Cambridge Audio CD4 SE- Upgrade ? CD-R Errors ?

If your CD4-SE had the IEC power cord socket, then try a better power cord first. An $80 Blue Circle BC61 would be a good choice. Even a fatter standard 14-3/14awg cord from the hardware/electrical store would be better.

What kind of music code are you putting of the CDR's?

The burned disks consist of jazz and rock- legally downloaded, I might add, from emusic.com. Any other suggestions ?

Weird, usually cd players do better with slower burn speeds (more burn time spent on each pit). I would first try a friend's burner then go buy a bunch of different cdr brands (mainly try different colors including 'black') and see if your player has a preference. I had a DVD player that would not read blue/green disks. Also make sure you are burning 'audio' discs and not 'data' discs with wav files, that would do the error message thing. You could try a software cd-rom in the cd4 and see if you get the same message.

If I were you I and on a budget, I would add a sub first then maybe go for a Halo amp down the road.

Cheers

Thank you for that suggestion; I have been wondering about cd media quality- are there any brands or types- or even colors- that are generally accepted as offering better sound quality - in comparison to the bulk that you can buy for pennies (or even less) per disk ??

It really depends on your player which will work best for you. It is my understanding that while there are many brands of cdr's there are only a few different plants that make the blanks, so one set of bulk disks could be the same as a branded jewel case type. I read an article that mentioned that the 'Black' type is easy to read for many players, but haven't tried them as they really do cost more and I have plenty of cheapos that work fine. I wouldn't worry about brand, but buy a few 3 packs of different dye colors and see what happens.

More info than you may want:
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_dye.shtml