I have used 3 different CD mats in the past 20 years. I have found that on lesser CD players, they do make a difference. On the more high end players, not so much. Once I moved on to Esoteric, there was no reason to use them.
"Tuning" CD's
Shaving Compact Discs to improve the sound (?!)
This Youtube will trigger the usual chorus of self-appointed audio rationalists, but I have a much simpler workaround that involves simply sanding the edge of the CD and then blackening the edge of the CD with a magic marker - all in the service of nullifying incident laser reflections bouncing off the glossy edges of CD's.
The results were so impressive that I now perform this procedure on all of my CD's. I should add that my system plays CD's only which are burned from downloaded flac files. The files are converted to .wav files in JRiver and burned at the slowest speed my desktop drive can achieve.
Please let us know what the you hear or do not hear.
I should also point out that the sonic graphs displayed the the Youtuber for comparison between the treated and untreated CD's are not symmetrical if you look closely.
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I am running a Jay's Audio CDT2 mk3 - not exactly a slouch. Would love to have an upper end Esoteric one day, but $15,000 and up is beyond me for the time being. Not using "mats" - just abrading the edges to stop IR reflections. Finding it "worth it," The only added cost is a little time spent abrading |
I still have CDs where I painted the edge with a special, audiophile-marketed green marker. Did it help? Maybe when I played them on my first CD player, a player that went belly-up maybe three days out of warranty. I can't recall the player's brand name. In any event, I haven't painted a CD edge since. upsers portal |
Well looky here - a guy who thought of sanding CD edges 13 years ago. I have also just started using "Auric Illuminator" which does indeed clarify CD output though I am not sure it works the way the manufacturer claims. It may simply be cleaning off age related chemical plastic degradation. Not to belabor the obvious here but these CD tweaks should also be performed on blank CD's prior to burning music data on them - not after. We want to start with superior data collection on our discs.
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