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bebopbob

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Anyone recently experience poor customer service at Oldies.com? 
 

I returned a CDR burn of Pat Martino: Baiyina- listed as a CD- which they received on July 3, 2020 and still have not seen a refund after 3 emails and a phone call.

Any similar experiences with Oldies.com?

 Thanks,

Bob

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I have never had to return anything to them, but they are producing a lot of CD-R's at this point and selling them as CD's.  I placed a couple of big orders a couple years ago picking up a lot of Hank Crawford/Fathead Newman/Les McCann etc. from their Collectables label at $2.98-$4.98, so I was OK with some (maybe 20%) being CD-R's, at that price point.  Their big warehouse is about 10 minutes from my house.   This area (suburban Philly) has been hit pretty hard by Covid-19 and is still largely shut down, so your return may be sitting in a pile of unopened mail.    Also, I doubt they were doing very well as a company even before that, as they seem to be grossly overstocked from what I can tell.   They've been desperate to dump inventory for years and years, a lot of clearance sales.

Edited by felser
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A lot of European labels are putting out CDRs without labeling them as such (Document is one of many), as are domestic labels. I had to return Cal Tjader: Monterey Concert to Walmart.com after discovering it to be a CDR. This is false advertising, CDRs just don't have the lifespan of CDs, nor do I wish to pay inflated prices for them.

You have to be careful with Oldies as well. Some of the small labels they carry like Squatty Roo (mostly poorly recorded bootleg reissues) seem to be all CDRs.

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There is no cd-r that is silver like a glass master made cd. Put a real cd next to one you suspect and you’ll know instantly. There are archival cd-r that use 24k gold. I have some but you don’t but those to burn your playlist to, they’re a hard copy back up and were fairly expensive when I got them. 

These are the ones I used. 
Memorex 80 min./700MB 52x Pro Gold Archival CDR (3-Pack) (Discontinued by Manufacturer)

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7 hours ago, jcam_44 said:

There is no cd-r that is silver like a glass master made cd. Put a real cd next to one you suspect and you’ll know instantly.

What about the Diamond Silver cd-rs? 

From https://www.genesysdtp.com/faq.htm:

"Q:  DiamondSilver cd-r's - what are they?  Are they better quality than silver/silver cd-r's?

DiamondSilver cd-r's have a record surface which, before recording, is practically indistinguishable from the standard silver lacquer label surface.  This is achieved by using a 'neutral' or 'colorless' dye, as compared to the light-green hue or other colors/variations of many other cd-r's.  When a disc is fully burned, DiamondSilver cd-r's will look as close as possible to pressed cd's (already with content)."

There have also been some discussions over at the Hoffman board about cd-rs in certain Bear Family box sets that were visually indistinguishable from pressed cds, but I have to admit I never saw what I would consider to be conclusive proof that the discs in question were really cd-rs.

 

Edited by Dave Garrett
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So Sonnymax is Merv, actually? :D

Re- how to tell apart CD-Rs:

About the color of the back of the CD-Rs: I have some CD-Rs (bought as items described as CDs at the time, of course <_<) that look VERY silvery. Offhand indistinguishable from CDs. But do the CD-Rs indicate the actual catalog number of the CD around the center hole on the back? Or don't they just list different, almost endless sequences of digits but not the catalog no.?

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3 hours ago, Dave Garrett said:

What about the Diamond Silver cd-rs? 

From https://www.genesysdtp.com/faq.htm:

"Q:  DiamondSilver cd-r's - what are they?  Are they better quality than silver/silver cd-r's?

DiamondSilver cd-r's have a record surface which, before recording, is practically indistinguishable from the standard silver lacquer label surface.  This is achieved by using a 'neutral' or 'colorless' dye, as compared to the light-green hue or other colors/variations of many other cd-r's.  When a disc is fully burned, DiamondSilver cd-r's will look as close as possible to pressed cd's (already with content)."

There have also been some discussions over at the Hoffman board about cd-rs in certain Bear Family box sets that were visually indistinguishable from pressed cds, but I have to admit I never saw what I would consider to be conclusive proof that the discs in question were really cd-rs.

 

I’ve never heard of diamondsilver cdrs but if someone went to lengths to create a cdr that replicate a dying media more power to them I guess. It used to be that a pressing plant wouldn’t print with a glass master under a 1000 cds so if you ordered 500 they would charge you the same as 1000, print 1000 and trash 500 and give you 500. I don’t recall why but I think it was something about the way the machine would press them it couldn’t do smaller numbers. It’s been a while since I cared about any of this and it’s all muscle memory at this point. 

