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

[jnorman@maxoptical.com]

Sally,
Audio CD Players are designed to compensate for defects in the CDs but what
you must understand is there is error correction being applied to your
music.  If the error correction is heavily applied the sound or tone of the
music can be changed.  So even though you could here the music from a CD
with the cigarette burn it most likely did not sound the same as the
original source.
John Norman
Max Optical
www.maxoptical.com

10 years ago when I was working in an audio video
store we used to play back very badly usedcds on a B+)
(Bang and Olufsen) cd player to demonstrate the error
correction. The crowning achievement of the player
came when it  was asked to play a cd that had a small
cigarette burn. It did!
Who's to say  what will hold up and what willnot? I
recently picked up a free 8-track recorder+player and
tapes-after 30 years those badly designed  cartridges
stillplay as well!

Sally Fisher

--- James Lindner <jim@vidipax.com> wrote:

>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