Do you demag or destat your CDs/DVDS?

In the Navy, the 'freshman' were told to grind anchor with file so it penatrates bottom better.
CD's are not magnetic and need demagnetizing just as anchor needs grinding.

The paint is slightly magnetic, magnetic enough to hear when it's been demagnetized, anyway. The first ion of air molecules on the plastic CD while spinning imparts a static electric charge on the disc best removed with any number of things, anti static spray, tourmaline negative ion gun, what have you.

The way I read and understand this, the CD itself is not
magnetic, but the ink used to print the top of the CD can
be, which might create a magnetic field.

I have tried a couple of these "CD Demagnetizers"
in the past and really couldn't hear any difference.

YMMV

Jea48, If your bike has aluminium frame, you can try to attract magnet there and see what happens. Try to attract CD with magnet and see what happens.

Try to offer to private boat owners grinding anchors and you may also find some fools that would actually pay for service!

Would the left handed file work better than the right handed ones?

Depends on whether the file is directional or not.

Nonoise, you can DOUBLE the action with both.

,If your bike has aluminium frame, you can try to attract magnet there and see what happens. Try to attract CD with magnet and see what happens.
07-09-14: Czarivey

Is the aluminum frame 100% pure AL or maybe only 99% pure? What about that 1%?
And how about the ink used on the label side? Any ferrous materials there?

