Actually, the warning for the paper label has more to do with CD's getting jammed in the unit. This is especially true with 6-Disc In-Dash CD changers (Clarion IX-6) which has very tight internal tolerances within the stacking and ejecting mechanisms. The "throwing off the balance of the disc" theory is interesting, but is not the reason for the warning.

The units in the Z-car were not DESIGNED to handle CD-R's, but they do play most of them if they were burned well on good media. Since the Owner's Manual states on page 4-8...

The following CDs may not work properly:

Copy control compact discs (CCCD)
Recordable compact discs (CD-R)
Rewritable compact discs (CD-RW)

...the inability to play a CD-R would not be a warrantable item because there is no way Nissan/Clarion can predict how crappy a particular customer's CD-Rs might be.

 

Too bad Nissan could not spend another $3 and have the vendor spec a CD player to play CDR's. I am thinking of putting in a new head unit (Eclipse) anyways but it just seems that a lot of people play CDR's and they would have designed a unit to play them.

 

It might just be the labels. I burned another copy of a CDR that had a label that would skip after the 4th or 5th song. the new copy w/o label plays fine. I don't know why the labels would screw them up, but apparently they do. No labels from now on. Could just be a crappy player though, I never had this problem with my last Alpine deck.

 

Interesting you mention it being the 4th or 5th song. It seems like my CD's tend to skip more towards the middle of the CD.