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Hi,last night I tried the Tweak ,that I found a couple weeks ago.I sanded the Edges of an alredy painted CD and repainted it.Than I started listening and said WOW what a big difference.It got a lot better.
By T.
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How then would the Audio Desk System, a CD 'router' with a sharp blade designed to shave off the edge of a CD to make it 'perfectly round', avoid damaging a CD? Unless it is only removing the excess material, it seems that any removal would have to be miniscule.
I have been using the Audio Deck which angle cuts the edge of cds and sacds for several years and have seen no such problems. Similarly, I have been cleaning cds with Vivid for some time with no problems despite the common warnings against liquid cleaners.
I have been sanding all my CDs for over 15 years and not one of them has ever had a problem. I sand the outer and inner edge, black the inner and outer edge, Walker Vivid and then Mapleshade Ionoclast. All must be done or you do not hear what the CD/DVD-A/SACD is capable of.
Comments here suggest that other colors might work better. Since you list so many tweaks on your website, I'd be curious to know your experience with using other colors, if indeed you've done so.
_____________________________"But this is the plastic age,
the quiet rage
is damned and civilized."
Started out years ago using green opaque paint marker from Ushida? Decocolor? Then went to Black about 5 years ago. I have heard of the esoteric blue/green from the Pacific Northwest, etc. Green absorbs red and black absorbs all colors. One person who had used a green said that black over it made it better. Try different colors and let us know. Spend the rest of your life finding just the right shade of green/blue/black....he he. All I know is that black works. Works great. So did green, years ago.
But it's far down the list of things to do to my system. If I do manage to formulate the perfect shade, I'll be sure to let you know. : )
_____________________________"But this is the plastic age,
the quiet rage
is damned and civilized."
Some folks have warned that if the aluminized data layer is exposed to the air by breaking the laquered air seal that is created when the label is 'printed' on, that it can develop pin holes, and thus loss of data, and eventually become unplayable.I would advise anyone considering this tweak to take that into consideration, and proceed cautiously, before sanding every CD in their collection!
Jon Risch
I agree with this - never mess with the master CD. However, the sanding works, and I do it on every single black CD-R I create from my masters (I sand and color the sanded edge black before I even create the dupe).
This way, if the CD-R goes bad, you can always make another.BTW, Pre-sanding and painting before the burn is also a good idea, one I have done with some success with just the green paint pens.
You could say I have studied this phenomenon with a statistically significant population. In 1998, my house was flooded. All my CDs were under water for a day or so, and most had a layer of 'flood mud' deposited. As you might guess, with my home destroyed, cleaning the CDs was not a top priority. Eventually, they all were cleaned up (but the jewel cases and liner notes all thrown away). Many of the CDs developed pinholes in the aluminum layer, over time. Some played fine for over a year, then started hanging. Inspection revealed massive pinholing. Not a single label came off, however.The morale? If they get wet, dry them quickly and thoroughly, because the laquer is not an ideal protection (of course, no organic coating known to man IS. Just ask the military why they still use expensive hermetic (ceramic or metal) packages for ICs in critical circuits). Be careful not to damage the label surface.
Surely one could not remove much polycarbonate with a few passes of 200 Wet-and-Dry?I'm not sure what you mean by "laquered air seal"? When the acrylic is "flowed" onto the metalized layer to protect it and to form a surface for printing the label, do you think this is "wrapped" over the edge of the polycarbonate?
If hyou look carefully at most CD's, the aluminized layer stops short of the very edge, thus, the label plastic does not have to wrap around the edge in order to 'seal' the aluminization from the air.However, when using sand paper, it would be quite easy to create a minute scratch close enough to the aluminized portion to allow the entry of air and moisture into that layer. If you stayed STRICTLY on the very edge, it shouldn't do anything adverse, as long as the label layer did not continue to flake or degrade once it was 'broken' at the very edges.
Still an iffy thing to be doing to CD's.
