Unplayable CDs

Today was a first for me; I found my first unplayable CD!!! I've heard the legends, most only about CDr's, that some CD's become unplayable over the years. Well, today it happened to one of my CD's. I'm currently in the process of ripping all my CD's to a harddrive, and today I am adding my Mortification discs. I started to rip my "EnVision EvAngelene" CD, but after 4 songs it just stopped! This had never happened before, so I tried it 2 more times. Then I took it out, thinking it mght be smudged, but there it was: The print on the CD looked like it had been bleeding through to the playable side of the disc! Everything outside the David star could be seen as spotty parts from the silver side of the disc!!! Man, I am bummed. Now I have to rebuy another CD!

You know, it's interesting, because I still have a couple CDs I purchased in the late 80's...and even though alot of the silver has come off and you can see about 40 pinholes of light through them...they still play.

I haven't experienced actual CD Rot that made a disc unplayable yet.

I even have the first CDR I ever made, from 1998 and it plays fine.

kmorg wrote:

Today was a first for me; I found my first unplayable CD!!! I've heard the legends, most only about CDr's, that some CD's become unplayable over the years. Well, today it happened to one of my CD's. I'm currently in the process of ripping all my CD's to a harddrive, and today I am adding my Mortification discs. I started to rip my "EnVision EvAngelene" CD, but after 4 songs it just stopped! This had never happened before, so I tried it 2 more times. Then I took it out, thinking it mght be smudged, but there it was: The print on the CD looked like it had been bleeding through to the playable side of the disc! Everything outside the David star could be seen as spotty parts from the silver side of the disc!!! Man, I am bummed. Now I have to rebuy another CD!

i have a Slammin' Watusis cd that stops after the first few minutes of the 2nd song. the side with no print looks very milky & whitish. only cd i've ever seen do this.

I have never seen it either - all my early days cdrs are still working..

MOST CDRS I'VE MADE ARE JUST COLLECTING DUST OR ARE GONE. I PUT ALL MUSIC IN MY COMPUTER FOR THAT VERY REASON SO I STILL HAVE THE MUSIC IF THE HARD COPY IS INOPPERABLE. TAKES UP A LOT OF SPACE BUT SINCE MY 60% OF MY COMPUTER USAGE INVOLVES MUSIC (35% FOR INTERNET AND 5% FOR GAMES & PICTURES) IT'S WORTH IT.

ONE OF THESE DAYS I MAY COME ACCROSS AN UNPLAYABLE ONE BUT I HAVEN'T YET.

DB, get an external hard drive and back up that computer. Hard Drives fail much faster than CDRs. In fact, on average they only last about 5 years.

I have 2 redundant backups of my music, stored at separate locations, so in case the place I live in ever catches fire or something, it doesn't burn up both my orignal computer AND my backups.

You can never have too many copies of a digital file.

As soon as I get around to it, I'll buy cloud storage space and that will become another backup, then someone else can maintain that backup for me.

Shawn D. wrote:

DB, get an external hard drive and back up that computer. Hard Drives fail much faster than CDRs. In fact, on average they only last about 5 years.

I have 2 redundant backups of my music, stored at separate locations, so in case the place I live in ever catches fire or something, it doesn't burn up both my orignal computer AND my backups.

You can never have too many copies of a digital file.

As soon as I get around to it, I'll buy cloud storage space and that will become another backup, then someone else can maintain that backup for me.

Agree - I have my music on two separate hard drives! You can get them cheap now!

thejokeriv wrote:

Agree - I have my music on two separate hard drives! You can get them cheap now!

Best advice I ever got on that. If you have a safety deposit box at the bank, store one of your hard drives there, then you can "swap it out" with a more recent backup. Safety Deposit boxes are the most secure places on the planet and are fire-proof, water proof and under lock and key.

I have a couple of CDs that won't play in the little piece of sh*t boom box that I keep on my desk at work (Helloween's GAMBLING WITH THE DEVIL and W.A.S.P.'s ANIMAL/LIVE...ANIMAL) but they play fine in my car stereo, my players at home, etc.

On the flip side, I have a couple of other CDs (Slayer's WORLD PAINTED BLOOD is one, I can't think of the other off the top of my head) that won't play at all in my car stereo, but they work fine everywhere else, including that boom box.

So are my CD players getting pickier, or are CD manufacturers slackin' on the quality control side nowadays?

