Kenwood DDX512 DVD question

[IIGood]

I just picked up a Kenwood DDX512 and now it's in and functional. Very nice unit so far; just put it in Saturday night and have started to spend some time tweaking things, getting used to it, etc.

My question lies within the DVD reading. It reads movie DVDs fine...but it has a hard time reading DVDs that I burn MP3s to. If I just select the MP3 folders that I want, and click "Burn to disc" the head unit doesn't read them.

I also tried burning a DVD full of MP3s from within Windows Media Player, and it actually read that burn...sort of. The head unit started hanging up on this one song and it would reboot itself. But the folder structure in this method isn't right.

Anybody have any advice on what to do to burn a functional DVD?

Click to read more...

 

[HmoobVaj 10+ year member]

You need to burn it in ISO file format. Use a 3rd party program to do this (Nero...ect). The way you're doing it it's probably burning it in UDF which isn't widely supported.

 

[IIGood]

Interesting. I'll give that a shot.

 

[IIGood]

Okay, so I attempted this last night...created a bunch of foldered MP3s to an ISO, then burned the ISO to DVD. Still no luck. The player just sits there "Reading..." How aggravating. I'll try different media next, maybe the discs I'm using have too dark of a surface (but that wouldn't explain why the one disc did partly play).

I also noticed this morning that it takes an unusually long time for the head unit to read a commercial CD...about a minute before it'll start playing it. Very odd.

 

[lashlee 10+ year member]

I've got a 6019, and I use nero 6 and click on burn mp3 dvd. Drop and drag and works great. Same with my w205.

 

[IIGood]

Further issues ensue. I've contacted Kenwood and they're of little help, as it's too new of a unit for them to know anything about it.

I haven't revisited the DVD issue quite yet. Now my concern lies with some MP3s on flash drives.

When the head unit was first installed, my friend got his 8 GB SanDisk flash drive and put some MP3s on it. We used it to test playback. It worked.

The other day, I went out and purchased the same flash drive and loaded it up with MP3s. It didn't work. I received the error message of "No Media Files." Nothing else but MP3s were on this drive.

So I dropped a bunch of MP3s onto my 4 GB SanDisk flash drive. They worked...mostly. Certain songs would cause the head unit to reboot though. For this, I suspected a bad rip of the files. So I deleted the files from the flash drive, deleted the files from my hard drive, and re-ripped the CDs to MP3. Then I loaded them back on to the flash drive and they STILL DON'T WORK.

I really don't think it's a case of what bitrate it is, as ALL of my MP3s get ripped in the same bitrate (I rip to 192, and I have some other MP3s that I downloaded with a variable bitrate). DRM/protected shouldn't be an issue...the crashing files are from older CDs (pre-DRM days) and even some newer CDs. So there's no consistency there.

If anybody has any ideas, it's appreciated...but I just mainly want to give others a heads-up on this. If you're thinking of purchasing this unit, wait.

 

[lashlee 10+ year member]

It sounds to me that it might be the mp3 stuff that you have. I would get your friends flash drive and see what happens. If his works, and yours dosen't, it may be a computer issue, not a kenwood. I would take your drive to the shop you got it from and use one of their displays to see if you have the same problems.

 

[IIGood]

I feel defeated.

I just tried re-re-re-re-ripping one of the offending CDs:

-On another computer, with another OS

-In a different bitrate on the other computer

-Back on my computer in different bitrates

When I lowered the bitrate to 128 there was hope...the first song off the album played. But all subsequent songs crashed the head unit. And then after the crash, going back to the first song crashed the head unit.

*SIGH*

Maybe Kenwood just doesn't like early Deftones, 311, Third Eye Blind, Linkin Park...

I think I'm gonna try to swap units. Same model, just another head unit. Maybe this is one of the "bad" ones.

 

[IIGood]

...I think it might be a rip issue. I tried another program earlier to rip CDs to MP3s, and now the songs that didn't work on the head unit are working.

 

[davedude 10+ year member]

No your problem is the Kenwood Firmware. They just released a new firmware to fix those issues:

http://www.kenwood.com/cs/ce/mm/firmware/2008/eng.html

 

[qteter]

hey just wondering.. where did you have yours installed? and do you need to buy any extra wiring?