JR : ""If you stayed STRICTLY on the very edge, it shouldn't do anything adverse, as long as the label layer did not continue to flake or degrade once it was 'broken' at the very edges.""I disagree..
I believe that the top surface of the CD where the aluminum is applied to is extremely smooth prior to aluminum deposition..and i believe that extremely smooth surface extends all the way to the edge of the cd..
Very smooth surfaces don't have very good adhesion qualities. The cut edge of the disk is probably not polished, so I believe the coating needs to wrap over the edge in order to keep the coating from peeling from temp cycling..the car enviro being the worst.
I think it will be possible to see de-lamination of the coating at the edge, there will be color fringing.
JR: "" Still an iffy thing to be doing to CD's.""
Agreed.
Cheers, John
Jon,Would this apply to the Audio Desk too?
Audio Desk AUDIO DESK SYSTEM
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AUDIO DESK SYSTEM
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Catalog No. ADESKSYS
OverviewAUDIO DESK SYSTEM
Highly recommended! Audio Desk Systeme is a unique motorized cutting device manufactured in Germany. It is designed to “true” the shape of the CD to reduce mechanical jitter, and also trims the edge of the CD to a 38° angle to reduce laser scatter. This edge is further treated with a black marker. This 60-second process results in pronounced improvements in focus, transient attack, detail and transparency. The hardened cutting blade trims about 2000 CDs.
Jon Risch
and also, as an aside, ask what you, John, meant when you mentioned the 'printing' of the label? I always thought, without REALLY thinking, that the labels on CDs were actually screened onto the disc. I found out, to my dismay, that they seem mostly to be actual adhesive-backed labels adhered to the disc's surface.I recently went to play a disc and noticed that the label side had some sort of sticky residue on it, and went to rinse it off under a faucet. When I did so, the entire label started to disintegrate and slough right off the surface of the disc. The stickiness I had felt turned out to be the plastic material of the label, which had started to degrade, presumably from age. (The disc was about eighteen years old). Luckily, an E-mail to the record company (Green Linnet) resulted in my receipt of a replacement disc within a few days.
I have only experienced one case of what is called "CD rot", but it was vey discouraging to experience it at all, and makes me wonder. This, too, involved an older disc; I went to play it one day, and it became "hung" on a particular track, seeming to search for a "way out" of it's jam. When I held the disc up to a bright light source, I saw a minute pinhole in roughly the portion of the disc where the hang had occurred. A few months later, I checked the disc again, and found many more pinholes, and put it in the player. Not surprisingly, the disc was manifesting even more hanging and otherwise bad behavior.
In this case, as well, a call to the distributor (Qualiton) resulted in a swift replacement of the disc. Luckily for me, both of these discs were still availabe, as they both were among my all-time favorites.
Most CD's have a label side that consists of various forms of spray-on plastics (usually refered to as laquers, even though no uses the little ground up beetles anymore to make true laquer) and is directly on top of the aluminized layer. Then the "label" is printed on top of this with inks.If the label seal is compromised, the aluminum could oxidize and essentially disintegrate, creating local pinholes of very little reflectivity.
In your instance, you found out that your label are used water soluble inks that were flaking off.
Most CD's have a label side that consists of various forms of spray-on plastics (usually refered to as laquers, even though no uses the little ground up beetles anymore to make true laquer)...Lacquer never was made of ground up beetles.
"True lacquer" or what's often called Japan lacquer, is made from the sap of the Japanese lacquer tree (Rhus Vernicifera). Not beetles.
What you're thinking of, more properly called shellac, is made from the resinous excretion of the larvae of the Lac Beetle (Coccus Lacca). No beetles or larvae are ground up except perhaps by accident.
The excretion is simply scraped from the trees on which the larvae feed. And it's still readily available even today.
se
... and I was not, regarding the shellac and laquer.So what I should have said was "no more tree sap".
I think the major point was that the laquer is just a name for various plastics that are used today.
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