CD Sound

Does putting labels of Tape, or Paper on cds and dvds mess with the balance and speed of the cd (sacd, dvd, and blry) players? I was thinking of music speeds and distortion. This may be an irrelevant question but I figured this was the place to ask. Folks spend a lot of money trying to get the best sound and videos.

What do you think? Any thoughts?

 

No, I very much doubt that this would have any impact on rotational speed, and even if it did which I doubt but can't prove, buffering would eliminate it.

I'd be more worried the stuff I was sticking on the disks fell off and fouled up the internals than any sound quality impacts.

 

It won't cause distortion. Not at least in an analog manner. Reading of the data off a disc is based on clocks and timing of receiving the information. What will happen is error loss will occur. Modern player do have buffers, but, buffers can be depleted. If the buffers are depleted, the data is read real time. Information is lost because timings are off. Voids in the data exist will exist. This will result not in a distorted sound as the tones are presented as it has been read. But tones will be incomplete. Harmonics will be lost or at least be incomplete.

 

A CD spinning at 500RPM (1x speed at the center) experiences 50 g acceleration at the edge of the disc. A DVD takes that up to 300g. That means a 0.1 oz sticker on one side can be more like a pound of force pulling out on one side of the disk. If the motor suspension has enough compliance, eventually this will give enough eccentricity to tracking the spiral groove that the laser mechanism must also wobble (beyond what the positioning voice coils allow) to follow the groove and errors may result.

 

I never put any stickers or anything other than Sharpy ink writing on my CDR's. Some brands of CDR's like the one pictured below which I use offer a space to write but I also write over the entire face with no problems.
I never write or put anything on factory pressed commercial music CD's.

 

I would be more worried about Laser defraction then weight.

 

No, unless it disrupts playback altogether.

It's digital. The data defines the music, end of story. "Tweaking" as in the analogue world is therefore pointless. The only thing that makes a sonical difference is the DAC, and hopefully very little.

 

Tell that to the crowd over at AudiophileStyle (a.k.a. ComputerAudiophile).

 

I bought a bunch of cds from a Salvation Army Store and I noticed some had a lot of tape on them with a marker. When they use that kind of tape it's sticky, it even leaves sticky glue on the disk. I'm not as technical as some of you folks are in here. I guess it's more a cosmetic problem, but I do know folks who are always tweaking their systems. Thanks for the replies, I appreciate your thoughts.

 

That's one of the reasons I don't put anything on commercial release CD's because I might want to sell them and get a good price for them. The less used, the more valuable.

Also I have two slit? slot? loading CD players where I have to push the CD in the slot and wait for something to grab it and pull it in and there's always some loud clunky sounding mechanism that makes it sound like it's having a tough time loading the CD. I just don't want anything that's the thickness of paper or tape to add to the complexity of whatever is going on with the slot loading CD player.

 

I have messed with many of those ideas. Such as carbon stabilizer discs and all that stuff.

You know... this kind of things:



I even own some cds that the previous owner painted with a green sharpie... whatever you name.


I never experienced any difference. Nothing made the sound better. And nothing made the sound worse.

However, it´s still fun to try all this "voodoo" stuff.

If tomorrow somebody says on this forum that burying their cds on their backyard for 4 weeks enhanced the bass frequencies, I´d probably try it just for fun.

 

When the Playstation 2 was released back in 2000 or so, most of the games were made with DVDs, but there were a few in the first year or so of the console's existence that were made on CD-ROMs as the console could read either disc. A CD (at least in a PS2) is spun at a much higher speed to read the disc than a DVD.

Over time, many of the early PS2 consoles had developed difficulty reading the CDs. The most common problem is that the CDs will actually shift around inside the disc drive, almost bouncing up and down slightly as it were. This is not a problem with DVDs.

Now, to remedy this problem, techy guys have been known to open the disc drive and adjust the piece that holds the disc in place, making a snugger fit. But I found that sticking a layer or two of clear packing tape on the top of the CDs worked just as well, and the discs were able to be read perfectly after.

Now, whether that layer of tape is causing the disc to slow down slightly, or just give it the extra bit of girth it needed for a snugger fit in the disc drive, I'm not sure, but it worked for me. And I posted this solution on a Sony Playstation message board about 10 years ago or so, and others had good luck with it as well.

