Using CDR's in a standard head unit or changer will kill the laser very quickly. Only play original cd's or lose the cd player altogether, choice is yours

why does that happen i dont play copies in the car luckily
Put very simply ... a "purchased" CD is "stamped" from a sheet of foil... and the working surface (the rear of the "label") is a mixture of highs and lows... with an actual physical difference existing... albeit very small ......
A "burned" CD (home made) the "foil" has a dye within the surface, when "burned" the dye is heated to change colour and gives the impression to the laser that the surface is at differing heights, so fooling it into giving the same output as the real highs and lows of the stamped disc.
The problem is .. the laser "knows" it needs to change the focus to get the high and low in focus every time .. but the "dyed" disc is all at the same distance .. so the focus mechanism of the laser is working overtime to achieve very little ... it thus wears out much faster....
Perhaps not totally accurate but gives the basic idea hopefuly
Daft question, but surely the laser focus moves the same amount, whether genuine hi/lo's, or fake dyed ones.
Therefore, although it ""achieves very little", I can't see why there would be any difference in the amount of movement & thus wear-out time?
Or am I missing something?
its not the distance the laser travels that causes the problems, its the physical size of the pits and troughs of the data it is looking at on the cd. Audio data is a much larger physical format, when compared to the tiny computer data being written to by a home computer recorded disc. Its the laser struggling to focus on the smaller data that causes premature wear. Think about it, if you have to keep squinting to see something very small, sooner or later your eyesight will be knackered - same principle.
CDR`s and recordable media should not be used on ANY Omega stereo, and MP3 is not a format that any of them support anyway.
And I can confirm that any MP3 stereo will be fully compatable with recordable media, CDR / CDRW - obviosly there will be some performance issues depending on how the media is recorded
