I thought it was a gimmick but for $30 I figured it was worth a shot considering all the old ruined cd's I have.
So far I've repaired about 7 cd's, 2 of which wouldn't even start at all, and a few had some songs that wouldn't start. Now they all play pretty well. These things were so bad you could see through them in a starry sky pattern. Scratches everywhere. Only one cd was completely repaired, and it only had one bad spot, but it was so bad that it prohibited playing the last half of one song and the next song completely.
THE REAL TRICK FOR A COMPLETE REPAIR: After repairing the cd's, they played a million times better- afterall some wouldn't even start- but still had some skips and one actually had a crackly sound in places, very much like a scratchy LP. I read them onto my harddrive and I guess since it wasn't required to play back in real time and I set the software to 100% error correction, it could take the time to find the correct info or compensate somehow.
Now the tracks play back with no skips, but the one is still crackly. I burned them to CD-R so now have perfect cd repair from cd's which were essentially worthless.
Also, one track was so bad the computer seemed to lock-up while reading it at one point, so I recorded it from my outboard CD player RCA's into my Delta 1010 and just hit the search button when it started skipping in that one spot. In Logic, I cut that spot out and pasted the pieces back together. Not perfect, but not bad either. The extra generation of DA/AD conversion didn't seem to effect it, but then I didn't really listen too critically.
I've since come upon another track that seemed to lockup, but I was more patient and waited. It took about 5 minutes to get past this one spot but it got it. Perfect playback!
Man, I forgot how great that old Al Green's Greatest Hits CD is!!
So far I've repaired about 7 cd's, 2 of which wouldn't even start at all, and a few had some songs that wouldn't start. Now they all play pretty well. These things were so bad you could see through them in a starry sky pattern. Scratches everywhere. Only one cd was completely repaired, and it only had one bad spot, but it was so bad that it prohibited playing the last half of one song and the next song completely.
THE REAL TRICK FOR A COMPLETE REPAIR: After repairing the cd's, they played a million times better- afterall some wouldn't even start- but still had some skips and one actually had a crackly sound in places, very much like a scratchy LP. I read them onto my harddrive and I guess since it wasn't required to play back in real time and I set the software to 100% error correction, it could take the time to find the correct info or compensate somehow.
Now the tracks play back with no skips, but the one is still crackly. I burned them to CD-R so now have perfect cd repair from cd's which were essentially worthless.
Also, one track was so bad the computer seemed to lock-up while reading it at one point, so I recorded it from my outboard CD player RCA's into my Delta 1010 and just hit the search button when it started skipping in that one spot. In Logic, I cut that spot out and pasted the pieces back together. Not perfect, but not bad either. The extra generation of DA/AD conversion didn't seem to effect it, but then I didn't really listen too critically.
I've since come upon another track that seemed to lockup, but I was more patient and waited. It took about 5 minutes to get past this one spot but it got it. Perfect playback!
Man, I forgot how great that old Al Green's Greatest Hits CD is!!