Are Jazz CDs making a comeback?

[Stompin at the Savoy]

That last picture is a good example.  The picture is there, but degraded.  The picture doesn't cut off half way.  There are bits of missing data spotted throughout.  Q.E.D.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I have had many CDs & CD-Rs fail and ticks are the usual audible result. Static is the next one and it usually only happens with a very damaged disc. Dead discs won't play. That has only happened with a few discs in my experience and those CDs looked like somebody tap danced on them.

2 minutes ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

That last picture is a good example.  The picture is there, but degraded.  The picture doesn't cut off half way.  There are bits of missing data spotted throughout.  Q.E.D.

But again - the audio equivalent of this is not simply a messed up sound stage. No way. An audio equivalent of this would be static or pops. Photo files are typically decoded by lines. That last picture clearly had lines of damaged data. This much damage can be shown as colored blocks in a photo but that is likely the photo display programs method of interpolation. Audio can't "patch up" that much blank space and will mute the audio or even stop playing.

[Dub Modal]

While on this subject, anyone have tips for cleaning CD players? Mine is having issues reading discs consistently, skipping frequently. At first I thought it was the discs themselves but figured out it was the player. 

[T.D.]

If you google cd lens cleaner, you can find:

Products (discs with brushes) that claim to clean the lens;

Videos on how to clean the lens manually.

I think the former work to some extent (on at least some players), have never tried the latter. I also think that laser units sometimes just die, which in the price range of players I use means "get a new one". I'm not sure about high-end models...maybe those lasers get replaced.

[mikeweil]

7 minutes ago, T.D. said:

I also think that laser units sometimes just die, which in the price range of players I use means "get a new one". I'm not sure about high-end models...maybe those lasers get replaced.

The laser unit of my Marantz SACD player started malfunctioning after 17 years. Replacements hard to find and you need a competent technician. A costly procedure. New players are one grand or more.

[Dub Modal]

1 hour ago, T.D. said:

If you google cd lens cleaner, you can find:

Products (discs with brushes) that claim to clean the lens;

Videos on how to clean the lens manually.

I think the former work to some extent (on at least some players), have never tried the latter. I also think that laser units sometimes just die, which in the price range of players I use means "get a new one". I'm not sure about high-end models...maybe those lasers get replaced.

'get a new one' sounds about right then. damn

[T.D.]

1 minute ago, Dub Modal said:

'get a new one' sounds about right then. damn

I'd buy one of those "CD laser lens cleaner" discs. They only cost $10-15. If that doesn't help, then it's probably time to get a new one. Unless you want to take the top off and try to clean the lens yourself...worst case is you mess it up and have to replace it anyway.

I saw some links estimating the effective life of a laser unit at 10,000 hours playing time. So if the player is more than 10 years old, there's a good chance the laser is dying.

[Dub Modal]

51 minutes ago, T.D. said:

I'd buy one of those "CD laser lens cleaner" discs. They only cost $10-15. If that doesn't help, then it's probably time to get a new one. Unless you want to take the top off and try to clean the lens yourself...worst case is you mess it up and have to replace it anyway.

I saw some links estimating the effective life of a laser unit at 10,000 hours playing time. So if the player is more than 10 years old, there's a good chance the laser is dying.

Yeah, it's older than that. Thanks for the advice 

[Holy Ghost]

Completely my opinion:

CDs versus vinyl: I posted I played an Oscar Peterson, Time After Time CD I "inhereted" in "what are you listening to NOW" thread and this CD is an absolute mess, like someone drove over it, or tied it on the back of their back bumper along with any other empty soup cans and used shoes after getting married (like what other annoying noise can we add to attach to the back bumper to already add to the rattling on the back bumper, to tell everybody we're hitched? You have any so-so Oscar Peterson Pablo CDs honey? In fact, I do!!! Time After Time! I'll tie it to the back bumper right now, along with the empty soup cans and nasty shoes!) Whatever the case, I washed it and played it, and it played perfectly fine; I couldn't believe it! Now tell me this would be the same case listening to a scratched up/looking like a shitty piece of vinyl after driving over it with your car. First, that record ain't worth shit; secondly, even if the sleeve is salvageable, maybe worth a ham at most. 

Moral of the story: it all depends on how you take of your stuff. CDs seem to have more give. You can drive over CDs with your car, yet they still play; one scratch on a slab of vinyl, it's ruined. 