Fat Freddy wrote:

I have a couple of CDs that won't play in the little piece of sh*t boom box that I keep on my desk at work (Helloween's GAMBLING WITH THE DEVIL and W.A.S.P.'s ANIMAL/LIVE...ANIMAL) but they play fine in my car stereo, my players at home, etc.

On the flip side, I have a couple of other CDs (Slayer's WORLD PAINTED BLOOD is one, I can't think of the other off the top of my head) that won't play at all in my car stereo, but they work fine everywhere else, including that boom box.

So are my CD players getting pickier, or are CD manufacturers slackin' on the quality control side nowadays?

I think manufacturers are slacking. Like if you look at CDs from the late 80s early 90s its just a perfect silver, but I was looking at a bottom of a CD that I bought around 2008 and it came with a weird bubbling blotch on the data side that looked like it had a liquid spilled on it underneath the surface..weird.

Never had a CD stop playing for me though.

Shawn D. wrote:

DB, get an external hard drive and back up that computer. Hard Drives fail much faster than CDRs. In fact, on average they only last about 5 years.

I have 2 redundant backups of my music, stored at separate locations, so in case the place I live in ever catches fire or something, it doesn't burn up both my orignal computer AND my backups.

You can never have too many copies of a digital file.

As soon as I get around to it, I'll buy cloud storage space and that will become another backup, then someone else can maintain that backup for me.

THANKS, BUT I'VE GOT IT COVERED. A WHILE BACK I GOT A 1TB HARD DRIVE TO BACK UP MY MUSIC AND I KEEP IT IN A FIRE PROOF SAFE.

Besides some labels using copyright protection, some cd's just fail to be be read by certain players or drives.

Like some discs I have, dvd's or cd's, if were scratched, have a hard time playing on many players.

I just have to keep trying as many programs as possible if a new, clean copy is needed that is playable , or if i just want it ripped to my hard drive for storage -
programs like Exact Audio Copy, DvdFab, DvdDecrypter, DvdShrink,Winamp, DbPoweramp Muswic Converter, Nero, etc

or iTunes lossless (ALAC) to make it really simple.

I've been collecting CDs for a little over a decade now and I've never had this happen to me apart from some CD-r's not playing in certain players. I did have a CD player a while ago that eventually started to skip the first track on every CD, that was irritating. Some old CDs say something in the booklet about how to take care of CDs and it says something at the end about how they can "provide a lifetime of pure listening enjoyment" or something. The only explanation I could think of (besides scratches on the disc, obviously) is if you leave a CD sitting in your car stereo for too long, especially on hot sunny days.

I sometimes hear people talk about how Blu-Rays are so much better than DVDs because they are ultra-scratch-resistant, and I'm thinking, "Who cares? Learn to take care of your s**t".

I have some cdrs that wont play in certain players but for the most part everything plays just fine.

Shawn D. wrote:

or iTunes lossless (ALAC) to make it really simple.

Itunes not allowed here

I think if you take care of cd-rs and not play them all the time they can last years.

I'm a youngin', so I haven't had too much experience with older CD's, yet my third (the first got crushed accidentally by my mom, second lost) Nightwish Century Child CD had that problem for the last 3 tracks after a few months. I don't know what caused it, really. I guess that CD's just not meant to be mine.

My brand new copy of Black Country Communion's 2 album won't play in my car stereo. Plays on my home and work computer fine, but not in the car. Weird.

mlotek wrote:

Shawn D. wrote:

or iTunes lossless (ALAC) to make it really simple.

Itunes not allowed here

I use the MAC version, which is far superior to the Windows version...because that one has to actually use the Windows operating system...

After hearing about the possibility of CDs someday wearing out, I've decided to play my music from my iPod now in order to conserve the CDs.

FINALLY transferred ALL of my CD's to hard drive(s). This took months off and on.

Quite rare for a CD to become "unplayable". Usually it's a sign of mis-handling (i.e. scratch) but I've had homemade labels come partly off that affected play. I know there is services and products available to help salvage CD's. I've kept SYLENTIGER on the shelf for years hoping to have it restored one day.

congrats on getting stuff transferred. Ripping CDs is damn near as much fun as watching cheese get moldy.

Most small used CD shops have resurface/buffing machines for discs, even badly scratched discs can sometimes be rescued, providing the scratch didn't go all the way into the data area (top scratches are more dangerous than playing surface scratches, because the data is near the top).

The problem with in my case was not mishandling or scratches. The print on the print side "bled" through to the playable side.

Not to be a nitpicker (HA!) but, can someone change CD's to CDs in the title of this thread?