Maybe ask a mod to change the thread title for you. Put the artist and album name in the thread title.
I have a lot of old CDs I burned for use in my car. That was about 10 years ago. I didn't take good care of them. Most still play well with my Yamaha 303, with a few skips. The ones that skip have visual damage. I have several well made studio recorded CDs: "Dark Side of the Moon" and "Tommy" amoung others which are about 10 years old. They sound great. I think your issue is with the damage to the CDs rather than age. BTW, Yamaha has issued an update for my 303 that I'm supposed to load into my player. Reports from other users states the update improves the play on older CDs? I'm not sure how that would work, but I'll hive it a try when I get the chance. Later.
Nah, this CD wasn't damaged. It was simply old and oxidation got the best of it, most likely because the UK CD plant it was created at had used some shoddy formula for the top coating.
Pin holes do not multiply over time while in your possession. This damage was done during manufacture. Dust or a spec of contaminant was on the metal layer and caused a pinhole. The disc was then sealed. The pinhole is contained inside, there are no holes on the label side or the clear polycarbonate. The holes do not come through the top lacquer. I've never had a problem playing my pinhole discs but if there are large areas of holes, that may cause playback problems.
Except when they do. I guess this problem started to rear its ugly head now that it's been 30+ years for some of these CDs. It's definitely related to the chemical formula used for the top coating. Some of them simply deteriorate faster than they should.
Here I shows that it is not exclusively an environment problem, but a manufacture problem with a particular plant (here previously-identified ARC etched on the inner ring, with SRC=05 and SRC=06 glass master (the = sign being the mastering machine, and the number a glass revision). Both discs of this set with the same flaw, stored in a Caselogic with other discs purchased the same era, 90% can be pumped through CueRipper at max speed with no problems whatsoever: Got one of them finally ripped good enough in CueRipper "paranoid" mode (read three times, then read 61 times more upon mismatch) that the disc could be recognized and repaired from online checksum. The pinholes are not the only read problem on degraded discs (or just poor glass masters - when 2000 results for a disc in cuetools have the same four tracks dropping to 1500 good reads for everybody), others just can't be seen. After over a year of ripping discs, I'm up to J for Jodeci (1991), and a "made by JVC" is free of any telltale signs, but yet half the tracks after a half hour of bit-banging are still "no match 0/22" instead of (22/22) accurately ripped. (PS, one would be hard-pressed to actually hear any problems with these rips, but a CD player only gets one pass)
@harby I'm getting goosebumps just looking at those pictures. I know some CDs were manufactured like Swiss cheese, but I'm telling you, that UK-made disc with Pictures for Pleasure developed more pinholes over time, and it was because the top coating degraded to the point of the lacquer coming off.
A total coincidence but I'm currently cataloging some CD's and think I noticed the first one in my collection with this problem. A fairly sizeable pinhole (probably twice the size of those in the pictures @harby submitted) that is visible on the top and goes all the way through to the readable side of the disc. Btw the disc in question is this one, manufactured in 1990: Sweet Sensation - Love Child ...haven't tried playing it yet. But I can tell you I have played it in the past (albeit not for quite awhile) and that hole definitely was NOT there before.
I don't have any issues with any of my cd's. Even 30 year old cdr's still play without a hitch! I have always stored them in a cool place, never in the sun or car. Even some that I did leave in the car got lots of sunshine and still play great. I do keep them in the paper/plastic sleeve things.
Over the last year or more I've been re-ripping hundreds of CDs from my collection - many of which date back to the infancy of the format itself. To date I've found none with any issues. All have ripped perfectly. Jeff
Then this aptly-titled track and disc rip attempt, another "SRC" master, ought to give you goose bumps. Warning, turn volume way down! wtf-disc.flac
I was just about to say, is it made in Japan by JVC with a 'T' in the matrix, but the dates don't match and the ones on discogs are made by Denon anyhow.
I find it's Polygram that have the largest number of pinholes. I'm surprised you are having a problem with a Nimbus disc, even an unwashed sticky one (a washed sticky one is a different matter; but maybe all sticky ones go bad eventually).
And you don't know how it was stored. I tend to avoid the sticky Nimbuses for aesthetic reasons if nothing else. I just hate that sticky surface which inevitably gets covered in dust.
Could Caselogic be part of the problem. I've only stored CDRs in such cases. CDs are stored in their original cases and never played outside the home.
I have hundreds and hundreds of CDs since 1990 and I have only had one CD ever go bad on me, it was the original Jimi Hendrix experience axis bold as love. Real shame too because that's a classic
That's an excellent point. You buy a used CD that's visually a VG+/NM- from a local shop or reputable dealer on Discogs; who knows- it could have been sitting in a boiling hot attic for years or even decades before it got to you.
Don't think so. I've cranked several dozen more discs page-by-page through two drives to finally report another small error after 48x burst mode - and no pinholes: "Offspring-Smash" churned in my Toshiba-Samsung set to "silent mode" for 15 minutes also for two sample errors (vs even worse results full speed), but it is of different provenance and condition before going to the case (and also had 33 of 1500 that matched my rip).
I take care of my CDs (about 5,000 of them) and I have never had one go bad. There were some that I had trouble with playing from the start, and a few that stubbornly refuse to be ripped (probably some copyright protection), but none have simply gone bad sitting on the shelf. There are two types of problems people report: the pinhole problem discussed above and "bronzing." Bronzing involves the CD becoming darker in color--a bronze or copper color--starting at the outer edge and moving inward. This is a problem attributed to a UK pressing plant of a company named PDO that used bad varnish in the manufacturing process. The varnish allowed in air that caused the darkening oxidation. I have been lucky so far in avoiding trouble. I have also ripped all of my CDs to a server and I maintain two backup hard drives in addition to the one in the server. This should, I hope, preserve my collection for a very long time.