Furutech RD-1 CD Demagnetizer

The Furutech CD demagnetizer might at first seem to be at the outer fringes of the improbable. Demagnetizing tape heads makes sense for two reasons: tape heads are made from permeable material, and the tape reading process depends on sensing magnetism. But neither of these reasons applies to CDs. CDs seemingly do not contain any permeable material that could become magnetized (neither aluminum nor plastic is permeable), and furthermore the CD reading process does not involve reading a magnetic field. So when we conducted our A-B before vs. after comparisons, we were admittedly biased. We did not believe that we would hear any sonic differences, nor any sonic improvement worth writing about. But hearing is believing. The Furutech is another winner that does make a sonic difference, and it is one of that very rare breed where the difference is entirely for the better.
Like any demagnetizer, the Furutech is intended to be used repeatedly and regularly, perhaps every few plays of each CD. Operation is very simple and automatic. You simply press the button and wait 10 seconds for the light to go out, indicating that the Furutech has completed its cycle. It automatically performs the task of gradually decreasing its demagnetizing field strength during this cycle, so you don't even have to bother with the manual chore of gradually withdrawing your CD away from the magnetic field (as you must do with old fashioned tape demagnetizers).
The Furutech makes your CDs sound more like the new high resolution digital formats. Music's trebles become faster, more extended, airier, and more open. There's a blacker background between musical notes, with better intertransient silence. You can hear more of music's subtle inner details. The natural hall ambience and decay captured by the recording is revealed much better. And music sounds a little more natural, with a little less of the upper midrange glare that characterizes many CDs.
That's a mighty impressive list of sonic accomplishments for a treatment that shouldn't make any difference. So let's investigate.
If we look at the Furutech's sonic accomplishments just above, we might notice that they could all be explained by one factor. If the Furutech somehow reduced the level of contaminating noise, then all the above sonic benefits might follow. Noise contamination certainly fills in what should be a silent black background between musical notes. This degrades intertransient silence, and also veils or blocks music's subtler inner details, which are audible immediately after and between music's stronger transients only if there is a silent background between these stronger transients. Likewise, contaminating noise would obscure and degrade subtle information like hall ambience and decay, which again are audible after and between musical transients only if there is a silent background. Finally, contaminating noise also smears and effectively dulls musical information, acting as a temporally lingering shadow that defocuses music's sharper edges. This is especially destructive of fast treble information, because treble information is by definition more transitory, with sharper edges, so it is more harmed by smearing, lingering shadows, and defocusing than are music's lower frequencies, which have rounder edged waveform profiles, and which tend to be more repetitive.
If CD treatment with the Furutech were somehow reducing some contaminating noise, then we would expect to hear these aforementioned problems reduced - we would expect to hear exactly those sonic benefits which we in fact do hear.
Now, how on earth might the Furutech somehow reduce contaminating noise? What is there in a CD that might cause contaminating noise, and that might need demagnetizing? And how does a CD get re-magnetized by being played, such that it benefits from further demagnetizing after a few plays?
The Furutech people have two simple answers. Ink and impurities. The whole surface of a CD is covered with ink, to make up the printed label. These inks contain pigments, some of which are ferrous, hence permeable. The Furutech people also suggest that the aluminum in the reflective layer might well contain impurities, including iron.
Now, the CD rotates pretty fast (200 to 500 rpm), and any ferrous material will gradually become slightly magnetized over time if it is rapidly moving in a magnetic field (the earth's magnetic field will do, but there are doubtless other magnetic fields as well within a CD player). All right, so we have a CD with some slightly magnetized pieces of ink, spinning around inside your CD player. How does that cause contaminating noise in your music?
Let's assume that the brown pigment in brown ink is ferrous, and let's assume that some small lettering on the CD label is printed in brown ink. Let's assume that there are about 50 letters in the small lettering, which means that there are about 100 vertical ferrous bar magnets (for example, the letter H has two vertical bars), rotating around with the CD. These rotating bar magnets are putting an electromagnetic noise field into the space and air inside your CD player. If the CD is rotating at 8 Hz (480 rpm), and there are 100 discrete bar magnets going around at 8 Hz, then they are putting out noise with a fundamental at 800 Hz, together with all kinds of overtones spread upward throughout the rest of the musical spectrum (if we were to assume the bar magnets were purely rectangular and put out noise that looks like a square wave, there would be overtones at 2400 Hz, 4000 Hz, 5600 Hz, etc.).
You can see that this contaminating noise thrown into the air is rich in high frequency spectral content, so it would be most destructive of music's higher frequencies and of singular, non-repeating musical transients, if it were to somehow interfere with the music signal inside your CD player. And, if a CD treatment like the Furutech could reduce this high frequency contaminating noise, then we would expect to hear the sonic improvements being most dramatic for music's trebles and for its singular transients - which is exactly what we do hear.
Given that this noisy electromagnetic field is radiating into the space and air inside your CD player, how could it come to actually contaminate your music? After all, your music signal is safely traveling inside the conducting wires of the CD player's circuitry, isn't it? So who cares if there's spurious electromagnetic noise in the air outside these wires, right?
Well, it turns out that electromagnetic fields in the space and air just outside your CD player's wiring can also penetrate into that wiring, so if that field comprises contaminating noise, then that noise can add to or interfere with the signals in your CD player's wiring. The analog circuitry in your CD player is certainly vulnerable to signal degradation by interference from noise, but so also is all the digital circuitry in your CD player. Why? First, that so-called digital circuitry is actually analog circuitry, operating with precise thresholds and precise currents, whose level and/or precise timing can be contaminated, degraded, or made less determinate by noise. Second, it is now widely recognized that merely adding noise to a digital signal in your CD player can worsen jitter (by making thresholds more temporally indeterminate), which in turn worsens distortion of your music when that timing indeterminacy reaches your DAC chip. If the interfering noise has high frequency content, then this can cause high frequency jitter, which is especially destructive of music's higher frequencies, causing smearing kinds of distortion (from FM distortion sidebands spread over a wide and high frequency range).
Furthermore, it turns out that the desired signals running around in the wiring of your CD player are not really traveling inside the wires, but instead are actually traveling as electromagnetic fields in the space and air outside those wires - in the very same space and air also occupied by the noisy electromagnetic field from those spinning magnets on the CD. Since the desired CD player signals, representing your music, and the noise from the spinning CD magnets are both mixing it up in the same space and air, naturally there is cross contamination.
Similar considerations would apply to any ferrous impurities in the aluminum deposited on the CD as its reflective layer.
A simple 10 second demagnetization with the Furutech would erase all these tiny magnets, and thereby would eliminate this source of contaminating noise, providing just the kind of sonic benefits we in fact do hear. Then later, after a given demagnetized CD has rotated fast about 75,000 times, it stands to reason that the ferrous particles in the label and/or in the aluminum might have become magnetized once again, so it would be beneficial to treat that CD to another simple 10 second demagnetization by the Furutech. Incidentally, note that in just 3 plays of a long (74 minute) CD, it rotates fast about 75,000 times. Thus, remagnetization and sonic degradation could begin again sooner than you would suspect. Since it is a pain to keep track of how many times you have played each CD since its last demagnetization, it might be easier to simply demagnetize every CD before each critical listening session, and don't bother before casual listening sessions.
In sum, there is a plausible hypothesis explaining how the Furutech demagnetizer achieves its sonic benefits, and indeed just the kind of sonic benefits that we in fact hear (this predictability and corroboration lends additional credence to the hypothesis). Of course, the most important proof of the pudding is in the listening. The sonic improvements you'll gain from using the Furutech on your CD library clearly make it a winning CD treatment to invest in. (Continued on page 54)

http://www.iar-80.com/page53.html

Other articles for you to read.

