Scratched CDs
Posted by Skrud at Saturday, August 12th 2006 at 1:14am
The reasons for me to not buy any CDs are starting to stack up. The most obvious reason, of course, is the fact that music sucks and there’s been barely anything worth listening to that’s come out in the past couple of years … or maybe I’m just too picky. There are other reasons too ranging from the political (“I don’t want to support big labels”) to the financial (“Why would I spent $30 on a CD with only 30 minutes of playtime?”).
But lately I’ve been stuck on durability. If I’m going to pay something like $30 on a CD, which I’ve done in the past, to be sure, the damn thing had better last. I’ve been discovering more and more irreperable CDs in my collection.
You see, there are two main kinds of CD damage: Top Scratches and Bottom Scratches. The latter kind are the scratches you see most often: the bottom of the CD is dirty or scratched and just need a good rub-down with a soft cloth to get working again. Top scratches, on the other hand, are another story.
CDs comprise four layers. The bottom is a plastic polycarbonate layer that has the data etched in it. On top of that is a reflective aluminum layer that fills in the etched-in bumps on the plastic. That’s covered with a protective acrylic layer, and finally the graphic is placed on top of that. (See How CDs Work).
The case with a lot of my CDs is that the graphic on top has come off in certain places with the acrylic and aluminum layers removed with them. This makes certain see-through holes in the disc which you can see if you hold the CD up to a light source. Once this has happened, there is no way to recover the data.
I keep all my CDs in protective cases, yet still a number of my CDs have developed lethal top scratches. A lot of these are either tough to find. Here’s a short list of CDs that I’ve tried to play in the past week that are unplayable due to these kinds of scratches:
- Iced Earth – Days Of Purgatory (Disc 2) (This disc is only available to the European import version. The North American version had only one disc. And just my like that the scratch is over one of the few songs that didn’t make it onto the North American release).
- Iced Earth – Alive In Athens (Disc 3) (Ditto as above, but the North American release had 2 discs instead of 3)
- Blind Guardian – Battalions of Fear
- Blind Guardian – Nightfall in Middle-Earth (Best. CD. Ever.)
This is pretty freaking irritating, especially since the 2-disc and 3-disc versions of those Iced Earth discs are difficult to find even online. If I’m going to pay through the teeth for some CDs, they had better be playable a few years down the line. As it stands, I think I’m probably better off downloading my CDs in the first place, and never worrying about them getting scratched. I’ll gladly support my favourite artists by seeing them in concert and buying t-shirts (which I’m told gives them a much larger percentage of revenue compared to CDs). And concert tickets (for my shows, anyway) are usually cheaper if not equal to the price of one CD.
You didn’t bring your CD’s to the beach did you? Because I did that one, and I ruined almost all my CD’s. I didn’t drop them or anything, it’s just that sand gets EVERWHERE, and rubs the aluminum off the cd’s.
Nope, never. And some of these have been scratched for a while, well before the beach trip.