Botton line: In my opinion, I think this vinyl-revival is a quick, market to dum dums, make a quick buck, stupid-ass fad, which young dum dums are titillated by, until their scatter brains run their ADD course very quickly, and on to whatever else. I'm in no rush converting any format to anything else. 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by Holy Ghost

[Stompin at the Savoy]

1 hour ago, Holy Ghost said:

Completely my opinion:

CDs versus vinyl: I posted I played an Oscar Peterson, Time After Time CD I "inhereted" in "what are you listening to NOW" thread and this CD is an absolute mess, like someone drove over it, or tied it on the back of their back bumper along with any other empty soup cans and used shoes after getting married (like what other annoying noise can we add to attach to the back bumper to already add to the rattling on the back bumper, to tell everybody we're hitched? You have any so-so Oscar Peterson Pablo CDs honey? In fact, I do!!! Time After Time! I'll tie it to the back bumper right now, along with the empty soup cans and nasty shoes!) Whatever the case, I washed it and played it, and it played perfectly fine; I couldn't believe it! Now tell me this would be the same case listening to a scratched up/looking like a shitty piece of vinyl after driving over it with your car. First, that record ain't worth shit; secondly, even if the sleeve is salvageable, maybe worth a ham at most. 

Moral of the story: it all depends on how you take of your stuff. CDs seem to have more give. You can drive over CDs with your car, yet they still play; one scratch on a slab of vinyl, it's ruined. 

Botton line: In my opinion, I think this vinyl-revival is a quick, market to dum dums, make a quick buck, stupid-ass fad, which young dum dums are titillated by, until their scatter brains run their ADD course very quickly, and on to whatever else. I'm in no rush converting any format to anything else. 

 

CDs are pretty robust, generally, but they have some vulnerabilities.  There is a directory area at the beginning of the data which if compromised with quite a small nick generally spells the end.  It's pretty easy to mess up a cd by putting scratches and holes through the label side and screwing up the reflective layer. Steve has documented nasty issues with glue-on labels, above.  When he was small my kid was pretty good at finding the weak spots in things.  He showed me that it is easy to completely wreck a cd by not putting it far enough onto the spindle and then shoving the cd tray into a pc.  Another time he pulled a cd up off the spindle of a laptop when the cd tray/drawer was not all the way out - bent it seriously.  If I remember right it didn't snap but was totally unusable.

As to vinyl - I grew up with it and I admit it used to sound amazing through the tube push-pull mono amp my dad assembled and the big tuned speaker enclosure he built.  I particularly remember loving Jimmy Smith's The Cat on that rig.  But I also remember the heartbreak of skips and scratches...  

[Holy Ghost]

10 minutes ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

CDs are pretty robust, generally, but they have some vulnerabilities.  There is a directory area at the beginning of the data which if compromised with quite a small nick generally spells the end.  It's pretty easy to mess up a cd by putting scratches and holes through the label side and screwing up the reflective layer. Steve has documented nasty issues with glue-on labels, above.  When he was small my kid was pretty good at finding the weak spots in things.  He showed me that it is easy to completely wreck a cd by not putting it far enough onto the spindle and then shoving the cd tray into a pc.  Another time he pulled a cd up off the spindle of a laptop when the cd tray/drawer was not all the way out - bent it seriously.  If I remember right it didn't snap but was totally unusable.

As to vinyl - I grew up with it and I admit it used to sound amazing through the tube push-pull mono amp my dad assembled and the big tuned speaker enclosure he built.  I particularly remember loving Jimmy Smith's The Cat on that rig.  But I also remember the heartbreak of skips and scratches...  

Wow. I didn't know this, but why would anyone go out of their way to deliberately mess with CDs? I mean, my kids would just go the good ole' fashioned way and spill milk on my CDs and laugh, as I cried; but this thinking I don't get, like why this:

"When he was small my kid was pretty good at finding the weak spots in things.  He showed me that it is easy to completely wreck a cd by not putting it far enough onto the spindle and then shoving the cd tray into a pc.  Another time he pulled a cd up off the spindle of a laptop when the cd tray/drawer was not all the way out - bent it seriously.  If I remember right it didn't snap but was totally unusable."

Wha? That's like fucking around with my car, so it doesn't start. First things first, I'd say (just me), "Stop touching my shit!" Just saying. 

Question further begs, why? How come? What enjoyment comes out of this? Fucking with the integrity of enjoying a CD eludes me. For example, if I (stupidly) left a CD nearby my daughters, I was playing roulette; anything near them (because they were sloppy) was at my own risk. Frankly, my kids were just slops, like, "sorry dad" as they spill milk on Dizzy's Blues In Trinity. Like, try cleaning up milk off a CD; just as wholesome as a good-ass,fun-ass, hoe-down, cleaning up broken eggs off the floor...sorry dad. That aside, like why mess with CDs otherwise? Oh yeah, keep them away from your kids. 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

11 minutes ago, Holy Ghost said:

Wow. I didn't know this, but why would anyone go out of their way to deliberately mess with CDs? I mean, my kids would just go the good ole' fashioned way and spill milk on my CDs and laugh, as I cried; but this thinking I don't get, like why this:

"When he was small my kid was pretty good at finding the weak spots in things.  He showed me that it is easy to completely wreck a cd by not putting it far enough onto the spindle and then shoving the cd tray into a pc.  Another time he pulled a cd up off the spindle of a laptop when the cd tray/drawer was not all the way out - bent it seriously.  If I remember right it didn't snap but was totally unusable."

