12" vs. CD....the saga continues...

[StuckIn1979]

Does anyone know if CD's wear out if they are played alot? I think one advantage of CD's is that people assume as long as you don't use them for frisbe's and they are properly taken care of they can be played indefinetly, over and over....is this true?

[BrunoRepublic]

I have only met one individual who claimed that CDs wore out and that he could hear the difference... but I would also argue that he was insane.



Having said that, there are certain types of CDs which are vunerable to rust. Some of the early 80s CDs, and in particular, UK discs made by PDO during the late 80s/early 90s, are known to be susceptible to this. If you have any of these, back them up!



Recently a fungus was discovered in Central America that eats away at the aluminum layer of the disc. However, it's pretty rare, and it's only a concern for people who live in tropical climates.



By far the greatest threat to a CD is to get a nasty gouge on the top side of the disc that damages the TOC. If your CD player can't read the TOC, the disc is toast.

[Rab]

I swear I have CD's that do not sound as well as when they were new? Or maybe I'm hearing things?

[QUINNY]

Hey, let's get this into perspective.
A vinyl disc gets worse with every play, as even the best tonearm/stylus combination is going to wear away a little of the disc, especially if there's (invariably) some dust in the grooves to help grind things up. Each minute scratch is going to have some sort of detrimental effect.
The only advantage with analogue sound carriers is that, within reason, they will still play no matter what condition they are in. It may sound awful, but it will play. Once digital 'goes' it's lost forever, otherwise it will sound the same from day one to that finality.
CD-Rs are another matter all together. Personally, I'd have CD-Rs banned. They cause more trouble than they are worth. When they invented them, they should have added in a large 'idiot factor' and definitely made them a caddy based medium (as many of the early recorders were). I have CD-Rs that I recorded onto top quality media only 3 or 4 years ago that won't play now. GGGGGRRRRRRRRR!!

[K-Bee]

I totally agree with your views on CD-R's, Quinny.
They can indeeed be a thing of evil. When I started making them about two years ago, everything was fine - I could play everything on my CD player.

That is definetely not the case today. It seems that CD-R's screwed up my player so now they're the only ones that work!! 8 out 10 original cd's are rejected buy my player and the laser jumps all over the place most of the time. it is especially when playing the more recent cd's (1998-)that everything goes wrong.
I've heard rumours that the coating being used today is a lot worse than it used to be due to low production costs. Can anyone confirm that??

[StuckIn1979]

CD-Rs are another matter all together. Personally, I'd have CD-Rs banned. They cause more trouble than they are worth. When they invented them, they should have added in a large 'idiot factor' and definitely made them a caddy based medium (as many of the early recorders were).

I hate to ask this question....but what is a CD-R? Is this when you take a blank CD and burn it?

[Nano]

Yes, Stuckin. Those discs are for Recording... then, they are CD-Rs. If they are re-writable (you can record them again like a cassette) then they're CD-RWs.

Now, I have a question for Graham... please tell me, what is a TOC?

And another thing: can a perennial marker penetrate the plastic cover of a CD and fuck the aluminium layer? I buyed some "generic" CD-Rs (no etiquette on them) and happened to write right over the transparent cover (on the top side, of course) with a perennial marker for identification. Can that ruin the recording over time?

[StuckIn1979]

Yes, Stuckin. Those discs are for Recording... then, they are CD-Rs. If they are re-writable (you can record them again like a cassette) then they're CD-RWs.

This is really depressing. I've been thinking all along that recording my vinyl onto CD would be a great way of preserving my vinyl, plus I thought they could be played indefinetly with nice sound quality...along with a little more durability than cassettes. Now, it sounds like we're better off just recording on a cassette tape instead? Also, these CD's actually "damage" your CD player?

[QUINNY]

Stuckin: Get yourself a Minidisc recorder (full size model preferable to personal one) and you have great sound with much less hassle than CD-R. They are absolutely terrific machines and so user friendly and useable. You won't regret it.

[BrunoRepublic]

Originally Posted by Nano

Now, I have a question for Graham... please tell me, what is a TOC?

Table Of Contents. It's the place on the disc where all the information about where each track starts and ends is. If it gets damaged, the disc will not play at all.

[NickNack]

OK --- you guys have just scared the hell out of me. You seem to be making a distinction between the blank CD-R's people use to burn and the pre-recorded store-bought CD's of our fave artists. If I understood you, CD-R's not only wear out after time, they will eventually ruin your players, where as CD's are OK and will last longer than styrofoam. Please explain the difference between what we, the consumer, use and what the record industry is recording music onto. Sorry to be dense, but like Stuck, you've now got me thinking why bother to transfer my vinyl to CD if it won't last? (Other than the obvious reason of turntables becoming obsolete.)

Thanks,
Nicky

[Bernie]

Originally Posted by NickNack

OK --- you guys have just scared the hell out of me. You seem to be making a distinction between the blank CD-R's people use to burn and the pre-recorded store-bought CD's of our fave artists. If I understood you, CD-R's not only wear out after time, they will eventually ruin your players, where as CD's are OK and will last longer than styrofoam. Please explain the difference between what we, the consumer, use and what the record industry is recording music onto. Sorry to be dense, but like Stuck, you've now got me thinking why bother to transfer my vinyl to CD if it won't last? (Other than the obvious reason of turntables becoming obsolete.)

Thanks,
Nicky

Nicky,

There's no evidence that a CD-R or any CD for that matter can damage a CD player. Unless it's cracked and shatters in the drive there is just no way I can see of it doing any damage. I think it was just a coincidence that K-Bee had problems after using CD-R's.