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/furutech/rd1.html

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/furutech/rd2.html

http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/demagnetization.html

Why so much science when there's a simple math?
All of these articles are just about fraction of % of other materials and minerals inside aluminium???

Folks got enough talent and weed to smoke to write and continue to write hundreds of articles about nothing that makes money and makes product or process markettable and Furutech is one of the champions in this strategy, according to their array of products they sell.

There are certainly other articles that clearly state about bogus tweaks in audio industry(CD demagnetizer is certainly listed as one of the articles' bold headlines), but they're not as massive as marketted reviews and philosophical product articles. Can you do your math?

Might as well grind anchor because everyone on the ship will tell you that it'll work better LOL!

You can also wave the broom over the antenna to blow away EMI and other interfearances. That one also common on military or Navy. Everyone will tell fool to do that!

I dip them into holy water ....deeper soundstage, airy highs

I have had great results with Mapleshade Ionoclast on CD's. $38.00 when I bought mine.

No. I do make sure they are clean and smudge free by wetting and wiping clean with a non-abrasive cloth whenever possible, especially for a faster rip with fewer re-reads. That addresses any static electricity issues that might exist as well. There are many other better areas worth investing $$$s in for clearly better sound than a fancy gadget for this purpose alone.

I just put my CD's in the dishwasher like everyone else.

I have zero practical experience of waving broom over antenna and also have zero practical experience grinding anchors.
Should I have any practical experience demagnetizing CDs and vinyl? Figure out and do ya math.

Maybe they discontinued the demagnetizers because they expect cds to be discontinued.

And to answer the question, no, I don't demag cds. Seems like a ridiculous idea to me. But for those who find it creditable, enjoy.

Even if the ink on a CD contains some small amount of magnetic materials I am still not sure why it would matter. The interface between the player and the disk is a laser. Is there any practical examples of a magnet effecting a light? I can't think of anything. We also can't forget that the digital stream isn't trying to differentiate among millions of nearly identical results, there are two possible outcomes. The A/D conversion and the rest of the analog signal path is a different story.

I did a little quick research and it appears that CD players use photon lasers. Photons have no charge and therefore would not be effected by a magnetic field.

Can someone explain what the mechanism is for magnetic ink to influence the playback of a CD in a negative way, or at all? I would guess the ink explaination came up as a response to people first becoming skeptical of the product as it was first advertised.

I did a little quick research and it appears that CD players use photon lasers. Photons have no charge and therefore would not be effected by a magnetic field.

Can someone explain what the mechanism is for magnetic ink to influence the playback of a CD in a negative way, or at all? I would guess the ink explaination came up as a response to people first becoming skeptical of the product as it was first advertised.
07-09-14: Mceljo

Mceljo,

Quote from link.

"Now, the CD rotates pretty fast (200 to 500 rpm), and any ferrous material will gradually become slightly magnetized over time if it is rapidly moving in a magnetic field (the earth's magnetic field will do, but there are doubtless other magnetic fields as well within a CD player). All right, so we have a CD with some slightly magnetized pieces of ink, spinning around inside your CD player. How does that cause contaminating noise in your music?
Let's assume that the brown pigment in brown ink is ferrous, and let's assume that some small lettering on the CD label is printed in brown ink. Let's assume that there are about 50 letters in the small lettering, which means that there are about 100 vertical ferrous bar magnets (for example, the letter H has two vertical bars), rotating around with the CD. These rotating bar magnets are putting an electromagnetic noise field into the space and air inside your CD player. If the CD is rotating at 8 Hz (480 rpm), and there are 100 discrete bar magnets going around at 8 Hz, then they are putting out noise with a fundamental at 800 Hz, together with all kinds of overtones spread upward throughout the rest of the musical spectrum (if we were to assume the bar magnets were purely rectangular and put out noise that looks like a square wave, there would be overtones at 2400 Hz, 4000 Hz, 5600 Hz, etc.).
You can see that this contaminating noise thrown into the air is rich in high frequency spectral content, so it would be most destructive of music's higher frequencies and of singular, non-repeating musical transients, if it were to somehow interfere with the music signal inside your CD player. And, if a CD treatment like the Furutech could reduce this high frequency contaminating noise, then we would expect to hear the sonic improvements being most dramatic for music's trebles and for its singular transients - which is exactly what we do hear.
Given that this noisy electromagnetic field is radiating into the space and air inside your CD player, how could it come to actually contaminate your music? After all, your music signal is safely traveling inside the conducting wires of the CD player's circuitry, isn't it? So who cares if there's spurious electromagnetic noise in the air outside these wires, right?
Well, it turns out that electromagnetic fields in the space and air just outside your CD player's wiring can also penetrate into that wiring, so if that field comprises contaminating noise, then that noise can add to or interfere with the signals in your CD player's wiring. The analog circuitry in your CD player is certainly vulnerable to signal degradation by interference from noise, but so also is all the digital circuitry in your CD player. Why? First, that so-called digital circuitry is actually analog circuitry, operating with precise thresholds and precise currents, whose level and/or precise timing can be contaminated, degraded, or made less determinate by noise. Second, it is now widely recognized that merely adding noise to a digital signal in your CD player can worsen jitter (by making thresholds more temporally indeterminate), which in turn worsens distortion of your music when that timing indeterminacy reaches your DAC chip. If the interfering noise has high frequency content, then this can cause high frequency jitter, which is especially destructive of music's higher frequencies, causing smearing kinds of distortion (from FM distortion sidebands spread over a wide and high frequency range).
Furthermore, it turns out that the desired signals running around in the wiring of your CD player are not really traveling inside the wires, but instead are actually traveling as electromagnetic fields in the space and air outside those wires - in the very same space and air also occupied by the noisy electromagnetic field from those spinning magnets on the CD. Since the desired CD player signals, representing your music, and the noise from the spinning CD magnets are both mixing it up in the same space and air, naturally there is cross contamination.
Similar considerations would apply to any ferrous impurities in the aluminum deposited on the CD as its reflective layer."
http://www.iar-80.com/page53.html

