How to fix CD?

I usually take them over to the sink and with just a dab of dishwashing liquid and using my hands and a little water give them a good cleaning just to remove some of the oils and grit over the yrs of handling. Then wipe gently with a very clean cotton cloth.

Is it the cd or the player that is acting up ?

Are you able to play the cd's in another player, car, etc...without issues ?

If the CD experiences laser rot or has scratches, you can try to rip it into a computer and than burn a new copy from it. Ripping software does a much better job reading damaged CD due to its superior error correction capability. I had rescued a few in the past doing just that. It is worth a try.

When I pop the CD, I can always spot the very small imperfection but it's not something that can be cleaned or wiped away. I was thinking instead about anything that maybe "fools" the player so it can read through/over it?

I'm using a very fine McIntosh CDP, by the way, that does a great job reading anything you throw at it.

I just seem to recall seeing once (Music Direct?) a product that claimed to fix a CDs blips.

Have you tried what member Sidssp mentioned ?

you can try to rip it into a computer and than burn a new copy from it.

I do something similar to Schipo - but I use pure soap and I blot dry them with Viva paper towels (recommended by Lloyd Walker).

If this fails, do as Sidssp recommends - rip them to your hard drive with EAC and burn a copy. I was given a CD of interesting Indian fusion and it was so beat up it must have taken EAC over an hour to read the disc and copy it. The resulting CD-R was great. Rescued.

Regards,

it's sacrilidge on here to say this, but I have fixed many a cd and DVD with the DiscDR RX. Loud, and crude, but it works in most cases.

I had an Elton John ...To Be Continued disc (no. 2 with all the best songs on it) that hadn't played correctly in 10 plus years, that was fixed with the Disc Dr RX.

Of course, then rip all the songs to a hard drive with a hgih sample rate such as FLAC or WAV and don't worry about it again.

Thanks for your answers and help, folks! I'm not into computer audio however. In another 2-3 years it'll be better settled out, IMO.

Can anyone suggest how you rip and burn a cd and make it sound good? I've tried slow rips and burns on high quality cd-r's and they sound horrible. I'm using Windows Media Player.

Try to burn this CD and play recorded CD-R instead.

I have found that using a cd treatment can help with cd's that are scratched. I use the auric by audience. It really works, it helps the quality of the sound, the bass response and the clarity, but as a secondary benifit, on a few of my cd's from my youth (which I didn't care for as well) I found that thet dont skip at all. It treats 200 to 300 cds permanently. and costs less than 60$ That would be an easy fix. Try it.

If we're talking scratches here, there are a few companies that polish the CD surface. Google "CD repair".
Haven't tried this so can't make specific recommendations.