operating systems such as Windows or Linux. I get solid, consistent and PROVABLE results. Otherwise the discs tend to have a much higher chance at having read errors during the installation process. The same (once in a while) goes for music discs. (Depends on what they’re being played in. Stock car stereos or older CD players of any kind tend to reject CD-R’s. Especially high-speed burned CD-R’s.)

Also try switching your media. You’re on the right track with that. I recommend TDK or Philips media. (Used to be a fan of Memorex…until my Memorex burner proved to have issues with their own media! Particularly their DVD-R’s. Go figure on THAT…) Maxell has proven to be worthy enough in the past.

The other possibility is the software. Not sure what’s out there for Mac these days… But try different softwares for burning.

That’s about it.

Just a few notes:

1) There IS a difference between “music” (aka “General Purpose”) and “data” CD-Rs – the CD-R header! And some decks won’t play “data” CD-Rs with music on them (Denon comes to mind, although I think they’ve fixed that) as part of the anti-piracy trend. See, there’s a performance tax (in the USA) on music CDs (in Canada, on ALL CDs … not sure about other countries) which lines the RIAA’s pockets – err, supposedly, goes into a slush fund and is paid to performers. Email for references (and the exact header info), or a quick Google can turn it up.

2) ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS burn music CDs at the lowest speed you can. Here, it’s more of making sure the distinction between a pit and a land is as sharp and square as possible – it takes a few microseconds for the laser to turn on, and at max speed, this can result in a transistion that isn’t straight up and down, but is instead sloped (think of a square tunnel vis a drainage ditch).

3) ALWAY, ALWAYS, ALWAYS burn as an Audio CD (not the same as USING an Audio CD-R!) Again, the notes on a data CD vis an audio CD are worth while.

4) Not all players will handle CD-Rs since the variance between a “1″ and a “0″ is about 1/2 to 1/3 the variance of a pressed CD. However, a 2005 Impala should have no problem (my 2000 Malibu, albeit with a 2001 radio in-dash, doesn’t, although it’s more prone to skip on a burn vis a press.)

5) When all else fails – get them an iPod and an FM transmitter for it, and screw the CDs, listen to that 60G HD instead! B)

RwP