If the coating on a CD is plastic, in theory couldn't it have picked up a static charge?

Sorry Jea, but there's no lab tested evidence at all.
No information is quantisized or leveraged.
Do you or any one here knows of published info with any magnitudes and/or quantities? Any info on flow of the lab test?
Any scientific evidence will help.

Pseudo science at best misapplying concepts in such a way that it sounds good to the consumer.

The type of marketing takes me back to the F-150 commercials when Mike Rowe first became involved with the "new" truck. It must have been about 2004 since that is when I purchased a Tundra after driving all of the half ton trucks. The commercial claimed that the F-150 has the most low end torque in class and the seat of my pants told me otherwise. I recorded the commercial and paused it to read the fine print. The actual fact was that the F-150 had the highest percentage of peak torque at 800 rpm. I just laughed when I read it. By law they have to make factual claims, but it is very easy to mislead.

I don't think there are any regulations for advertising in audio so...

"Pseudo science at best misapplying concepts in such a way that it sounds good to the consumer."
07-10-14: Mceljo

Mceljo,

These guys have no dog in the fight.

IAR International Audio/Video Review

http://www.iar-80.com/

http://www.iar-80.com/page53.html
.

The CD laser is a quantum device and produces a coherent beam of light. But, since the CD laser is a *quantum well* that operates by quantum confinement, the light beam of photons is a WAVE only, not particles. And since the light wave is in the *electromagnetic* spectrum it's quite possible it's subject to magnetic fields. Also, the physical data is located extremely close to the ink on the label, which helps the case for some sort of magnetic interference, even if the magnetic field is very small. It wouldn't take much since the size of the physical data is nanoscale.

Sorry but i wanted to see lab results not review after all.

Can you tell difference between scientifically proven results and reviews? I can build hypothesis out of literally anything, but how can I prove?

Jea, you don't you even know a-bit of science? If not, math is simpler way to comprehend. Check my previous notes.

Yes gives me something to do.

Not every physical phenomenon has an effect on our precious sound quality. THis is one of them in my opinion in that CD playback nowadays is perhaps the most reliable process in all of home audio in terms of producing consistent results, save except for playback of digital files in memory or even on magnetic disk storage.

Wait, those computer disks are magnetic!!!!! Audiophile alert!! :^)

GEof/Machina Dynamic considers this a problem. What more evidence is needed?

Ebm, Please do something dude!

" Yes gives me something to do."

I suspect you are not alone here.....

YES SIR!!

Dstat gives more open sound.

Maybe a dumb question but, Wouldnt a Milty Zero-Stat Gun have the same effect for alot less money ?

Sorry Jea, but there's no lab tested evidence at all.
No information is quantisized or leveraged.
Do you or any one here knows of published info with any magnitudes and/or quantities? Any info on flow of the lab test?
Any scientific evidence will help.
07-10-14: Czarivey

Czarivey,

I would think by now you would have tried to back up your claim that the Furutech RD-1, RD-2 and the Acoustic Revive RD-3 are nothing more than pie in the sky snake oil devices. But no, all you do is continue to trash the devices and there by trash the name of the companies that manufacture the devices. You Flat Earthers never fail to amaze me. The very least you could of done is find one, just one, audio magazine that said the devices were nothing more than snake oil. Hell you are too lazy to even do that.

