cds from my friends work
That suggests to me that it has to be a problem with the way you are burning your discs.
If it was because of the deck, your friend's discs would probably have the same problem as the ones you burn, but you just mentioned that they work fine.
If you really want to use discs.... what I would do now is.... I would see what program and burner your friends are using and compare it to what you are using. Also compare the burner settings and firmware.
Btw, how old is your burner (also brand/model)...?
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imho, I wouldn't even bother burning discs anymore. Reason being.... a disc only has 700mb of space, and you'd be limited to around 60-120 tracks depending on the track's length and bitrate. You would be much better off just using a thumb drive or hard drive. Some reasons...way more space, easier to edit/add/delete tracks, and less likely to get damaged by handling it when compared to a disc. It's also a lot easier to carry around a couple of thumb drives in your pocket than a couple of cd(r's).)
