OEM CD Player Q:
 

Hope you guys can help brainstorm: I have a 2002 with the stock AM-FM CD (single disc) player. I burn my own CD-R's on my home stereo with a TDK disc-to-disc recorder, mostly so I can make my own "greatest hit" stuff and not have 30 CD's in the car for 11 songs I like. Other than the burned discs occasionally getting stuck, I've had no troubles till now. I recently bought a new box of CD-R's and it's a different brand than I was using. Now any new discs I burn sound static filled, especially the high-end (cymbal crashes, etc.) and loud passages, but ONLY in the car. They play fine on the TDK. Also it's random, some tracks are unlistenable, some are fine, and if I burn a new one, the same songs that were fine on the first try are now static filled, and some that were static filled are now fine. Is it my Mazda deck, my new choice of blank discs, my TDK recorder, or any and all of the above?

All. The deck is not very sensitive so the laser will have trouble reading the burnt discs.
The TDk recorder is also a problem becuase its not burning deep enough on the disc to be easily readable, this can be fixed by burning at a lower speed.
You choice of meda is pretty importnat you cannot cheap out. Then again some cd players have there own preferences as to what they can read easily.

Thanks for the info, my first step will be to try better quality CD-R's, as I never had a problem with the previous brand. I tried to play the new ones in my kid's laptop and it had trouble playing them too, so I think it's a matter of cheesy quality discs. Out of curiousity, does the Mazda deck play CD-RW's?

Problem solved! Don't skimp on your blank CD purchases. I got some Brand-Name CD-R discs (Maxell, TDK, etc.) and all is fine.

If it's true CD-->CD have you tried reducing the gain? It's possible you are trying to record with too high of gain and it's peaking. That could be part of it as well.