Shave your CDs

Will an electric razor work? 🤣

I’m old skool...gonna use my safety razor. Those Astra Platinum blades are the best. The Lathe of the Audio God (with apologies to Urusla K. Le Guin)

All the best,
Nonoise

I thought that wax makes for a smoother experience.

Rocky the Squirrel to Bullwinkle the Moose: "You don't have to be a squirrel to be nuts!"

Using Gillette foamy myself....

Doesn’t everyone bevel their edges @36°?
 

🙃

I’m pretty sure they discontinued making this some time ago

Note that the shaver is belt driven, thereby lowering the noise floor. 😂

Applying Old Spice to both sides after shaving improves tone, though you do have to let it settle down for a couple of minutes first.

Amazing that someone spent a lot of time and money engineering and developing this thing. I did not listen to the video, just looked for a couple of minutes.

I own one and it works great (but very messy as shavings quickly fill the inside). Also, caution is needed when seating the cutter or it CAN dig too deep and fracture the disc. GENTLE PERSUASION is the key to success

Nice design, plausible theory, too bad the top is falling apart already.

Sketchy Science at best, has faulty manual control over the Speed of rotation which can cause chatter in the cut, Pressure on the cutting blade, and how deep to cut. That leaves far too much up to chance to be anything credible.

Guys, check the date.... June 2003

AudioDesk CD Sound Improver [Lathe] by Wayne Donnelly        

Audio Desk Systeme Disc Cutter, Ultra Systems, CD ...   

Search the Agon archives. Member @sean

Wow! Do they make one for records?... Actually, I don't know why it wouldn't also lift veils when used on a RTR. Not on the tape itself. That would be stupid. I mean on the plastic or metal reels themselves. If they are not balanced, one could fly of the deck and decapitate someone. 

I shave myself only.

I always shave my cross dressers.

nonuse.....Astro are really fine, but try Dorco Prime Platinum....smoother still

"Tempted to try it?

Follow your hunch.

Be "Top Banana".

Not one of the bunch!

Burma Shave.

Well on my sonic frontier  transport 3 whe  the iris opens you can see the disc spin quite easy to see that some of the cds are out of round. The center  whole doesn't  match the outside diameter  off venter slightly.  That being said if the servos  don't have to work as hard it will sound better. That being  said washing cds makes then sound better easy for any non believer  easy to try. The funny thing about his comparison  is the 5 cent cd player he is trying  it on. And quite easy to try markers on the edge of the cd as well as the center  that is easy to hear the difference  as well. And yes I heard a demo of this machine with a levinson  system in a high end store and yes there is a difference.  Lol easy to hear when you listen  on a quality  system  instead of a pos. 

Only my "Cream" cds.

My curiousity got the best of me, so I ordered one of these a few years ago. The improvements were immediate and impactful. I know the term "sounds more analog" is overused, but does apply here. It made me aware the those littlle computers inside those DACs are really good at slight of hand and are pretty slick at substituting interpolated (guess at) information into the bitstream without us detecting it. Interpolated data doesn’t shout out "Wrong!" in most cases -- it just isn’t true to the source. I went thru my collection of favorites, shaved each one and, without exception, the sound was "more analog" with a reduction in harshness, more detail, tighter bass, etc. My wife purchased one of those Time Warner compilation CDs that sounded so bad I had to leave the room when she played it. After shaving them, the sound was not close to a reference recording, but had hints of audio resolution, delicacy and less glare. We now listen to it -- together.

I’ve also tried the cutter on BluRay discs. If you own one of these and you haven’t tried it, you’re in for a treat. The improvements are consistent with CDs. Also experimented with CD ROMS and ripping. My experience is that ripped shaved original CDs sound better when streamed from a computer, and shaved CD ROMS sound better than untreated.

I’m also a fan of UltraBit cleaner and treatment. The results are different than the CD cutter, but used in tandem do some interesting stuff to physical media. I place these into the "everybody knows" catagory. "Everybody knows" that CDs are concentric. And, "everybody knows" that new CDs are clean. Until you find out that they’re not.

They seem to forget that to make music the data has to be clocked. Try listening to a USB buss. USB to SPDIF AES/EBU converters are essentially just clocks. It does not matter how messed up the timing of the original data coming off the disc as the internal DA converter is going to reclock it.

@waytoomuchstuff +1

Let me guess you have at lest one high end system  and your second system  is better than ninety  percent  of the audio file s main system.  Lol that is why it is easy to hear the difference.  You can actually  hear the music  playing not just the low end cheap equipment.  

I'm surprised that no one has yet claimed that shaved streamers and lps sound better than shaved cds

@mahler123 😀

I was on board up until the black marker. EVERYONE knows that green is preferred. 

Mho is the device doesn't spin fast enough nor have the 'edge accuracy' to completely promote the improvement possible, markered or not.

A higher rpm and a blade carrier that would introduce a more accurate edge bevel ought to make for a proper 'match' to the pit alignment of the cd's surface.

The arm of the unit is controlled by hand manually; cueing an LP by hand is almost unheard of at this time, so why would anyone want to 'lathe' a CD in this fashion.
May as well trade in all your gear for something with the 'Flintstone' trademark...

The only caveat would be to Not spin at too high of rpm's...it could have an unfortunate end, as these gentlemen are more than happy to demonstrate...

(This was done by seasoned professionals...who just happened to be out to lunch at the time...).

Don't knock it until you've given it a fair chance👆

umm, I don't know about this. I've heard of shaved ice and shaved  umm woodchuck but shaved CD's???

Do I save my CD's? of course I do.😆

I think the more relevant issue is comparing the objective measurement with the "expert" reviews. Measurement=no difference

"Audiophile journalist=more transparency, pace, and other unmeasurable BS.

Does it discredit the reviewers or prove that we hear what we expect?

As a consumer who often has identified which components I will try to audition based on "credible" reviews that scares me!

Really works well on my digital files. Makes an MP3 sound as good as a FLAC file.

Well, the video was entertaining, but not real scientific. Things such as motor vibration, balancing the CD disc when being clamped, and most likely more, would yield different results. Ultimately, at some speed the event would happen.

 I don't know enough to say what effect that balancing a CD might have. Seems to me that it is better to have done than not. I did the same thinking with my grinding wheel by balancing them. Of course this is apples and bananas, yet for the grinding wheel things run much smoother, and the wheel grinds better.

 Vibration for just about any task is not wanted, unless you are trying to tear something up.