Customer Reviews

Maxell CD-AUTO Automobile CD Lens Cleaner

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

These brush cleaner CD's do work, believe it or not. Perhaps not quite the same as having your system professionally serviced, but why waste more money than you may have to. This is a worthy investment to look into first - because these do work most of the time (and it's always a good idea to have one for continued preventative maintenance anyway). If you're getting play errors or severe skipping of your CD's, you might be amazed at how much one of these can help.

But here's a few tips for those of you making audio CD's on their home computers and having trouble playing them on some machines... It may not be a defective or dirty player at all.

First, it may be best to turn off any other programs you may have running in the background. This will give your CD burner full resources to do its burning job. Also, make sure your screensaver is turned off. If it starts up in the middle of a job, the laser burn may be interrupted and cause errors. So shut down all other programs and the screensaver too.

Second, it may do you well to defrag your hard drive before starting a burn. If you have a pretty fast PC, this may not be a big problem, but it may adversely affect the read data process if your computer has to search all over the hard drive to find pieces of the media files before burning them on the disk. I personally have an auto defrag program installed on my computer that runs constantly keeping my system running at its optimum.

Third, I recommend NOT copying CD's "on the fly" (in other words, directly from disk to disk). Copy the audio files to your hard drive first. Most CD burning software have a "create image" option - use that and then burn the image to a blank CD. If your using Nero, just turn off the "on the fly" option and the music files will copy to the hard disk first and then to the CD automatically. By-the-way, you may want to read my review on Amazon about Nero. It is, in my opinion, the best burning software available! Since I started using Nero, I do not know the meaning of the word "coaster" or "frisbee."

Fourth, ALWAYS burn CD's in DAO mode (Disc At Once). This will insure there is no gap between songs(TAO - Track At Once - usually leaves a 2 second gap between songs and causes the laser to have to stop burning momentarily between songs), but more importantly, using DAO will insure that the laser continues to burn constantly throughout the whole CD copying process.

Finally, and most importantly (in my opinion), make sure you don't burn CD's at anything faster than 12x! In fact, if you're playing CD's on an older system, burn the CD at 8x or even slower. If you still have trouble, take the speed all the way down to 1 or 2x. It can make a big difference. Yes, I know it means you won't be using the full potential of your zippy 52x burner, but you just have to figure out what is more important - fast burning or being able to actually listen to what your burning?

Most newer CD players have very little or no problem at all playing CD's burned on a computer at the highest speed; however, this is not often the case with much older units. As a general rule it is always better to burn audio disks slower.

You may also want to make sure you're using Audio CD certified media. That may help a little bit too. The brand of media may be a factor also. Sometimes the cheaper CD's may have a higher failure rate. I've heard this from some people. Personally, I have not had too much trouble with cheaper CD's... Usually, if the steps I have already mentioned are followed, cheap media will work fine. That has been my experience anyway. But different burners may be a factor as well and you may want to try some different brands of media until you find one that seems to work best for you. Using quality name brand media is probably a safe bet and may be your best course of action.

Good luck! :)

I bought a used '96 Dodge Caravan and the factory installed radio/CD/cassette player stopped playing CDs about a year ago. It would give me an "error" message on the track listing screen whenever I put one in. Anyway, I was shopping for a low-cost replacement car stereo on line when I saw this automotive CD lens cleaner from Maxell. I couldn't find a review of it anywhere on the web so wasn't sure if it was any good or just a waste of money.

Well, it worked for me. I put it in the car player and now the unit plays CDs. There are four sets of three little brushes on the bottom of the cleaning disk that apparently did the trick.

The reason I am giving it 4 stars instead of 5 is because the unit still will not play CDs burned on my home computer. Actually, I don't know if it ever did - maybe it was made before CD burners were really popular. However, these same home-recorded CDs play fine in my home audio system and in my other car's stereo.

No guarantees that this cleaner will work for you but at least you have my experiences to consider in deciding whether to give it a try or not. Good luck.

I have both a '97 Chevrolet(GM) pickup and a '98 Jeep(Chrysler Corp.) and specifically purchased the unit to clean the laser lens in the Jeep. IT WILL NOT OPERATE IN THE CHRYSLER CORPORATION CD PLAYER as it immediately displays an "ERROR" message and ejects the MAXELL lens cleaner disk.

It DOES function in the GM player, however. I have noticed that the Chrysler CD player is 'finiky' about playing some CD disks that always play on the GM unit. It is obvious that my GM unit is superior to my Chrysler unit, but the fact remains... THE MAXELL DISK WILL NOT FUNCTION in my '98 Jeep's CD player!

This product worked as advertised. I have a 7yr old Honda CD player that was not playing any CD; it only displayed Error 00. I followed the directions, put the disc in, ran the cleaning cycle for 20 seconds, and my CD player was back to normal.

My cd player in the car was skipping. I figured I needed a new unit, my car is 9 years old. I just tried this before I spent alot of money. I can't believe it worked! I put in through about 3 times and no more skipping! It really works :)

It is ok... my cd's dont skip as often now..... but they still skip.

I have a 2005 Matrix with a cd player that was always skipping. Even a brand new cd just out of the box would skip. I was about ready to purchase a whole new cd player, when someone suggested cleaning the lens. I bought this and tried it the day I got it, and I have to say I am so impressed. It was so simple to use and my cd player is playing like new. I haven't had any skipping!! I would recommend this to anyone who is getting tired of their cd playing always skipping to give this a try, it worked for me, and is a lot cheaper then a new cd system.

Well, before I bought this disc, I noticed some one star comments. Unfortunately, it happened to me as well. There's no different before and after using this cleaning disc. I can play a few discs, but the auto cd-player can not read this disc. It's a sad experience.

After the first use I noticed a lot of dirt on the brushes that it took off of the cd lens, it was really dirty.

I was looking forward to receiving this cleaner and finally having my CD player back. The disk would not play in my Firebird 2001 factory original Monsoon CD player. It immediately ejected. The error code was E20 and a CD cleaner was suggested as a possible solution in the manual. Just be sure and look over other reviews for this item to see if your vehicle has a history of disk acceptance.