CD treatments
-- Thu, 12/18/2008 - 21:14
There are many CD treatments offered...such as Audio Desk lathe...to trim the edges...they just introduced a cleaner/polisher....there are also a number of cleaners/polishers on the market....does anyone have experience...comments on these devices. I ask this because my local dealer "cleaned" one of my "dirty....scratched CDs" from Mosaic....and not only did scratch/skip go away...boy does it sound better....any thoughts from folks out there....am I deceiving myself or does this approach make sense...???
John
The best thing to do is slow-burn copies of your CDs to gold CDRs. Then use a disc solution / finalizer like that reviewed by Robert Harley in TAS earlier this year. This is a one-time (only) application. Finally, you should de-magnetize your discs between plays. This is easy...and it works.
I don't know if TAS reviewers do all these things - but they should, as long as they are not using hardisk or memory for their digital-drive......
It's a mystery why some of these disc-treatment products work, but in my experience, they can improve the sound. I'm working on a story on different CD substrate materials (including glass), and will have a full report in an upcoming issue.
Sounds interesting. In my experience the treatments all do something, but whether they improve the sound is subject to debate. Some roll off the highs, perhaps in an effort to reduce digititis.
Brian Walsh
Essential Audio ~ Chicago area ~ (773) 809-HIFI
Does anyone have anything other than annecdotal evidence that these types of solutions actually improves the sound quality? I've tried a couple, and imagine theres a difference, but certainly couldn't tell in a blind test. While I'm not a DBT proponent by any means, the technical side of me debates the viability of these solutions.
As far as I know, there can only be two aspects that these solutions can help with;
(1) allows the CD transport to read the information off the disc with less errors, and
(2) thus potentially reducing the "jitter" in the CD transport's synchronous digital stream because of lesser re-reads.
However, (1) has been proven time and time again to be a non-issue even with the cheapest of CD transports. But no one seems to have spent any time exploring (2) - perhaps this is something TAS can explore?
I should also note that instead of de-magnetizing our discs between plays, we can blow ions (yes, ions) on to the disc with Acoustic Revive's negative ion "blower". First reports of this technique are very promising.
One would think that with CDRs, finalizer solutions, ion treatment and good footing/support, hardisk playback suddenly doesn't look like the big advance it was purported to be.........
Interesting....I never paid any attention to CD treatments until I went to my local dealer (interestingly enough I work with Ivan who wrote a letter to TAS a few months ago)...for something/treatment...to clean/fix several problems CDs I had. Ivan kindly cleaned it...I offered to buy some of the stuff...but alas it seems there is a small market...at least in Raleigh...thus making it hard for a dealer to stock and sell these type of products. Thus I went on to look around at what is available from the market...I purchased three items:
1. a cleaner/clarifier product....in all cases it seem to make the mid range better defined...and if bass was in the recording...obviously go deeper
2. purchased a Audio Disk lathe...which rounds the CD, lets you put 38degree angle on edge...then apply a black mask on edge....seems to provide a further improvement....pleasantly surprised.....
3. lastly...and most silly sounding...is an Acoustic Revive demag unit for CD....all by itself...it provides additional improvement as to clarity....
all of these steps move things to a more natural...musical sound that I enjoy...I am glad I went down this path...which for me never would have seemed logical a few months ago
John
Thanks for sharing that experience. I recently acquired pairs of discs that contain the same data, but pressed on different substrate materials (including glass). I'll have a full report in an upcoming issue.
Whatever happened to the technique of applying green ink to the edge of cds? This was a hot topic years ago. I tried it but couldn't tell any difference. If it did improve the sound then either my hearing wasn't good enough or my system wasn't or a combination of both.
Shine O La works pretty good.
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