Life time of factory pressed CDs?

By the way, in the mid 90s and just for the fun of it, I once put a CD in my freezer for a month. -After I thawed it out, it played just fine

 

I've had my oldest disc for 30 years. No sign of any change. I did (do?) have an old Days of Future Passed that darkened; don't recall if it was every a performance issue.

 

Weird. Other than PDO bronzing, I have never had a CD or CD-R fail, and I have close to 10,000 pressed discs.

 

I've never said I had a pressed CD fail...

 

Thank you for your valuable inputs chaps. As I can see there is not too much to worry about

 

I bought a Technics portable CD player in 1986 and at the same time, 'The Very Best Of Elkie Brooks' CD that the shop had used to demo it (there weren't many choices for an 'early adopter' back then!)

After hunting around, I just found that disc - in a drawer & unplayed for at least 25 years - it seems to be in perfect condition.

 

Out of curiosity, did your failed CDRs have adhesive labels on them or were they unlabeled?

There were definitely big differences in CDR quality over the years between the different manufacturers. Some were unstable and prone to failure quickly. Some were much better and could almost be called "archival," though I wouldn't personally rely on a CDR to hold any valuable data for too long without doing periodic back-ups.

 

When's the last time you played them all?

 

Last month I ripped my ~400 CDs, one was unreadable and from five CDs the last Track could only be ripped with errors (used dbpoweramp). All were from 90s indie labels. I'm happy that I started making a backup .

 

Do the CDs that have trouble ripping play ok on a cd player. I have cds that play fine but have trouble ripping.

 

None of them. Four of them are released on the DURTRO label which had quiet a lot of trouble with rotten discs. The one which is unreadable was in a digipak, I guess some perspiration from the glue killed the disc. Had the same issue with some movie DVD.

CD is quiet durable if manufactured correct and packaged well.

 

Practically all of my cds with a transparent label (the ones not painted in its entirety with artwork or else) have darkened bronze to different extents. But even the PDO ones from the late 80s still play fine.

 

Perfect sound forever.

Well, sound forever, anyway.

 

What was it:

Soundtrack to "Big Chill"?
Ice Cube?
Ice T?
Vanilla Ice?
Foreigner's "Cold As Ice"?

I'll stop now...

 

Likewise.

As for CDs lasting forever, I doubt it. There never has been and probably never will be any storage format that hasn't or won't soon be obsoleted. Even hard disk drives will, I strongly suspect, give way to solid state devices.

I am confident that my CDs will outlive me.

 

Never had any go bad ever. (450+aluminums and 150 24K golds.)

But they have always been finger print free and stored in an air conditioned, dark, and dry space in it's own CD case. If that makes any difference.

 

The budget compilation CDs made by WEA in the mid-90s are the ones I have trouble ripping.

 

If you collected early Warp Records, Rising High Records and early Coil CDs they are pretty much trash these days...PDO victims.

 

I just ripped Made in Japan from 1988 still plays and rips just fine.

 

I have old 80`s cds pressed from all over,some wich are scratched but all play without issues.

 

I read somewhere that CDs are predicted to last at least 100 years but no-one really knows as they have only been around for 34 years. I have a couple thousand CDs, many from the early 80s, and never had one go bad on me. They are not abused nor treated with kid gloves either. I have however come across a few duds over the past three decades and they were faulty from new.

 

No issues here. A handful didn't work over the last 25 years. Nothing that would remotely concern me; usually damaged discs. Some of my earliest discs go back to 1983/84 and still play fine.

 

Surely a wise decision?

I think this is why you get differences of opinion, a CD may well play "fine" in a CD player, with varying degrees of corrected errors. I'm certainly not going to get in a discussion about what that does to sound quality.

I've got about 9 CDs that have bronzed. Worst case scenario is a Mike Oldfield, Virgin, PDO, which although scratch free, is not readable, yet alone playable. The best of the bronzed discs, ripped without errors, the majority rip error free, until the last two tracks, when there maybe several hundre to thousands of frames with errors.

As someone mentioned previously, I also have some Polydor (and a couple of other label) discs, whilst again being un-scratched, have minor problems on the label side. These play "perfectly" in a CD player, but give errors, again usually on the last two tracks.

The other extreme, is that I have been given a CD that is scratched to pieces, that rips perfectly. I'm talking AccurateRips / Secure rips here, using dBpoweramp, or EAC, not iTunes, which may rip "OK", but give varying degrees of audible errors.

I guess out of 2,000 CDs, the number of "problem" discs, is about 20. All but three play "fine", in a CD player.

Everyone's collection is different, and they may well not own any "problem" discs. For one person an almost instantaneous mute is inaudible, or ignored, for someone else, this is a major disaster.

As an aside, the very earliest CDs, were manufactured to an extremely high standard, and were premium products. I've had no major issues achieving AccurateRips on 30 year old discs, maybe the occasional few frames needing multiple attempts. Are ALL modern CDs manufacturerd to the same standard?

 

Not wanting to go off topic, but CDs that play but don't rip accurately may well rip accurately on a different CD drive using dBPoweramp. There are lots of separate threads devoted to CD ripping, so I won't dwell on it.

Going back on topic, I have approx 1000 pressed CDs, all of which have been ripped in the last couple of years with the accuracy of the rip verified with AccurateRip. I don't think I have had any that have unexpectedly failed. The few that have failed or been very difficult to rip properly (probably less than 10) have all been CDs with physical damage, usually scratches from my wife playing them in the car (slot loading car CD players...). Even scratched up CDs often rip accurately eventually, which gives you the option of burning a CDR from the rip, if you need a playable disc. The CDs that gave me the biggest headache to rip have all been ones with copy protection or non standard in some way (I have one DualDisc; that was evil to rip!).

I did have a few early DVD videos that failed and appeared to show discolouration / separation suggestive of some sort of rot / degeneration, but i've binned them and can't produce a picture of them.

Overall, I don't think it is a major concern. I have no idea as to how stable SACDs are. I have a few of them, but don't have a means of ripping them to back them up (I am well aware of the PS3 ripping method but don't have enough SACDs or time to justify going down that route). Most other discs can be ripped with relatively little hassle; if doubt rip your discs to lossless and make multiple backups.

 

As long as my CDs last throughout my lifetime, then everything is great.