[vorbis] When CDs Go Bad

[Myles Buckley]

v7022 at wave.co.nz Wrote on 20030825 1805edt>

>Hi All,
>
>Some of the discussion recently has touched on ripping one's own CDs
>for archival purposes.  I've consistantly rejected the idea of doing
>this in my case for space and time reasons, and in the belief that
>commercially produced CDs when properly treated can be expected to have
>a very long life.  However, I'm now questioning this assumption.

>I have a 2 CD set of "The Phantom of the Opera" on the Polydor label
>which I purchased new in the late 1980s.  Both discs have always been
>stored together in the same case and played the same number of times on
>the same player; in short, they have the same history since pruchase.
>Both appear visually to be in the same excellent condition.
>

Polydor? late 80's? - the discs are very likely garbage.

>But on my latest playing of them, the second CD has acquired some fairly
>substantial white noise which varies in sympathy with the music volume.
>The music itself is intact and the player seems to have no problem
>reading the disc.  I have not tried playing it on another system as
>yet, but given that this is the only CD which exhibits this problem,
>I strongly suspect it is not a player fault.
>

it isn't the player.

>So I have two questions to which someone out there may know the answers:

>1.  What has caused this problem, and

Go to google, enter 'cd rot' and click "I'm Feeling Lucky"
You won't like the article, but it does explain it.

If there are no C2 errors you should use EAC in full paranoid mode to 
extract what can be fully recovered.

>2.  Can I expect other CDs in my collection to suffer the same fate at
>    around the same age?

as per the i'm feeling lucky link to : http://foetusized.org/cdrot.html
(and many other links following a normal search), you are likely to 
encounter this frequently of late 80's discs pressed by Phillips and 
Du Pont Optical.

>This post is a little OT, but I'm hoping your responses will help me
>decide (again) whether or not to archive my CD collection (with FLAC,
>but the FLAC list is ultra-quiet).

to extend this thread even further OT, yes, use FLAC, and I suggest also 
using par2 volumes to create 'recovery' files against bit rot on the 
CD's you burn that hold the .flacs.  (In case there is any doubt, yes I
am quite paranoid about my music being less than 'perfect' - I do NOT 
want to re-rip all my quad channel vinyls.)

>
>TIA,
>John.

feel free to email me off-list regarding the use of parity volumes with
FLAC.

-Myles

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