I bought a box-set of** Gulda**'s 1968 recording of Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas from Amazon.de last month. It was a cheap reissue but from a major label (Decca) so I was not particularly worried. The first two discs were fine.
Yesterday, I put disc 3 in my CD player and it was ok at first. However, when it reached track 9 (out of 13), it started skipping. Same thing with track 10.
At first I thought (hoped) it was a problem with the player itself as it’s been a bit erratic in the past few weeks (not able to read and/or spontaneously ejecting perfectly fine CDs). I quickly checked the surface of the disc and noticed quite a few minor defects. I thought it was surprising for a brand new CD but it didn’t look really bad either. I then put it in another player, starting at track 9. This time, it went fine and so did track 10 but it started skipping again at tracks 11 and 13.
OK, so the CD was the problem. I looked at its surface more carefully with a strong light directed at it and I noticed something I had never seen before: there were some weird spots not far from the edge. Since, if I’m not mistaken, the last tracks are located near the edge I was sure that they were responsible for the skipping and indeed, the spots covered the areas 9-13.
They look as if a few drops of some fluid had been poured on the disc and then allowed to dry: the edges of the spots are dark grey and the inside is completely featureless i.e. the grooves that are clearly visible on the rest of the disc seem absent there. On the whole, there quite small: the biggest one is about half the size of my little finger’s nail but the other are much smaller.
I wiped the CD with a piece of dry cloth then tried to play it again on my computer and it worked, to some extent. No skipping this time but there was an intermittent soft thumping on tracks 11 and 13.
I’m pretty sure it’s a manufacturing problem and I don’t have much hope of finding a solution but just in case: what is the likely cause of these spots and, more importantly, is there a way to get rid of them? As I said, the CD is playable, although imperfectly, on my computer so the data seems to be there but I’d like to play it on my CD player without the skipping and/or noise.
If wiping it with a cloth helped, you could try cleaning it with soap and water. CD’s are water proof. Run it under water, rub a little bit of soap on it (with your finger) and dry it, from inside to outside (not around in circles) with a soft, lint free cloth.
If you have any used CD or record stores in your area take it to them. They usually have scratch removers that buff readable side to take out scratches.
Regarding disc rot: I’ve thought about it but the pictures I’ve seen online look different from the spots on my disc. Disc rot look like tiny holes whereas I see what looks like some residue from a liquid.
I’m also considering returning it but I’m not sure I willing to put up with the hassle. I’ll see how the other discs work.
As I said, wiping it did help to some extent although the spots didn’t seem to disappear. I’ll try the soap treatment.
Computer CD drives are often more robust (better at handling errors) than standalone CD players. If I were in your situation, I’d probably try ripping the CD in a lossless format and burning the music to a new CD.
oh, one other common thing that ruins CDs is if they’re left in contact with something made of vinyl. Vinyl used for things like car seats, carrying cases, etc. contains plasticizer solvents which can “craze” the surface of polycarbonate CDs. It does tend to look like spotting from water deposits. You might be able to “buff” that out with one of those CD scratch removal kits.
I’ll clean the disc first (soap or scratch remover) then give it another try.
If it’s still problematic, I’ll rip it. I’d love to avoid it since I don’t like having a “weird-looking” CD in an otherwise uniform set although I know it’s silly. Amazon.de does indeed offer Auto-Rip.
Or I guess I could buy a second set and replace the faulty CD :D.
Amazon’s auto-rip service does not give you an exact copy of the disk. They give you an mp3 file for each track that uses a much lower bit rate than the original disk. This could be fine for some people, but others might want the full CD-quality tracks.
This.
I had an Indian CD (India Indian from India) by Debasheesh Battacharya that skipped horribly in two spots. Some CD players had more/less trouble than others, but none could play it flawlessly. Close examination revealed two small but quite visible “bumps” in the surface underneath the coating. No amount of buffing or cleaning was ever going to make any difference.
Finally, it occurred to me to put it Roxio and copy the disc at 16x. The resulting .wav files played back perfectly. Burned them to a CD-R, no problems.