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4 hours ago, Dave Garrett said:

There have also been some discussions over at the Hoffman board about cd-rs in certain Bear Family box sets that were visually indistinguishable from pressed cds, but I have to admit I never saw what I would consider to be conclusive proof that the discs in question were really cd-rs.

 

Do you have a link to those discussions? Bear Family (of all labels) passing CD-Rs as REAL CDs, now that would be bad news. :huh:

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Honest question.  If the CD-R is silver-bottomed, what is the difference to the consumer (me) compared to a CD.  I understand the manufacturing difference, but will the sound quality or the life expectancy be less for the silver-bottomed CD-R than for the CD?

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The life expectancy of a CD-R is limited. I have had at least one that quit playing at all. I have never had that happen to a CD during my decades of collecting them.

Alan Grant used CDRs for his bootleg Thad Jones-Mel Lewis release.

CD-Rs inevitably have matrix / runouts that are nothing close to the original releases, most have been long strings of numbers. You won't generally see the catalog number, a glass mastering credit, SID codes, etc.

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4 minutes ago, Ken Dryden said:

The life expectancy of a CD-R is limited. I have had at least one that quit playing at all. I have never had that happen to a CD during my decades of collecting them.

 

I am pretty sure Bresna can chime in here about commercial CDs failing too.

I have had CDRs fail but still been able to re-extract the audio and re-burn. This has been for individual tracks though never had one fail to play entirely.

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28 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

I am pretty sure Bresna can chime in here about commercial CDs failing too.

I have had CDRs fail but still been able to re-extract the audio and re-burn. This has been for individual tracks though never had one fail to play entirely.

Thanks Dan.  Were those commercial silver-backed CDR's, or the blank green-backed ones we buy in bulk?

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1 hour ago, Dan Gould said:

I am pretty sure Bresna can chime in here about commercial CDs failing too.

I have had CDRs fail but still been able to re-extract the audio and re-burn. This has been for individual tracks though never had one fail to play entirely.

I’ve had a cdr fail completely. Harris Eisenstadt - Last Minute of Play In this Period. Tried pc and two Macs and half a dozen programs. It happens.

Edited by jcam_44
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4 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

I am pretty sure Bresna can chime in here about commercial CDs failing too.

I have had CDRs fail but still been able to re-extract the audio and re-burn. This has been for individual tracks though never had one fail to play entirely.

I have had a couple of commercial CDs fail. One was a UK CD from the early days of CD manufacturing and it "bronzed" to the point where it stopped playing. The other was also from the early days of the CD and it played the first several tracks but then stopped. The aluminum near the edge of the CD looked like something started taking bites out of it. I read that it was a bad coating used in the label side.

I have had quite a few commercially sold CD-R titles stop playing so I always back up any that I get these days. The last one I got was from the VSOP label. $16.99 for a CD-R and flimsy artwork. Ouch.

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On 7/29/2020 at 6:02 AM, Big Beat Steve said:

Do you have a link to those discussions? Bear Family (of all labels) passing CD-Rs as REAL CDs, now that would be bad news. :huh:

There's this:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/bear-family-and-cdrs.895471/

but that's not the one I'm thinking of. There is a 368-page catchall thread on Bear Family releases, and I think some of the CD-R discussion was buried in there, like on this page:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/your-favourite-bear-family-releases.418974/page-49

I got these from Google, and you can see other relevant search results from the Hoffman site here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=bear+family+cd-r+site%3Astevehoffman.tv

but it may be better if you just do a search for "bear family cd-r" on the site itself. As I recall, some folks were pretty hot under the collar, and it probably didn't help matters that one of the forum members who does work for BF was conspicuously silent about the matter.   

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On 7/29/2020 at 7:28 AM, felser said:

Honest question.  If the CD-R is silver-bottomed, what is the difference to the consumer (me) compared to a CD.  I understand the manufacturing difference, but will the sound quality or the life expectancy be less for the silver-bottomed CD-R than for the CD?

The color of the CD-R does not matter. The silver ones still use organic dyes that are modified when exposed to laser light. Pressed CDs use a glass master to physically stamp the data into the disc (sort of analogous to how a vinyl record is pressed). The dyes in a CD-R are inherently less stable and more prone to degradation over time than a pressed CD.

As for sound quality, I've never seen anything to indicate that there is a discernible difference between a CD-R and a pressed CD. That's possibly a heretical statement in some corners of the audiophile world, but so be it.  

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