“IMWAN for all seasons.”



Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 13 posts ] 
Author Message
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 5:48 pm 
User avatar

Joined: 10 Jun 2011
Posts: 2941
Today I discovered that one of my CD's appeared to have some clouding on the data side. However, when I played it, the entire disc played perfectly. A quick Google check, however, revealed this this particular title is indeed reportedly susceptible to CD rot.

As the title is something of a mail-order boutique release, I'm wondering if it is at all possible to somehow reseal the CD and arrest the rot before I go about attempting to replace it. I called a local used CD store that offers to repair scratched CD's (presumably by refinishing them) but the guy who answered the phone told me that he had never heard of CD rot.

Is there any preventive maintenance one can do to arrest or prevent this from happening? The disc came in a digipack, and I've stored both disc and digipack in a resealable plastic sleeve, although some claim that it is the glue used in digipacks that causes the rot to occur.


Top
  Profile  
 

IMWAN Admin
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 6:38 pm 
User avatar
Helpful Librarian

Joined: Day WAN
Posts: 197132
Location: IMWAN Towers
Bannings: If you're not nice
Andrew, make sure to rip it to FLAC before it becomes unplayable.

Supposedly, CD rot can be stopped by shrinkwrapping the disc in mylar with a commercial grade vacuum sealer. Rot occurs on discs which were packaged in jewel cases too, so I don't believe that the glue in digipaks is a cause, although you might want to seal it in a jewel case just to be extra safe. Faulty/missing lacquer coating on the disc itself is what allows CD rot to occur.

_________________
Image


Top
  Profile  
 
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Sat Aug 03, 2013 3:42 am 
User avatar
I love Music & hate brickwalled audio

Joined: 27 Sep 2006
Posts: 37652
Location: The Pasture
Rip it Rip it Rip it. EAC is the way to go. It's free & the best. You can also rip to wav, if you don't want to compress at all. If possible use an old real Plextor cd only drive to rip, they will provide the most accurate rips. (this is perfectionist talk; if you're not an audiophile ignore everything I'm saying other than "rip it to 2 drives" & "rip with EAC"). If you store a copy on a quality hard drive (or 2) in wav, other than a small amount of timing jitter it should be identical to what's on the disc. & I mean IDENTICAL.

_________________
Putty Cats are God's gift to the universe.


Top
  Profile  
 
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Tue Aug 19, 2014 6:04 am 
User avatar
Sonic Death Monkey

Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 8543
Location: Jet City
Bannings: 6
This seems like a good place to put this:

Quote:
How Long Do CDs Last? It Depends, But Definitely Not Forever
by LAURA SYDELL
August 18, 2014 5:21 PM ET

Many institutions have their archives stored on CDs — but the discs aren't as stable as once thought. There is no average life span for a CD, says preservationist Michele Youket, "because there is no average disc."

Back in the 1990s, historical societies, museums and symphonies across the country began transferring all kinds of information onto what was thought to be a very durable medium: the compact disc.

Now, preservationists are worried that a lot of key information stored on CDs — from sound recordings to public records — is going to disappear. Some of those little silver discs are degrading, and researchers at the Library of Congress are trying to figure out why.

In a basement lab at the library, Fenella France opens up the door to what looks like a large wine cooler. Instead, it's filled with CDs. France, head of the Preservation, Research and Testing Division here, says the box is a place where, using temperature controls, a CD's aging process can be sped up.

"By increasing the relative humidity and temperature, you're increasing the rate of chemical reaction occurring," she says. "So we're trying to induce what might potentially happen down the road. That gives us a feel for how long things are going to [take to] age."

France says part of what they are trying to do here is determine the minimal conditions needed for libraries and archives everywhere to preserve CDs.

"Smaller institutions don't have the resources to control environments tightly," she says. "One of the things we try to do is sort of look at how wide can that range be, as long as it doesn't fluctuate too much. And [if] it's stable, then that's usually the best thing."

Unfortunately, this testing has also found that not all CDs are the same. Michele Youket, a Library of Congress preservation specialist, plays a CD of classical piano rhapsodies by Erno Dohnanyi. It crackles, and eventually the sound just cuts out.

This is a variant of what's called "CD rot," Youket explains. In this case. it's what's called "bronzing." The outer coating of the CD erodes, leaving a silver layer exposed. And when you leave silver exposed, it tarnishes.

"So it's actually changing the composition, and that's why you hear the scratching there," Youket says.

And here's the thing about CDs: Youket says part of what makes it hard to preserve CDs is that they are not uniform. There were a lot of different standards of manufacturing, depending on the year and the factory.

"This phenomenon of bronzing was particular to only discs that were manufactured at one particular plant in Blackburn, Lancashire, in England," and only between 1988 and 1993, Youket explains.

"Everyone always wants to know the answer to the same question, 'How long do CDs last? What's the average age?' " Youket says. But "there is no average, because there is no average disc."

The Library of Congress has around 400,000 CDs in its collections, ranging from congressional records to popular music, and the library regularly gets donations of CDs.