As for their playability years from now, that can be a concern as no one really knows. In fact the formulations for CD-R's are getting better each year. I still have CD-R's from 1998 that still work just fine and have original CD's from the mid 80's that also play fine. Storage and care plays a major role in their longevity. Just keep them dry and away from the sun and cross your fingers.

[NickNack]

Originally Posted by Bernie

Nicky,

There's no evidence that a CD-R or any CD for that matter can damage a CD player. Unless it's cracked and shatters in the drive there is just no way I can see of it doing any damage. I think it was just a coincidence that K-Bee had problems after using CD-R's.

As for their playability years from now, that can be a concern as no one really knows. In fact the formulations for CD-R's are getting better each year. I still have CD-R's from 1998 that still work just fine and have original CD's from the mid 80's that also play fine. Storage and care plays a major role in their longevity. Just keep them dry and away from the sun and cross your fingers.

Bernie,

The shades are drawn tight and the fingers are crossed... BIG TIME. :D

[QUINNY]

With digital media, the recording industry has fairly major concerns, but even analogue master tapes have had to be subjected to the 'slow oven' treatment, so nothing is 100% safe. The only saving grace is that it tends to take advantage of new formats as they are developed, so with luck, once digitized a large percentage of the available material is transferred to new (better) mediums, which should have less compatibilty/storage problems. Or so you would have thought.
CD-R was ill conceived really, and no-one ever considered it would become the commodity it is today, with such incredibly low prices. If you're intent to transfer all your vinyl to CD-R you should keep a few things in mind.

1) Always, always use the best quality media from named brands. They are more likely to have less compatibilty problems. this brings me to
2) Always use 74 minute CD-Rs. Don't even entertain the thought of using 80, 90 or 99 minute discs.
3) If at all possible, invest in a CD player where the disc has to be loaded upside down. This will cause the discs to be scratched far far less on the playing side. When the disc spins down to stop in a conventional player, friction (with the CD loading tray) eventually plays some part in the slowing down process. Pressed CDs can take incredible abuse, wheras CD-Rs are far more likely to exhibit problems.
4) As previously mentioned, store in a dry, dark place (normally the Booklet in the top of the jewel case makes it dark enough, in a proper (relatively dust free) jewel case: but how many of us make up booklets for every CD-R we burn?
5) Handle with kid gloves every time, and try not to leave (fatty) finger marks over the playing surface.

Otherwise, hold onto that record player for dear life.

[CeesMasters]

Hi Bernie,

There is a change that an CD-player will be damage when using CD-R. I know that because my older and expensive Denon CD player doesn't work oke after using CD-R disks. Last year I bought a new one because of this.
The discussion is a little difficult to explain but here is a snip of the discussion on the CoolEdit user forum where some technical people are around. If you want to read the rest about this topic search on the CoolEdit site, I did the same some month ago.

Greets, Cees

[snip]
The original CD audio standard was the famous ‘red book’ standard published jointly by Sony and Philips back in the mists of time. The important thing to note about it, is that it contains the basic standards to which audio must adhere in order to be recorded at all, and is the fundamental standard on which all the others are based. It specifies details about the Table of Contents (TOC), and the coding and interleave requirements for robust digital recording, and the notorious 74 min. limit. It even allows for 20Mbytes of other digital data to be recorded, but I’ll ignore that here. And it says Disk At Once (DAO) writing, but it would – it was the spec for mass-produced commercial CDs.

The interleave stuff is quite significant, though, especially in the context of ‘clicks’. Audio data is arranged into interleaving ‘frames’ when it’s written to a CD. This interleaved data from the CD is decoded in firmware when the datastream is reconstructed, and as not all firmware is identical, it rather follows that some players are going to be more susceptible to problems caused by incorrect frame boundary data than others. Most decent CD writing software fills the last frame with trailing zeros, ensuring a correct boundary, but it ain’t always so. It follows that even using DAO with weird numbers in frames can produce clicks, especially if those weird numbers are CE cue data, not audio.

But if we continue, the confusion starts to set in. I want to make something very clear from the outset. The CD writer in your PC writes CD-R disks. The standard for these is contained within the Orange book standard, Pt.ll. This standard was added in 1988, and basically allowed multi-media and multi-session CD’s, which by implication means TAO (Track At Once). This is the basis on which EasyCD creator, Nero, etc, etc. include the option to do it – it’s in the standard.

Now, before anyone gets too excited, let me remind you of what I said earlier – the red book standard is the basic audio one, and has not been superseded, as far as I’m aware. So if you are going to make an audio CD that has any chance of passing muster as the basis of a glass master, ideally it should conform to the rather conservative red book spec if you want to guarantee that it will play on all non-faulty players. The reason that the red book length spec. hasn’t been increased is that there are still a lot of dodgy players around, and not all of them are portables. A lot of the problems stem from the inability of their laser head servos to track accurately beyond the 74 minute boundary – I have one that consistently won’t play anything beyond 75 mins. If you want to do audio on an Orange Book CD writer, you still have to abide by the red book standard, or run some risks, and here’s another one:

CD-Rs reflect significantly less laser energy back from the disk than commercially duplicated audio CDs. The very best ones can manage 75-80%, I believe, but CD-RWs are much worse, with figures around 20%! The immediate result of this is that the servo has even more trouble coping, as it relies on the reflected beam to track the spiral, and the actual pit reading is an extremely hit and miss affair.
[snip]