Some CD- related questions.

Factual Questions
1

I’m looking for THREE things:

1.) I’m pretty sure I’ve heard about a… thing… that supposedly erases scratch marks on CD’s. Do they work, and where can I find one?

2.) “” that fits over CD’s and prevents them from getting scratched in the first place. Supposedly, you can play the CD with the plastic-y sleeve-y thing in place.

3.) Is there ACTUALLY a CD player that you can REALLy use while exercising. Yes, a lot of them claim they won’t skip, and then they do anyway.

All advice appreciated.

2

  1. SkipDoctor. Never used one, heard good reviews. Try ebay or amazon.com.

  2. D-skin.

  3. I recommend a solid-state (flash based) Mp3 player. However, CD players which play Mp3s usually have longer skip-protection times as well (when listening to the Mp3s).

3

I should explain-- and I guess I will before going to bed… the only time I ever use a portable CD player is at the Y, and I can only use CD’s made by one company (Dynamix.) Given that, it’s hard to justify buying am MP3 player right now… which is why I was hoping to find a CD player that doesn’t skip.

4

If you only use one for working out, you can get one of the cheap flash models. The new flash-memory IPod starts at $99. I don’t know if they’re any good, but $99 isn’t all that bad, really.

5
      • Solid-state music players are perfect, if a couple of conditions already exist: 1) you have all your music CD’s ripped to your computer anyway, and 2) you exercise and want something that won’t skip.
  • The reason for #1 is that if you rip all your CD’s to your computer, you end up using jukebox software on your computer and can instantly, freely play any song you have without handling any CD’s at all. If you spend for a halfway-quiet computer and a decent set of powered speakers, it’s a damn-near perfect system. You listen to lots more music when all that you have is instantly available on one big “jukebox”.
  • The reason for #2 is that with a solid-state player, you may not have a lot of capacity on it, but in 30 seconds or so you can erase all the songs on it and put all-new ones on. The ability to change the songs so easily and quickly makes having less capacity a lot more bearable and solid-state players never skip, I assure you. A CD-polisher kit will run you $20-$30 and still won’t fix the problem. CD as a media is dead now, the ONLY people still pushing it are record companies. Generic 128-meg MP3 players are going for in the area of $50 online now; some are less after rebates (I only looked one place, tigerdirect.com). Assuming a normal MP3 compression of 128Kb/sec, you would be able to get about 30 4-megabyte songs on there at once. How many CD’s do you take to the Y?..
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