When I burn an audio CD in the TDK device in my PC, using Roxio Creator, the resulting disc does not play on a number of CD players around the house. It will play on my Sony RCD-W1 audio CD recorder. An audio CD burned on the Sony plays on all the other CD players around the house. However, if I take an audio CD that was burned in the PC and put it in the Sony to make a copy, that copy will likewise not play on many other CD players. By the way, all players tested will play pre-recorded CD's from the record store just fine, and I'm using standard 74 minute blanks.

It seems to me that there is some kind of a formatting issue among older and newer CD players and burners. How can I make (on my PC) an audio CD that will have the best chance of playing on all existing players?

The TDK burner in my PC works great with .mp3 and Sony's ATRACS formats, but I'm seriously considering skipping it altogether and purchasing a USB-to-Toslink cable to transfer digital audio from the PC directly to the Sony CD recorder. But I'm not absolutely sure that even this method is foolproof.

Why am I concerned about this? Friends want me to transfer vinyl LP's to audio CD's, and most of them aren't into .mp3 and such. They just want plain old audio CD's. I'd like to help them out, but I don't want to spend a bunch of time and then hand them a disc that doesn't play in their equipment.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

• The CD-ROM Family Tree

I'm wondering how those Internet businesses that take your old vinyl and tapes and restore the audio to CD's get around this problem...or maybe they don't.
Peace,
Mike