RE: [AV Media Matters] CD's Robust nature

[James Lindner <jim@vidipax.com>]

A slightly different story - but one I can personally vouch for.
Leah - the daughter of my partner JoAnn Watson - came home from
school with a CD-R that a friend had made. As many of you know
teenagers share EVERYTHING - and this was a borrowed CD-R. When I
first saw it I noted that it looked a little different - but did not
think much of it. Later when she took it out I noted that an entire
section of the CD-R had delaminated. A section about 1" in diameter
of the foil was completely missing - and some of the rest was
peeling too - but this huge piece was totally gone. It was about
midway between the index ring and the outer diameter (did not touch
the index). AND the most amazing thing to me was that the darn thing
played!! I asked Leah whether it acted strange - she did not notice
anything unusual - although a couple of the songs did not play back
- but the rest did - on plain old consumer type CD player both
portable and home stereo types. I had never seen a CDR delaminate
like this - but of course with a teenager it was thrown into a
school backpack with everything else with NO protection whatsoever -
so this did not totally surprise me - but the fact that the darn
thing played really did surprise me. I asked her if I could keep it
for some of my talks -but she had to return it to her friend. (Darn
- lose more samples that way). But I must say that I was (and am)
pretty amazed that it would play at all with a huge hole in it.

jim