Okay, I take very good care of my CDs. Handle 'em like my LPs. But over the years, a few have somehow developed whatever makes them freak out and get stuck. Looking for suggestions/products to take a shot at repairing the glitches so they won't freeze up.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.