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Journal jawtheshark's Journal: CD's are eternal 14

Journal by jawtheshark
My Ass!!! Bah! I'm trying to play all my old CD's because I want to rip them all (just take a small stack to work, rip them on the iBook while working - lot's of work now, production phase is next week) Now, I found out that one of my favourite CD's for playing the car doesn't work anymore. Not on my stereo, nor in my iBook. Last two tracks are absolutely broken. I would understand this if I were a careless bastard and threw it around the apartment, but I don't. It had been sitting in it's box, and there are no visible scratches on it (the CD that is). I'm pretty sure it still worked last time I used it. I don't understand how this is possible. Bit-rot? Yeah, surely.

Since I bought a license I should be able to get a replacement disk ;-) However it's not a major label. The CD is called "Compendium" from "Wamdue Project", a Belgian group as far as I know. You must have heard of it, because they used the last battle scene in Ghost In The Shell in their music video.

Anyways, contrast this to my (also well treated) Pink Floyd CD's that still work perfectly after 10 years. Unpredictable, that damned bit-rot. (And no, I never make backups of my music CD's but I'm tempted to do that now).

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CD's are eternal

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  • Temperature changes might contribute to the problem, also being in direct sunlight.
    • I am known not to change the CD's in my loader often. But it worked when I took it out... pretty sure of that. After all, this is the music you need to listen to above 200kmh drives ;-)

      However, it could be that.. Not sunlight, because it was in the loader all the time. Temp changes... Time to get all my CD's out of that damned loader ;-)

      • I only keep copies in the car, now. Part of the issue is degradation, but the big motivator was having a case with 20 of my favorite CDs disappear out of the car. I thought that the car was locked all of the time, but... Fortunately, I had ripped about half of them, but it was still a pain.
  • When I was archiving my collection I just ripped those songs in "burst" mode or whatever didn't check for errors. It was a crappy copy, but still the best copy I had. Always the last track or two. Fortunately I later tracked down most of them in FLAC and was able to replace the archives.
  • I've heard some good things about Exact Audio Copy as a tool for resurrecting the un-resurrectable. I haven't tried it myself (although I should on my "Hatful of Hollow" disc) but what have you got to lose [exactaudiocopy.de]?
  • I'd recommend that as a course of action, especially if you frequently have passengers in your car. The first thing I do when I get a new CD is make a copy. The original goes back in its case and the copy goes in my car. In my eyes, protecting the original from damage is really only a secondary motivator. CD-R's tend to get damaged more easily anyway.

    Theft is a huge problem here because of the proximity to Mexico and the large student population. Copying 30 CD's over again is much easier/cheaper than
    • Passengers? In an Audi TT? Are you kidding? I should take the sames stance as you do, CD-R's are easier replaced. However today I was looking for some Audio CD's (in a supermarket, while I was buying groceries). All of them don't bear the CD-Audio logo anymore, but some strange "copy protected" logo. Guess most CD's here have become unripable.

      Well, it guaranteed to work on normal stereo's, and PC's (I assume, with installing special soft, which I would refuse anyway). Macs are out, and anythinging

  • i've had limited success with CD paranoia.

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