CD static

[dobro]

I just listened to a CD I burned in December. It has loads of what sounds like static, like a scratchy old vinyl LP. I listened to other CDs I burned of exactly the same material at the same time, and they're clean. I used Philips disks.

Has this happened to anyone? Or just to me?

[Emeric]

You didn't leave it on top of a speaker or something? I don't know, maybe that particuliar disk was defective and degraded in that period of time. I've read some horrer stories of some cd media lasting a very short period, like 3 weeks. Hard to believe. I'm assuming it wasn't scratchy in the first place.

[drstawl]

Wow- that's scary. Even moreso when you consider hixmix's statement in this thread:

http://homerecording.com/bbs/showthr...threadid=22952

about the promise of new technology turning out to be the same old bullshit. All that hype about how digital could never degrade like the old vinyl did because there was no physical contact with the media during playback. It sounded so reasonable, and maybe one day it will actually happen.

This is much more distressing than coaster production.

[dobro]

Hey, fear not, brudders. My life's a chaos of technology, not a scientific conclusion based on reason and experiment. I had a handful of disks propped up between what I think is a defunct computer speaker and my printer, but my understanding from a recent thread about CDs is that magnetic fields don't affect them. One disk went haywire, and the other two are fine. Or it could have been my CD burner for all I know. I wander amazed through realms of hardware that I have little understanding of. There's a line in the Tao Te Ching that goes something like 'from wonder into wonder existence opens'. That sums up my experience of all the new technology, really. If it hasn't happened to anybody else, it isn't important.

[Roel]

Did you use rewritable or write-once disks? They are both based on a totally different -what's-the-word- thingy.

CDR's are based on an organic material that gets 'burned' by the laser, and turns 'black' (non-reflective). After a very long time the material burns totally. (The same way as paper turns yellow and even black after a very long time. It 'burns' even at room-temperature.)

CDRW's are based on a cristalline material. The laser melts it, and it cools very fast, so that it doesn't have the time to cristallize again. It leaves a amorph (non-reflective) space. In time, it will cristallize again, but very slowly. (about 40 years at least, if I remember correctly, and if you live in the sahara... ) This proces can be fastened by the laser on half-power, heating it untill just under it's melting point.

So you see: these aren't everlasting recordings. What is meant is that they don't degrade by playback, as vinyl does! They will degrade over time. But you can play them as much as you want. (This isn't true either. During playback they warm up too, thus fastening the degradation-process...)

Roel (wasting 8hours/day testing proto-types of future CD-DVD (encoder/decoder) chips.)

[ametth]

just out of curiousity, did you write on any of these disks with a magic marker?

[TaxMan88]

To my favorite oriental resonator:

I've had that happen to me as well. Actually, I find TDK DATA CDRs to be the MOST reliable followed up by Philips and then Sony.

I burned a friend a couple of CDs for his car and they worked for about 2 weeks then started skipping, sounding scratchy, and the like. On the other hand, I've burned myself disks that I've played through hundreds of times without flaw. I guess it's pretty much a crap shoot when it comes to CDRs. Just don't leave them in the sun! hehe

--Tax

[ruebarb]

I've had those things degrade in my car stereo, esp. when using the CompUSuck ones. (Compusa) - It would sound like the audio was going bad, but only in my Ford Pickup. Very strange.

[regebro]

Originally posted by drstawl
All that hype about how digital could never degrade like the old vinyl did because there was no physical contact with the media during playback. It sounded so reasonable, and maybe one day it will actually happen.

I never heard those claims. What I heard was that it wouldn't SCRATCH. That wasn't strictly true, but face it, its a LOT better than vinyl.

And no, you will never get stuff that doesn't degrade. It's the inevatable end of everything. However, the less energy you use to store each piece of information the easier it will degrade. We are, as we always have been, stuck with copying everything into new mediums to save it.
Old scrolls have been copied to parchment that we have made paper books of that now can be found on the interne. Thats life.

[gaffa]

dobro,

Had a similar problem a while ago - a freshly burnt disk (Kodak), no writing, burner in good nick etc. and the bloody thing had all manner of static on it.

I stuffed around for a while trying a few different things, burnt two more static disks (they sort of got more and more static after about the 35 min. mark), and then suddenly I got a perfect burn. Same source files, same burner, same batch of disks.

No apparent rhyme or reason, and the problem is that I spent ages tweaking stuff, so I'm not sure what I changed to fix it. I was using the Nero software at the time.

In the end I put it down to a dodgy disk or two, but I don't think that was the problem.

- gaffa

[dobro]

Roel - I used CDRs.

ametth - I used the same marker on all three disks. One went fritzy, the other two are clean.

Everyone - thanks for the response. It's good to know it doesn't happen only to me, then. What I'd like now is a CD burner program that can check the disk I've just burned for the integrity of the burn. (You know: "Sorry, pardner, sunspot activity rendered your recent burn unlistenable. Insert a new disk and try again.")

[pglewis]

Did you listen to all three disks right after burning 'em? Could it have been one bad burn and not degradation?

[dobro]

pg - No. Yes.

[TaxMan88]

Gaffa:
I had the same problem with the Nero software. You're right it wasn't the disks. It was the software (at least in my case and it's sounding like yours too).

Dobro:
Adaptec Easy CD creator is what I use now and I haven't had ANY problems with it. NONE. AND, it has a "Test and Create CD" option on it which does just what you want it to do. It TESTS the CD before it CREATES it.

Hope I've done some good in Metropolis
--Tax

[Roel]

The test and CD option doesn't really do much but wasting your time. It cannot burn anything while testing (or your cd would allready be gone), so what it atually does is just pretending it is writing, without putting on the laser. This will check if you have buffering probs, or if your disk is big enough (which it allready knows...) but that's about it. Won't tell you anything about the quality of the disk.

So, if you haven't had buffering problems in the past (you'll notice, clicks on the CD, or a CD that just crashes in the middle of the writting), don't be affraid not to waste your time on the test option...

Saving your time...
Roel

[TaxMan88]

I never said I USED the test function, I just said that it was AVAILABLE.

--Tax

[kristian]

ive used nero and only one disk has had this static effect. but its only on my old discman. it sounds fine everywhere else.