Hello all!
I am referring to a cheap CD player my father bought a couple years ago and had a mechanic install in his van. It isn’t a name-brand player, and probably cost about $50 or $60, if that makes a difference.
But the thing is, it ruins every CD he plays in the thing! I thought this was impossible at first, since CDs are never physically touched when they’re playing–that’s what the laser is for. But I’ve seen the damage this machine (and only this machine) causes to CDs. It has ruined his Rolling Stones CD, his Best of Kansas, his Miami Vice soundtrack, and a few CD-Rs my brother and I have burned for him. I know he only buys brand-new store-bought CDs and takes good care of them, so it isn’t a question of tossing them around.
When you pick up the CDs, you can now see a physical circle around the middle of the reflective surface, about equidistant between the edge and the hole in the center of the disc. And the CDs play up until their half-way points, which is always where this new marking appears. That’s right–once they hit around track 6 out of 12 (just as an example), they cut off or reset to the beginning, and this problem happens in every different CD player we try them in.
What the hell can this machine be doing? Could the laser be burning into the physical surface? Could the CD player be spinning them at an angle, however slight, that is damaging the surface? Could there be a sharp point or something in there scratching them like a record player’s needle? And most importantly, is there a way to fix or save or salvage these damaged CDs so they play all the way through?
Needless to say, this is a very annoying and weird problem, and it has cost my father quite a bit in replacing beloved CDs. He’ll get a new player soon and hasn’t used the old one since we discovered it truly is the culprit, but all these CDs have been rendered unplayable as a result, and we’re both pissed. Any advice?