[Mr_Red]

is 20 tracks limit normal, or just for older CD players?

I made an audio CD with 49 tracks, total time less than 1 hour. My limit was 640Mb to make it as universal as poss.

Problem is the one person who the CD was intended for reports that his CD player will not play track numbers above 20.

An odd limit to a hardware/software engineer, especially since 99 is a more natural limit or 31/32 would be logical. Or even 19 but 20????

But my knowledge is how to design systems not how a hundred other designers are constrained by cost etc.

[chrisjr]

CD has a track limit of 99. That is inherent in the spec of the beast. So it has to be a design fault of the player if it can't handle more than 20 tracks.

[Nigel Goodwin]

As chrisjr says, the actual CD spec limits it to 99 tracks (as it's only two digits), but it's certainly possible (indeed quite likely) that older CD players might have a considerably lower limit.

20 three minute tracks would be an hour, so it would have been quite plausible to design for 20 tracks maximum.

I've certainly seen players that wouldn't play all the tracks on some modern commercial CD's, where track numbers have increased.

[2Bdecided]

I had the first UK CD player, and the first CD player with a digital output, and both would happily play 99 track CDs. 99 track CDs are very common in the sound effects / stings / commercial music sphere.

80 minute CDs push various dimensions to the limits of their tolerance in the CD spec to increase on the original 74 minute playing time. Where the music gets near the edge, some older CD players struggle to focus.

Are you sure the person isn't just getting confused by a player that only displays the first 20 tracks (e.g. in a calendar or linear display?) - if you are playing track 20 and you let it play on, there's no mechanism in a regular CD player to stop it going onto track 21. If you're skipping to track 21 directly, it has to be able to read and understand the CD TOC, and very very rarely there are mastering errors in this. The CD TOC is repeated for error resilience, and the greater the number of tracks, the fewer the number of repeats. This can theoretically impact its reading when the disc is damaged or the player is knackered.

Still, who knows what stupid mistakes obscure manufacturers will make?

Cheers,
David.

[soulboy77]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr_Red

...Problem is the one person who the CD was intended for reports that his CD player will not play track numbers above 20...

Has that person actually tried to play a CD with more than 20 tracks?

[chrisjr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2Bdecided

Are you sure the person isn't just getting confused by a player that only displays the first 20 tracks (e.g. in a calendar or linear display?)

Good shout.

I've seen a few players that have a "calendar" like track number display - ie numbers in little boxes in a grid arrangement. They often have 20 or so "boxes" that get "turned off" as each track plays. But I've never known one stop dead at track 20. Just that it might not display any more boxes.

[Peter the Great]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisjr

Good shout.

I've seen a few players that have a "calendar" like track number display - ie numbers in little boxes in a grid arrangement. They often have 20 or so "boxes" that get "turned off" as each track plays. But I've never known one stop dead at track 20. Just that it might not display any more boxes.

My old Aiwa CD player has just that. It would circle the over box when the CD had more than 20 tracks. The CD player was from circa 1994 and certainly at the time there were a few CD's that had over 20 tracks. 1 CD I bought around 1998 by Del Amitri had 98 tracks on the CD. 15 proper tracks with blank tracks until you got to a hidden on track 98. The CD played with no problems at all on the Aiwa and has far as I know from CD spec it is 98 tracks that is the maximum not 99. Mini Discs had a much higher amount which I think was 250 tracks?

[David (2)]

I just about remembering seeing the CD track limit (rather lower than the official 99) way back and found that using the track forward skip button would go over the "limit" (eg, 20).