New Wave Outpost Forum

A short blurb in this month's Record Collector reports that a research firm has found that CDR audio quality starts to degrade after 2-5 years.

Anyone have this experience?

Oh hell yeah. The dye-based backing CDRs and DVDRs do degrade, but it's not the sort of sound degradation like an analog tape. You start losing bits that hopefully your player will compensate for. But for data disks, it's important to do incremental recopies every few years. There's kind of a natural technology progression for doing this though. If you think about it, if you were backing up on Magneto-Optical discks, you may have migrated to denser and fewer CDRs, then many people moved again to denser and fewer DVDRs after that. As my DVDRs start to age, I'll hopefully have the next generation technology to migrate to denser and fewer of whatever those disks or terabyte memory cubes are. [:p]

Maybe we should go back to vinyl. With the right care, they last practically forever.

I was thinking about this this morning: Laser Rot.

Anyone else have problems with cds that have a "crackling" sound, almost like the hiss and pop of records? I was listening to "Set The Controls..." by Pink Floyd off their [i]Echoes[/i] compilation and I noticed there was a lot of crackling. I played it on different players and it was the same. It wasn't scratched or anything! It's almost new!

I've noticed the same thing with the crackling. I reburn my cd's every few months, but that's a time consuming task, and no guarantee that a SNAFU won't happen.

You guys are totalling freaking out. Relax.

I've rarely seen any problems with cdr's. Just use good brand cdrs, make sure you dont scratch them up, and dont leave them in the sun in your car. They work fine and will last if you do so.

I've had laser rot that spread to a few of the neighboring cd's. I tell ya, it's the scariest thing in the world. My suggestion is to try to look at every cd in your collection once in awhile to see if this is happening. Replacing 4-5 cd's isn't too bad, replacing more would be painful. There's also some that you just can't replace.

Remember when cd's first came out and they had that thing in the back of the liner notes that said with a little care, your cd should provide you with a lifetime of enjoyment. I've been questioning that lately.

[quote][i]Originally posted by FreeWave[/i]
<br>You guys are totalling freaking out. Relax.
[/quote]
Freewave was one of those people who went around trying to convince the unsuspecting populace that the fluoridation of drinking water was NOT a commie plot! Plausible denial, elevate it to the level of urban legend and all that. Poppycock! [:D]

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12933

Maximum of five years? The guy's a quack.

Going back to hutter's comment about sticking with vinyl, I have read that archvived music at the Smithsonian, etc., is backed up on vinyl because the vinyl will not degrade over time as CDs do. So it would seem there is some loss of quality over time.

Not to mention that music sounds better on vinyl. Not just my opinion. Compare them yourself.

I prefer to backup all my music by etching ones and zeroes into stone![:D] It is a bit of a dilemma isn't it? Do you want all your CD-R's to rot in a space of 5 years or do you backup on hard drives and/or tape and pray that an apocalyptic magnetic storm doesn't wipe out your magnetic media? I've started archiving the Obscure80's series as disk images on my hard drive, since I've already encountered a handful of CD-R's that no longer play properly.

Basically, Blir's right about re-archiving every few years using the latest CD-R/DVD-R technology. Tape backups seem so archaic, but they are still a viable solution.

[b]Compact Discs = Perfect sound FOREVER![/b]
[xx(]
Anyone remember that line?

Mike and Blir are right. Making backups and taking good care of the original media is a very good idea but no guarantee it will last forever.

There is a huge fight in the audio world between the CD crowd and the Vinyl crowd over what media "sounds" better. Both sides present compelling arguments for their side, but from what I can tell neither of them actually get down to comparing apples to apples.
The strength of the digital argument is convenience and inexpensive equipment combined with low noise sound reproduction.

Vinyl in my opinion DOES sound better than CDs BUT only if you are dealing with pristine media (those flat round things called LPs) and a serious investment in equipment (that can get into the thousands of dollars) all in a dedicated listening room.
Anything short of that and then I think CDs win the day.
So maybe under ideal circumstances vinyl will sound better than CDs, just getting to that point is a major investment of time and money most people are just not willing to commit to these days.

I suspect that will change a little when DVD-Audio becomes more prevalent and eventually replaces CDs and just MAYBE we will have the best of all worlds.

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Let's hope so. I'm over the promises of every new technology being better than the last, only to find out the new flavor of the month has just as many, if not more problems. Will DVD-Audio be the solution? I sure wish it was, but I'm not going to be surprised if it's not.

Really ?

I'd like to hear from more of you guys about whether CDs/CD-Rs rot or not. I sure hope not! I'm not up on technology, really, but I am not surprised. I still hope it's not true, though[:(]

Jimbo, what is this DVD-Audio you've mentioned ?