Here is your precious test you so desire.
http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/cd_dvd/rd-3_2.html

LOL

PWL(db) Total Signal to
Power harmonic Noise ratio
distortion SNR(%)
THD(%)

noYUMI -13.36 72.11 2.047
UCYUMI -13.36 71.75 71.75
RDYUMI -13.94 70.99 1.866

Did you ever check these values??
THD 72.11% reduced to 70.99%???

It's fake dude.

Magazine reviewers are biased to be positive if they want to continue doing reviews.

There is a lot of science to support the idea that your assumption that it works will allow you to convince yourself that it works. Call it placebo or something else. There comes a point where it is no longer possible to hear the difference even if it were there. There is a lot of scientifically measurable aspects of audio equipment that cannot be heard by the listener. I highly doubt this effect has ever been measured and likely is undetectable.

Jea48 - Here's a little order of magnitude experiment for you to do. Find a way to isolate a CD player from your system such that you have no physical connection with it from your listening position. Then have someone pick the CD player up and move it around while you're listening and see if you can tell when the CD player is stationary and when it is being moved. Obviously, the goal isn't to make the CD player skip or identify connection issues from the cables being moved. You should use a long digital connection to isolate the disk to laser interface from the A/D conversion. If you listen for a reasonable period of time and have no way of telling if the person is in control of the CD player has "left the building" or not you will not be able to tell the difference if you're being completely honest with yourself. You must be able to tell when the CD player is picked up and set back down. Take note of the times and compare your notes after the fact with the other person.

Moving the CD player around will, in my opinion, have a much more significant effect on playback than the magnetic ink on the disk will have. If you can't hear the more significant one, then you cannot hear the less significant one.

If you think hard enough that you won't hear something's because it seems preposterous you won't hear it. It's the reverse expectation bias in full bloom. You psyched yourself out. Lol

I'm not ignorant. I fight foolishness and sometimes with humor(or laughs with anger and somewhat courage), because same money fool pays for bogus or fake can be much more useful elsewhere real. Even fool can feel difference between $350 disk demagnetizer and $350 pair of shoes after all(or $350 is too much for shoes huh?).

It's alway's one's call weather one realizes or not who to support -- the bogus factory(ies) or as per example above shoe designers.

I have compared $7 hardware store speaker cable to a pair of $2,000 Nordost, I think, on a very nice system. I did hear a tiny difference that I would say was an improvement, but I didn't think it was worth the extra $1,993 dollars it would take to upgrade. My new $600 tube amplifier made a much more significant improvement than a cable ever could.

If I am ignorant on this topic in your opinion, that's perfectly ok with me. Enjoy listening to your system.

David99...
"Maybe a dumb question but, Wouldnt a Milty Zero-Stat Gun have the same effect for alot less money ?"

That's why I ask the question, can't the plastic layer of the disk pick up a static charge? I'm not saying a CD can can become magnetized, but plastic is a conductor in the in the same way vinyl is.

As a final thought, are you concerned with the magnetic field your speakers put out impacting the playback of your CD player? A lot of speakers are shielded so maybe yours are? This would be a perfect example of a much stronger magnetic field that it is very likely in a reasonably close proximity to your CD player.

The thought occurs to me that demagnetizers like the Walker Talisman can also be used for demaging cables, especially interconnects. Can anyone think of why cables might need demaging? They also appreciate ionizing.

Yes, actual experience. Didn't read it in a book or magazine. Didn't learn anything from Flat Earther naysayers on this site either..... Actual hands on experience.

Jea48

I just don't understand the term "Flat Earther" in the context you use it. As I understand it a flat earther is one who rejects scientific reasoning and instead relies on outdated ideas, pseudoscience or religious arguments to derive their facts. What Czarivey and Mceljo are asking for is scientific proof that the minute magnetic fields produced either by the spinning disc or the paint on the top of the disc have any audible effect.
This always seems to be the case when the term "Flat Earther" is thrown around.

"07-10-14: Mceljo
Magazine reviewers are biased to be positive if they want to continue doing reviews."

Are you guessing? If not, can you give some examples?

Specifically, I remember one particular person that left the industry and provided their thought afterwords. I thought I saw it on audiogon, at least the link. If I get time I will try to dig it up.

Generally, I have never read a truly negative review in an audio magazine which leads one to assume that they will praise anything that is put in front of them. Admittedly, I so t read a lot of reviews so maybe my sampling isn't representative.