[Zoom]

I'm trying to rip some audiobooks for an upcoming roadtrip, put them on my iPod for listening, but my iMac is having a lot of trouble reading them. My MacBook Pro reads them fine.

I have a fairly recent iMac, and it can read DVDs just fine. For some reason it's just these audiobook CDs. My success rate is about 1 in 10.

Any ideas?

[reader50]

Are the CDs originally burned media, as opposed to factory pressings? Is the Macbook in question a few years old?

As optical drives age, they start having trouble with burned media, which has lower contrast than the pits on a factory disc. Eventually they have trouble with all discs.

[Zoom]

Factory disks, not burned. And the older machine reads them fine, it's the new one that doesn't.

[ghporter]

A multi-format drive has different lasers for different disc formats. If you're not able to read any CDs but DVDs still work fine, the read/write laser for CDs could be faulty. Get with your local Apple Store for a Genius visit; they should be able to diagnose and maybe even repair the problem (replacing the drive) right there.

[Zoom]

Yeah, good point. Of course my iMac is now 4 months past the 1 year mark (ie, out of warranty).

[ghporter]

They may fix it anyway, since this isn't something that can be done "on your own" on an iMac.