iMac burns CD but it won't play in HiFi CD player

When you insert an audio CD in a Mac the Finder shows the tracks as AIFF files, but this is actually an illusion. The disc is really in a quite different format. It should show on the Desktop as 'Audio CD' and if you do a 'get info' on the disc it looks like this:

If it's a data disk it will look like this:

If you are getting the latter result then it's not burning an audio CD, whatever it says it's going to do. If you are getting previous result then it's an audio CD but plainly there is something wrong with it, such as the Table of Contents not being burned properly.

In either case I suspect you are going to have to take it to an Apple Store or a service centre for investigation, though if you have the energy you could try a reinstallation of your System.

Since writing the above I've seen your image. Try setting the gap between songs to 2 seconds - this is only a guess, but the gap before the first song must be 2 seconds to be compliant with the CD specification: I don't know whether that cap is correctly maintained in your case, nor whether if it is five seconds there would be a problem, but it's something to try.

Boot into Safe Mode (Use Safe Mode to isoloate issues with your Mac) and try burning from there and check to see if it can be recognized and played. Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing. 

Let the music be with you.

Create standard Audio-CD discs with ease. Just drop your audio files in Burns audio list. Want more music on your disc, Burn can create MP3 discs. More and more players support these discs. Higher quality, no problem, Burn can create DVD-Audio discs, which can contain more and higher quality files.

https://burn-osx.sourceforge.io/Pages/English/home.html

AIFF is not an audio CD - you are burning a data CD. You must specify an audio CD - this screenshot is from Mavericks and 10.13 may be different.

You say the Mac reports the disc as blank. If you try to burn someething again will it allow it? And if you look at the disk surface carefully you can see the area which has been burned (it starts at the inside) so you can check whether a burn has actually taken place.

georgefromsouthampton wrote:

The hifi player is CD's only.

Many thanks for your observations and suggestions. Perhaps my machine is nearing 'retirement'!

Yes, sorry I meant CDs not DVDs. Most recent CD players should play recorded CDs but older ones - say more than ten years - are likely to have difficulty as the reflectivity is lower than the commercial pressed ones. But did you player previously play the recordable ones? Can you try one of your CDs on another, recent player? But even so, if the Mac is having trouble reading the disk on re-loading then somthing odd is going on.

You appear to have burned an audio CD (the AIFF-C business is an iillusion, that's the Finder being clever, it's not what's on the disk).

Were you previously able to play recorded DVDs on your hi-fi player? - older models often won't play recorded DVDs. If so, then I'm afraid I'm out of ideas. If you can take it to an Apple Store 'Genius' or an service centre that may well have to be the next step.