I realize this isn't quite what you were asking about in your OP, but I thought my results were somewhat applicable here. And I wanted to point out that CDs, at least in the computer realm (not sure about music discs), were spun at a much faster rate than their DVD counterparts.

 

Hey, it's all good, thanks for your post.

 

While we're on the subject I was wondering if anyone's seen CD's with their playing sides completely black as in the group Darkside's "Psychic" CD album seen in the pic I took below.
The sound quality is top shelf. There's even high frequencies that play as ambience effects that I'm suspecting are near 15Khz or there abouts.

The other side is matte black so nothing can be written on it that would be readable.

 

The thrift store put sticky price labels on the label side of the disc itself?

That would be a bummer if they did. Because that leaves you with a conundrum about whether to leave the labels on the disc or try to remove them. The label side of the disc is not as thick or durable as the play side. The label side is actually more susceptible to getting scratches and damage that will make the disc unplayable. So I'd be a bit paranoid about trying to remove the stickers from the play side. I'd likely leave them on unless they're really easy to remove. And if I did remove them I wouldn't try to clean off the sticky goo left behind. So I'd likely just leave the stickers on.

Many libraries put lots of stickers on the play side of the disc. And some are now using RFID tags that they stick to the play side of the disc. The RFID tags have thin metal antennas in them so are heavier than plain paper stickers. My local library does that. That extra off-center weight of the RFID tag hasn't caused me any problems when playing those CDs.

 

Pits is pits. No difference between black and silver discs. I have several commercially-released on the black and they’re wonderful. You can also buy them as blanks if that revs your engine.

 

All Playstation 1 games were like that.

There are many theories. Some people say that it was to prevent piracy, and some others say it was to make the discs look "cooler". I´m still curious to know what was the real reason behind that choice.

As music cds, they´re pretty cool and rare.

I only remember a Black Crowes cd being like the one you posted: This one

 

I've put sticker labels on DVD's I've made. Didn't seem to affect anything, but were talking DVD's here not CD quality.

 

You know I didn't ask, I thought the original owners labeled it, I've never seen the store do it before. I'm sure they will if the prices vary. I'm not going to buy them, they will probably be gone before my 5 year cycle. I don't want to be tempted to buy junk, even if it's cheap.

 

I'd buy a used CD that had a sticky label on it if I wanted that album and the price was right and if I made a judgement call that the label is not too big thick or heavy to cause problems. I'm an audiophile. But not too picky about everything (some things yes, but others I'll let slide). I'd be more concerned if I had a slot loading CD drive. Because labels on the play side can cause the CD to get stuck in the slot drive sometimes. All my CD drives and players are tray loading.

I'm also primarily computer as source. So I rip everything. As long as the CD survives the ripping process and gets me a clean rip I'm good.

 

I've used Goo Gone to remove price stickers and any other kind of tape that left a sticky residue. Fortunately that's been rare but I do have concern that any kind of solvent might remove the backing ink that appear to be screen print plastisol inks. I used to work in screen print shops where they had to use brake cleaning fluid type solvent to remove any ink that dripped on t-shirts and caps and other fabric based items.

 

Kind of off-topic, but you reminded me of my first CD player (quite a horrible one even though it was made by Pioneer).
This was back in the late 80s and there were a lot of CD magazines circulating with odd advice about improving this new digital sound.
A very popular tip was to place a second CD on top of the one you wanted to play. I think the theory was it acted as a stabilizer or something.

I did this for almost a year (until I got a better machine) and it did seem to improve the sound. I used a very scratched and fairly useless CD for this purpose. Maybe the sound improvement was my imagination - much like the green sharpie effect?

The CD trays back then had room for two discs but most of today's models have very shallow trays (mine do anyway) and I wouldn't even consider sticking a tiny label on any disc I wanted to play.
As someone observed above, it would be quite easy for the label to come off and gum up the works.

 

I have a slot loading Pioneer car cd player I bought and installed myself in '98 where the internal mechanisms aren't as loud as my slot loading 2010 MacMini.

The only thing I have to do with the Pioneer is run a lazer lens cleaning disc by GE I bought at Walmart. I run it any time CD's won't start to play and just get ejected. I can first hear the mechanical components cycling as if I kept re-inserting the disc until on the third time the player just spits it out. One go round with the GE lens cleaner and I'm good to go.

 

No, but adhesive labels can destroy the CD in time...and Sharpies also can be harmful to some CDs...

 

Thanks for the responses, I learned something.