Has it affected the sound yet?

My vinyl all still plays fabulously!

 

I started buying CDs in 1991 and, to my knowledge, have yet to find this sort of problem. Trouble is, I have so many that I could easily not discover something like this for years! Especially as many of my old CDs are not played as often as the more recently purchased ones.

 

That always concerned me, especially home recorded discs - along with writing on CDs with a permanent marker (not that I do).

 

It's a longshot but have you contacted the manufacturer? That's where I'd be going - with a snotty email or letter.

 

No - on second thoughts - keep that to yourself.

I'm thinking of buying a 1000gb one, as they tend to fill up all too soon. Cheapest I am aware of though is around £240

 

I have had 2 HD failures so far.

 

Thats why I thought it worth a mention.

 

If you are just backing up your CD collection then you'll get 5 CD's onto one DVD-R. If they are compressed as mp3 then you're looking at maybe 50 albums per DVD-R -though lossless systems such as FLAC are audibly better you'll probably only get 10 CD's onto a DVD.

 

Only problem then is that the DVD will also eventually rot.

 

I prefer backing up onto a USB hard drive, which is then stored in a cool dry place. At £100 each this may appear extravagant, but what value would you put on your data if you lost it?

 

The rotting is an oxidisation of the aluminium layer. This was first pointed out as a potential problem by Nimbus back in the early 80's, but was discredited by the major manufacturers at the time who didn't want anything to sully the reputation of their sparkily new format.

 

As the audio data is recorded from the inside out and the rot usually starts at the rim where the seal betwix the acrylic layers is porous, you maybe lucky and be able to rip the CD before the rot spreads into the data area.

 

oxidisation you say...this can only happen in the presence of oxygen. Perhaps we are going to have to keep our original cd's in vaccums, while we have a backup collection of copies for everyday play. There are also sealants that can suppress oxidisation. I wonder if they can be incorporated into future cds, if they're still around then!

 

I doubt that manufacturers will allot any time or money to the problem - what with the, apparent, successor already being rolled out in the form of digital, downloadable files. Not much A&R funding needed there.

 

yeah, it's obvious that music is going digital, but I like having that physical tangibility that comes with cds. I wish they'd just make quality cd's or some other tangible disk. I guess i'd be just as happy if they packaged cd's just as they do, but there's a computer chip inside or something and they made radios that'd play em'. Yeah, I know they'll never spend any extra money of dealing with the problem.

 

I also had "Traffic-on the Road" on CD. Unfortunately, the CD player has some mechanical problems, the CD fell from the Cd player`s  Tray into the CD player and it became damaged because when I opened the CD player`s  tray again, it scratched the CD`splaying surface! Later, I also discovered that the CD was broken!

 

 

As a point of information. A CD consists typical of ~1mm of polycarbonate encoded with  laser readable pits, which are aluminised with ~ 70nm of pure aluminium (I've been told by my local metallurgists), and this is in turn is coated with an acrylic based lacquer, which will then have the individual info printed on it. So called audiophile discs have gold instead of aluminium deposited (but do your sums, at 70nm by 5 inch diameter, how can they justify doubling the price of the CD?). Rot is either oxidation or hydrolysis of the aluminium layer i.e. pure aluminium can't survive in earth's atmosphere without forming a protective oxide or hydroxide layer which then protects the underlaying aluminium metal. Aluminium oxide is white and larger volume than its parent metal hence the acrylic coating with the contaminated aluminium are forced off the polycarbonate. Rot is proabably due to oxygen or moisture permeation through a few tens of microns of lacquer, getting at the aluminium layer: this was reported to be the  main problem. However, the CD manufacturers did claim well over a decade ago, they were using or moving to non-permeable lacquers. In some instances way back, the centre hole of a CD was punched out exposing the aluminium to the environment. Chromium is not used since potentially it is an environmental pollutant, silver is far too expensive - besides gold is used already.

 

Do it yourself burn CDs were claimed to have a 2 year life, a decade ago, especially if you didn't store the CD in a box and let it get exposed to sunlight - apparently UV damages the coating, which reacts with the laser burning treatment to give the pit encoding. However, compilations I burnt in 1994 are completely playable - maybe this was a con to get you to keep copying CDs, hence buying more burnable CDs!

Our first office computer was a 8Mhz CP/M system from Northstar - 15 users sharing a 5Meg hard drive.