Real estate records and titles were also moved from microfilm to CD beginning in the 1990s all around the country, says Jim Harper, president of the Property Records Industry Association.

"They just made the move because they thought anything that was digital, anything that was electronic, was going to be far superior to anything from the past," Harper says. "And it turns out that that was indeed wrong."

With budgets tight for local governments, Harper says most are not going to be able to move to another form of storage in the near future.

PRIA has been taking Youket out to speak to county officials, to at least make certain they understand the problem they're facing.

"We've been working very hard to ... say, 'Listen, if you're going to use these things, you better be careful what you buy, because it's not all created equally,' " Harper says.

Increasingly, CDs aren't being created at all. The record shops that sold them are going out of business, and new computers don't come with CD drives any more. Even so, many of us still have dozens or hundreds of CDs.

Researcher France says many of them can actually last for centuries if they're taken care of. "The fastest way to destroy those collections is to leave them in their car over summer," she says — "which a lot of people do."

Sadly, your favorite CDs — the ones you've played a lot — are often the ones that are most likely to be damaged.

These days, the Library of Congress is starting to archive material on servers, which France acknowledges could pose an entirely different set of still-unknown problems in the future.


http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconside ... ot-forever

_________________
My home on the web:
http://www.alger-photography.com


Top
  Profile  
 
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 2:34 am 
User avatar
Music from the 60s & 70s and a bit of the 80s

Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Posts: 4368
Location: Australia
I have spent past few years backing up all my CDs to FLAC. Hopefully the external drives I am storing them on will hold on until a better more reliable storage method is invented.


Top
  Profile  
 
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 3:01 am 
User avatar
I love Music & hate brickwalled audio

Joined: 27 Sep 2006
Posts: 37652
Location: The Pasture
I have never had a factory pressed disc go bad. Lots of off brand burned discs have though.

ranasakawa, I hope you're doing redundant backups to at least 3 drives for any flac files you care about. HD's go bad too; I've already had 1 Seagate external go bad & a couple internals.

Where I'm weak is I'm doing very few backups of burned dvd's. Once or twice, I've had to ask a friend for a new copy.

HD's are getting larger. i just saw a 5 TB ext Seagate for $160. In another 5 years, who knows how big they'll be. it also wasn't that long ago that 128 gb flash drives were unreliable. That no longers seems to be the case if you stick with a good brand, & they're getting cheap also.

Once we start getting affordable 10-20 tb hd;s, I'll probably start backing up burned dvd's.

Of course you can do H264 (etc) today for size, but i really don't want to.

_________________
Putty Cats are God's gift to the universe.


Top
  Profile  
 
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Fri Aug 29, 2014 7:04 pm 
User avatar

Joined: 10 Feb 2008
Posts: 5104
A tiny bit of car wax and gentle rubbing should get rid of the clouding. It worked for me several years ago.


Top
  Profile E-mail  
 
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 12:16 pm 
User avatar

Joined: 14 Oct 2006
Posts: 1561
Location: Evanston IL
The only 2 discs i've had go bad in any way was a traffic roio[had a cd-r burned from it that works]and Frank Black's Black Session disc.


Top
  Profile  
 
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 14, 2015 3:00 am 
User avatar
Music from the 60s & 70s and a bit of the 80s

Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Posts: 4368
Location: Australia
I discovered more CDs that have changed color, most seem to originate from late 1980s pressings. Company is PDO
Damn it!
They don't look good


Top
  Profile  
 
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 14, 2015 3:31 am 
User avatar
I love Music & hate brickwalled audio

Joined: 27 Sep 2006
Posts: 37652
Location: The Pasture
Are they UK manufacture? I've heard it was pretty much UK discs that went bad.

_________________
Putty Cats are God's gift to the universe.


Top
  Profile  
 
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 14, 2015 3:56 am 
User avatar
Music from the 60s & 70s and a bit of the 80s

Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Posts: 4368
Location: Australia
Possibly Geff, I'm packing all my CDs so I'll check later, moving house at end of year.


Top
  Profile  
 
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 14, 2015 9:24 pm 
User avatar
Friend of Jimbo.

Joined: 30 Jul 2006
Posts: 8859
Location: Sitting on a Cornflake
Bannings: Banned on the run
I am very lucky. I must have purchased 13000 - 15000 CDs since the 80s and have yet to have an issue with any of them.

Homemade discs on non-gold CDrs - yes, but no problems with official CDs.

_________________
DanO

"Orphans always make the best recruits." ~ M

My author page at Amazon


Top
  Profile  
 
 Post subject: CD Rot: Can it be arrested?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 14, 2015 9:44 pm 
User avatar
I love Music & hate brickwalled audio

Joined: 27 Sep 2006
Posts: 37652
Location: The Pasture
I've had very few official cd's go bad. The only thing I can remember is pinholes in the label once or twice.

_________________
Putty Cats are God's gift to the universe.


Top
  Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 13 posts ]   



Who is WANline

Users browsing this forum: Mark MN and 0 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  


Powdered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Limited

IMWAN is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide
a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com, amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk.