what does a CD cleaner fix?

[lee]

I have the original CD player, and it skips badly for home-made CDs, and sometimes skips on the first song for "store bought" CDs. Plus, it's somewhat sensitive to skips from shocks while driving (like running over those little warning reflectors between lanes). Is this something a cleaner might help with, or is the unit just old and not so long for this world?

[Beav]

I don't know if a CD cleaner will help. Mine skips anything over about 15 songs - it just can't keep up with the new tech, I suppose.

BTW - those reflectors are called Botts' Dots and I wished all states used them, they're great on rainy nights.
http://www.snopes2.com/business/origins/bottsdot.htm

[Ron Mummert]

While this question doesn't really apply to the original question about CD cleaning, I'll ask it because the audiophiles always flock to posts with CD in the title.
Oh.... the question.
I heard, read, dreamed? somewhere that CDs EVENTUALLY degrade, all by themselves. It may take 20 years, but they will not last FOREVER. Is this a true statement, & should I go back to recording my vinyl on cassette tapes? (Not that I should worry about a 20 year shelf life) I should be resting on a concrete shelf somewhere myself by then.

Ron.

[scoochv]

this happened to me quite frequently as well.. songs would not load or take too long to. skipping happened a lot, and i just grew tired of it. so, i opted out for a new head unit. best $200 i've spent on any car.

[kuoh]

Beav,

It's not really a function of the number of songs, but rather the amount of time elapsed that's causing your problem. A CD is read from the inside out and as the head gets closer to the outside, small vibrations track variations become magnified due to the distance from the center. Also, the original CD standard only allowed for 74 minutes of music. These new 80 and 90+ minute CDs accomplish their feat by packing the spiral in tighter, which a lot of older CD players designed for the 74 minute standard have problems with near the end, if they even play at all.

As for using a CD cleaner, presumabably with one of those 6 bristled "cleaning" CDs, save your money. You would have to have a pretty significant buildup of dust on the lense for it to affect playback significantly, and if careful use of a can of compressed air doesn't get rid of it, I doubt that 6 little bristles will either.

KuoH

Originally posted by Beav
I don't know if a CD cleaner will help. Mine skips anything over about 15 songs - it just can't keep up with the new tech, I suppose.

[kuoh]

A CD can "degrade" over time, but the time given varies anywhere from 20 to 100 years. Pressed commercial CDs will generally last longer than CDRs or CDRWs, but a 10 to 20 year shelf life under ideal conditions is the generally accepted "guess". Most if not all of these durability tests were carried out using accelerated aging testing processes. They were not put into a vault for 20 years then brought out and tested, so they may not be entirely accurate.

As for going back to cassette tapes, any CD treated with care (not left out in the sun, stepped on, etc) will last longer and still sound better than a cassette after 20 years. When and if a CD does degrade after 20 years, it's not like it will suddenly become a blank CD and be totally unreadable. It just means that the bit error rate (BER) might increase to a level that is higher than the industry standards, which might result in more noise, but should still be playable for some time. With a cassette, you not only have a problem with the tape becoming more fragile and breakable over time, you also have "ghosting" or "pre-echoing" where because of the layering of the tape over itself, louder passages can actually imprint themselves onto quieter passages just before or after it.

KuoH

Originally posted by Ron Mummert
I heard, read, dreamed? somewhere that CDs EVENTUALLY degrade, all by themselves. It may take 20 years, but they will not last FOREVER. Is this a true statement, & should I go back to recording my vinyl on cassette tapes?

[kuoh]

It could just be a matter of the laser diode becoming weak due to age. Laser diodes are heat sensitive devices and when combined with the extreme temperatures that can occur in cars, it is not unusual for a laser to go out in 3 to 5 years, let alone 10 years. They generally become weaker before going out all together, which is why you often hear more skips or have loading problems (reading the TOC) before it goes out completely.

KuoH

Originally posted by scoochv
this happened to me quite frequently as well.. songs would not load or take too long to. skipping happened a lot, and i just grew tired of it. so, i opted out for a new head unit. best $200 i've spent on any car.

[QUOTEI heard, read, dreamed? somewhere that CDs EVENTUALLY degrade, all by themselves. It may take 20 years, but they will not last FOREVER. Ron. [/B][/QUOTE]

Ron,
Its called CD Rot and you can read all about it here:

http://www.mv.com/ipusers/richbreton/m/files/cd_rot.htm