Wha? That's like fucking around with my car, so it doesn't start. First things first, I'd say (just me), "Stop touching my shit!" Just saying. 

Question further begs, why? How come? What enjoyment comes out of this? Fucking with the integrity of enjoying a CD eludes me. For example, if I (stupidly) left a CD nearby my daughters, I was playing roulette; anything near them (because they were sloppy) was at my own risk. Frankly, my kids were just slops, like, "sorry dad" as they spill milk on Dizzy's Blues In Trinity. Like, try cleaning up milk off a CD; just as wholesome as a good-ass,fun-ass, hoe-down, cleaning up broken eggs off the floor...sorry dad. That aside, like why mess with CDs otherwise? Oh yeah, keep them away from your kids. 

Oh sorry I guess I gave the wrong impression.  He was not intentionally breaking stuff.  Kids just naturally have a way of finding out the weak points of stuff.  I was pretty similar as a boy.  Luckily I was in my forties when I had him 30 years ago and was mellow and forgiving when he broke stuff.  Shit happens!

[Big Beat Steve]

16 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

... with the closest picture that looked like a distorted image looking so bad that an audio equivalent to this would not be listenable...

 

Getting back to the problem of MUSIC CDs that have become (almost) unplayable due to background noise and distortion: 
If I had to figure out an IMAGE of what I guess the damage to the sonic reprodcution of those "unplayable" CDs is like it would be close to the image above. Like I said earlier, the distortion is hard to describe, it is a more or less crunching distortion that does seem to be linked to the actual music. I.e. the distortion patterns follow those of the music (that you still can hear, but in a bad way). And the strange thing is that while I do have the distinct impression that the dud CD-Rs from that recent haul I made were corrupted by problems with the glued-on label that had become detached partially and caused imbalance, the distorted noise that overlays the music sounds very much like that on CD-Rs I burnt (or had received) many years ago and assumed they had failed due to age. But these CDs never had any glued-on labels that may have become detached and cause imbalance.
Just to check I went outside to my car and retrieved one of these "failing" CD-Rs. I had burnt it a good 20 years ago, found it had started to show increasing distortion (on the last few tracks) about 10 years ago, bought a new "real" CD of it for my collection and relegated the CD-R (that I'd figured was on its way out) to a corner in my car glove box so I'd be able to listen to what remained listenable on it (it's goodtime music that you can enjoy while driving for as long as the sound is OK). I had not listened to it in years, though, but spun it again now and to my amazement found that the distortion still is as it was back then: degradation starts at track 23 out of 27, increases and tracks 26 and 27 are virtually unlistenable. But no further deterioration during those pas 10 years! Odd ...

But what I think I've learnt from the above discussion here is that those dud CD-Rs that arbitrarily jump, splutter and skip and then resume and/or stop altogether and on next try might not start up again at all (at least not on every CD player) are likely to be afflicted by a different kind of deterioration of the data. Isn't it?

 

Edited 1 hour ago by Big Beat Steve

[Stompin at the Savoy]

Interiors of cars can experience heat extremes which sort of increase entropy with regard to plastic objects.

[Holy Ghost]

9 minutes ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

Oh sorry I guess I gave the wrong impression.  He was not intentionally breaking stuff.  Kids just naturally have a way of finding out the weak points of stuff.  I was pretty similar as a boy.  Luckily I was in my forties when I had him 30 years ago and was mellow and forgiving when he broke stuff.  Shit happens!

Word. My daughters managed to find every way to sabotage my day from my morning coffee, right up to my nightcap! Can't believe they both have high school diplomas and are in college. 

PS: After 25 years, I found a replacement copy of Blues in Trinity. They both still have no idea who Dizzy Reece is. 

[Big Beat Steve]

3 minutes ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

Interiors of cars can experience heat extremes which sort of increase entropy with regard to plastic objects.

Those heat variations are obvious (even inside the glove compartment). Which I understand would mean that this would or could accelerate deterioration? Particularly since my car is parked outside year in, year out.
Not the case here, amazingly, though.

BTW, my "real" CDs (that are fodder for my car player) haven't deteriorated either. But I would not have been surprised if the already existing degradation on that CD-R had continued inside the car. 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

4 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Those heat variations are obvious (even inside the glove compartment). Which I understand would mean that this would or could accelerate deterioration? Particularly since my car is parked outside year in, year out.
Not the case here, amazingly, though.

BTW, my "real" CDs (that are fodder for my car player) haven't deteriorated either. But I would not have been surprised if the already existing degradation on that CD-R had continued inside the car. 

Heat is definitely bad for cds. Depending on the climate, the car can really be a bad place for cds.  A few years back I left a Dell computer keyboard sitting on the seat in a car in San Jose, CA and the thing melted!  It was all distorted.  Global warming has made California's interior valleys really hot sometimes in the summer.