Posted by Keith Larson [ 24.63.7.139 ] on June 07, 2008 at 14:39:54:

In Reply to: My biggest surprise posted by Wayne Parham on June 06, 2008 at 18:51:12:

I know the light path can get messed up (just dirty up a disc), so I guess it is possible for discs, cd players and audiophiles to interact. However knowing that the edge of the disc is a long ways from the data, if my CD player was garbling disks, I would be more inclined to

a) Clean the disk
b) Wonder what was wrong with my CD player

Not all players are made the same, and it is possible to test them. The idea is that by controlling the media, errors can be introduced until at some point they are a) noticeable and b) cause the player to loose sync. Here is a commercial version I did find.

http://www.digital-recordings.com/cdcheck/cdcheck.html

Something that should concern everyone is that apparently a fair number of CD-R's are degrading with time. This is usually not noticed when 'data' is saved because of a much deeper level of error correction. On the other hand, audio tracks have far less error correction.

Original CD's will also age. Look carefully at a favorite CD that has been baked in the car for a few summers. It probably has a lot of extra and sometimes quite big holes in the metal. Hold it up to the light...

Keith Larson

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