Is your music safe on a compact disc?

[Gothic Sponge]

Compact discs were sold as the durable alternative to vinyl - but anyone who opens the case of an ageing CD may be in for a nasty surprise.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3940669.stm

[DemBones DemBones]

1. Figures, doesn't it? We keep embracing "progress" but it's not

always what we hoped for.

I remember our eight-track tapes and player -- what a bad joke that was!

[Kellanved]

3. at least DVDs are probably better

While a CD has only a thin sheet of pain to protect the reflective layer (and the data), a DVD has 0.6 mm of polycarbonate.

On the downside, nobody knows yet if and how the different glues will age...

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. a thin sheet of pain?

Sounds so positively...um....like German expressionism.

:-)

[Kellanved]

12. can I buy a 't'?

Anyway, it is often a pain. And "layer" would probably have been a better word than "sheet".

Well, I obviously wasn't up to speed this AM and was waiting for a team to fix the heating installation - as they were two hours late, "pain" was certainly on my mind.

;-)

[Aristus]

13. Well, as Dennis Miller once said (back in the Jurassic Era

when he was a smart, angry voice for the left, hard to believe, huh?): Leave it to our Teutonic friends, the Germans, to concoct an intricate glossary of pain terminology.

Just giving you a hard time, Kel. ;-)

[lapfog_1]

2. Actually this only scratches the surface (so to speak)

I was on an IEEE committee looking into long term archival
technologies... and here is the main problem:

Even if you came up with a very durable medium for storage, it is
probable that the hardware and software systems required to read
the data from the media will no longer be viable in less than 10
years from the time of recording.

In other words, that 8 track tape you got might be good for 50 years,
but that doesn't make it any more useful.

The only answer we came up with is... copy it forward (to new
media and technology) frequently.

[noonwitch]

5. The sound quality on some of my cds has decreased with time

Not all of them.

[arwalden]

6. I Had "Worm Trails" Eaten Into A CD Of Mine... Rendering It Unplayable

It was my Natalie Cole CD (Unforgettable) and the "worm trails" started at the outer edge and worked in toward the center. It reminded me of the little tunnels you see in toy 'ant-farm' terrariums.

I wonder if it was something "ALIVE" that was eating its way through the foil layer... or if it was just a chemical reaction or oxidation that followed a random path of least resistance.

-- Allen

[Magrittes Pipe]

7. And people think I'm odd for preferring vinyl.

:eyes:

[chenGOD]

8. Yeah cause vinyl never scratches or degrades...

No media is infallible, and the vinyl/CD debate will not be determined by this. In fact I have CDs from 1990 that still play as well as they did the day I bought them. And you know that every time you play a vinyl record, you are scraping away some of the audio "information".

[Magrittes Pipe]

9. Good stylus + care = (almost) immortal record.

I also have CDs from 1990 that play as well as ever. I have records from the '50s that play as well as ever.

I have no doubt that technology will eventually afford us a virtually indestructable recording medium; and we will eventually have digital storage media that are (as nearly as can be discerned by human ears) -- we are already getting close with SACD.

Nonetheless, I will always prefer vinyl, for personal aesthetic reasons -- cover art is better in 12" than in 5", it's a much more tactile experience, putting the needle on the record, records just smell better....

[ProfessorGAC]

11. Sorry, Not True

The vinyl used for record is only partially crosslinked, and is a low density PVC. Because of this, it still retains modest fluid properties. This means the the grooves flow essentially forever. So, the grooves get increasingly wider and shallower over time.

No amount of care can stop the simple physical chemistry that causes this. It's just a fact of polymer chemistry.
The Professor

[Beware the Beast Man]

10. Heck, I've had Mp3s "scratch"

It's the worst noise in the world, especially with headphones.

[Mara Steele]

14. Still have my suspicions that these technological

"improvements" and updates are for little more than profit...

Video to DVD, tape to CD...

I don't know... I just don't get excited about these things. I'll probably have a VCR for some time to come still...

:shrug: