I recently bought an RCA MP3/CD Player (model RP2621), but am having trouble creating disks. I burnt one and it worked successfully, although sometimes while pressing pause or fast forward, the player abruptly shut off. Now, the player does not play this disk at all, and I have made other unsuccessful attempts to make disks. I am guessing that the player is faulty, but it could be that I made the disks improperly. The documentation included with the player does not say how to make the disks. The MP3 disks do work in my DVD player.

Here is how I created a disk:
1. I put all of the 64kbps mp3 files into a directory.
2. I loaded this directory into XMMS.
3. I created a file called playlist.m3u.
4. I edited the playlist.m3u file to remove the directory names.
5. I loaded the playlist in XMMS to test that it worked.
6. I ran K3b.
7. I chose New Data CD Project.
8. I inserted a Maxell CD-R into the CD-Writer.
9. I drag-and-dropped all of the files to the disk.
10. I gave the volume a name.
11. I clicked the Open the Burning Dialog button.
12. I set the speed to 4x, the write mode to auto, and turned off Write on the Fly.
13. I am not sure what charset was used, but it might be ISO9660. I do not know if this matters.
14. I turned off the screensaver, so that it would not interfere with the burn.
15. I selected Burn.
16. The write performed successfully and checks fine in Nautilus.

I put the disk in my MP3/CD Player, but it did not play. It just says "Reading" and then turns itself off. The hold feature is not on. I have tried audio with a 160kbps bitrate and have I also tried with a SONY CD-R brand of disk, but no luck. Any ideas of what I did wrong or is it likely a defective product?

Did you install the mad? if you don't have the mp3 libs properly installed, you will not be able to burn the discs. Do a little search around here if you don't know what mad is or where to get it.

I burnt the MP3 CD as a data disk, not an audio CD. Does mad have anything to do with these disks?

Try using a different medium. Maybe your MP3/CD player doesn't like the Maxell Disks (or Sony, although that's a lot of bad luck)

If the MP3/CD player 'saw' the disk it should be OK. I had a player that didn't see my disks if I did not enable both Joliet and Rockridge

A good precaution, but it shouldn't be necessary, especially if you have DMA enabled.

How did you burn the previous disk that worked?

My understanding is that your RCA player could at first successfully play your mp3 tracks, though inconsistently, but then stopped working at all. Furthermore you have tried 2 brands of CDs using the same procedure that initially worked. If this is correct, the problem is probably the RCA player.

I don't use Nautilus. I do use K3b, and the defaults work fine for me. That is, mp3 tracks that I burn using K3b defaults can be played on two mp3 CD players (Panasonic & Sony).

I can't recall whether I needed mad installed for mp3 discs as data or not, probably not, but you can burn mp3 audio as MP3 CDs(not as in mp3s burned as audio disc, but a seperate, 3rd type of CD) with Nero on Windows XP, so it is my understanding there are 2 types of mp3 CDs. Actual MP3 CDs, and data cds holding mp3s. Assuming I have that situation sorted right, it would mean you are burning a data disc with mp3s and maybe your player cannot handle anything but an MP3 CD. Also assuming there is an MP3 CD type, it might mean you need mad to burn it right. Not having burned many CDs as MP3 CD or data with mp3, I don't know for sure about any of the above.

You could always try other programs, rather than k3b for truoble shooting. Download the nero trial for instance, which uses a fully different set of depencies so you will have a really good trial point. Or there are other programs to try including burn...something program I see people talking about a lot here on LQ.