CD Rot

[MylesBAstor]

Have to say that I have CDs going back to the dawn of the digital era and never seen this phenomena? Anyone have CDs thusly affected?

[Steve Lefkowicz]

I've seen this on old data and program disks that I didn't store well out in the garage, but not on any music CDs yet. Then again, the music CDs have always been stored on shelves in my listening room.

[1morerecord2clean]

Looks like a victim of Hurricane Sandy.

[Albert Porter]

I've had a few rotten CDs......... but no CDs with rot.

[JCOConnell]

you mean CDS with little pinholes you can see thru when you hold the disc up to the light? Yup, Ive had plenty of those.

[jonathanb]

Was that one of those cd's that were Armor-All'd by Sam Tellig?

[dan31]

i have a few. They seem to be contained to early 90's procurement.

[MylesBAstor]

Was that one of those cd's that were Armor-All'd by Sam Tellig?

[Tapetech]

Pinholes in the CD are not CD rot. I have never seen any CDs with rot. It's mostly a myth. Extremely rare. And the ones that do have rot are likely counterfeits made in sub-standard factories.

[MylesBAstor]

Pinholes in the CD are not CD rot. I have never seen any CDs with rot. It's mostly a myth. Extremely rare. And the ones that do have rot are likely counterfeits made in sub-standard factories.

Glad you brought it up. That's exactly what crossed my mind when I read that piece.

But I assume there was some truth to the story about laser discs?

Yes and were not talking pinholes although interesting as time went on and they tried to make the CD ROMs cheaper and cheaper, they had more and more pinholes. I remember Bob Ludwig bemoaning that fact and in fact, he quantitated it.

[regnaD kciN]

Out of several thousand CDs, I've had it happen on a handful of discs; mainly the infamous PDO "bronzing." I've had a couple of problems with pinholes, including one on a The Art of the Japanese Koto & Bamboo Flute CD belonging to my wife which I was just attempting to rip this past week.(anyone have a copy of Dorchester DRC VGR 9019 I could borrow? ;-) ). And I had one used CD purchased on eBay that had a whole patch of aluminum missing -- needless to say, I got a refund on that purchase. But I've had more problems with DVDs than CDs. In fact, there was one series of Universal DVDs from early 1998 where they released a whole bunch of titles (Apollo 13, Brazil, Dragonheart, and several others) on the same day that ware all manufactured improperly -- I bought most of the titles they put out that day, and each and every disc eventually bronzed and went bad.

In recent years, when it comes to CDs, I make a point of ripping them to FLAC with EAC as quickly as possible and storing them on a server with multiple backups to portable hard-drives, each tested at regular intervals.

[MylesBAstor]

Out of several thousand CDs, I've had it happen on a handful of discs; mainly the infamous PDO "bronzing." I've had a couple of problems with pinholes, including one on a The Art of the Japanese Koto & Bamboo Flute CD belonging to my wife which I was just attempting to rip this past week.(anyone have a copy of Dorchester DRC VGR 9019 I could borrow? ;-) ). And I had one used CD purchased on eBay that had a whole patch of aluminum missing -- needless to say, I got a refund on that purchase. But I've had more problems with DVDs than CDs. In fact, there was one series of Universal DVDs from early 1998 where they released a whole bunch of titles (Apollo 13, Brazil, Dragonheart, and several others) on the same day that ware all manufactured improperly -- I bought most of the titles they put out that day, and each and every disc eventually bronzed and went bad.

In recent years, when it comes to CDs, I make a point of ripping them to FLAC with EAC as quickly as possible and storing them on a server with multiple backups to portable hard-drives, each tested at regular intervals.

I'd put pinholes in a different category. Bob Ludwig was complaining, back when I visited in 1999 or 2000, about the pinholes in CD-ROMs he wsa sending albums on for making CDs. Bob mentioned (and he did measure pinholes) that the number of pinholes in blank CDs increased dramatically as blank CDs became mass produced. And he felt it made a difference in the sonic outcome too.