CD Rot

[Impman]

I have a box full of them I haven't checked since I added them to iTunes, maybe a decade. I wonder if they have it. Remember when they said they were indestructible and wouldn't scratch like records? Huh! I like my pieces of vinyl boff.

Your noinety-noine pieces of vinyl?

[LASERCD]

Your noinety-noine pieces of vinyl?

Fla fla flolee

[jkelman]

I have almost 3000 CD's (oldest ones are from early eighties) and have never encountered CD rot.

Island Records had a series of releases, back in the '90s if I recall correctly, that were plagued with this (or something similar). I had it happen with my CD of Fairport Convention's Nine. The good news is, for a certain period of time they offered to replace the CDs free of charge, so I got a new one and, something like 20+ years later, it's still fine.

[JJ88]

^Yes some of the older Island discs were, I think, manufactured by PDO UK. I believe that it was around the mid 90s where the problem was discovered.

[infandous]

I don't think I have more than 1000 CD's, but I've ripped them all, mostly in the past year or two. Not a single problem, and that includes CD's I bought in the mid to late 80's and through the 90's. I do have a few CD-R's (various brands) that have failed, but I kind of expected that. I'm actually surprised that some CD-R's I've had for more than 10 years still work fine, though I suppose different brands have different manufacturing standards so some will last longer than others.

[Adm.Kirk]

Imation discs have caused me some problems but I have some CDr discs that are 20 years old and are fine. Maxell seems to be very reliable. What concerns me with the CDr discs is that I have my own compositions and recordings on CDr. So I guess I need to back all of this up to an exterior hard drive or to a cloud service.

Bill

[Rick L.]

My Tangerine Dream - Ricochey is bronzed, but still plays fine.

My original CD copy of King Crimson - Three of a Perfect Pair had pinholes, but I replaced it with the 30th Anniversary edition. I have a copy of Talking Heads - Remain in Light that has a pinhole, but played fine the last time I listened to it.

[progmatist]

I had a problem with a '95 issue of Genesis Lamb. A few other CDs from the same time frame are known for having the same problem.

[Tangram]

I have about 1,000 CDs and only 1 ever quit playing. It was the Moody Blues 'The Other Side of Life'.

[Mister Triscuits]

I have about 1,000 CDs and only 1 ever quit playing. It was the Moody Blues 'The Other Side of Life'.

Strange. Maybe we should investigate.

[Trane]

I have almost 3000 CD's (oldest ones are from early eighties) and have never encountered CD rot.

Same here

I have somewhere between 2 and 3 thousand CD's. I do have a very few where a track will not play right anymore. Not sure if it is deterioration or if the disc has gotten damaged. I just noticed it with an old UFO disc about a week ago as one of the tracks was skipping. I tried cleaning off the disc, but it did not make any difference. This has been a very rare experience however.

skidding laser beam over damaged CD is not rot, IMHO

From what I understand CD-rot would actually block the laser through tiny holes in the engraved label's flipside.

Most likely a good polish of the reading side would solve most of the surface damage.

very rare with a store bought CD, CDR's however its a different story with anything over 7 or 8 years old being a proverbial crapshoot.

I'm starting to find CD-r either not being recognised (and therefore not playable) or partially damaged sonically speaking (as if it was a near-totalled cassette), and I engraved most (via a hi-fi burner at normal speed) of my CD-r between 2001 and 2005

love hammill, but if i could pick one disk of his to rot, this would be the one.

ymmv, of course.

much worse album from Hammill, IMHO, but the early-90's era is about right


Somebody mentioned early Island CD pressing, but I heard this actually applied to the German label Line and Line A releases, though I've not encountered it when borrowing them via my library system's catalogue.

My DVD copy of Yes - Live at the House of Blues has the well-documented rot problem and is unplayable on any machine I have. 😔

Too recent for "rotting" >> this is most likely a engraving/manufacturing flaw

[strawberrybrick]

Over the past year, I took the task to rip my CD collection 3000+ to hard drive (RAID 1, with backup). I had a few CDs that didn't rip, but those had visible scratches. I did have issues with CD-Rs, but in almost every case, the discs had - wait for it - sticker labels.

I did have "bronzed" discs, including PH's FOTHOU. Still ripped.

RIP, Conrad Schnitzler, may your fingerprint live forever!

[Ground and Sky's Ghost]

It was mostly the one pressing plant- PDO UK- where this was an issue.

I wonder if they're the ones that did Monty Python's "The Final Ripoff" (a 2-disc best of collection). My copy bronzed and became unplayable after just a few years.

I had another CD that started "disintegrating" around the outer edge - not the plastic outer layer, just the reflective part inside. It stopped before it got to the playable part of the disc, so it wasn't a problem. I'd check to see if it ever got any worse, but now I can't for the life of me remember what CD it was.

[Man In The Mountain]

CDs have a limited shelf life of just over 130,000 years, depending on the condition they are stored in. That's why as a precaution, I always make a cassette recording of every CD I buy to have a fail-safe copy to keep when that unfortunate day arises.

[JJ88]

I wonder if they're the ones that did Monty Python's "The Final Ripoff" (a 2-disc best of collection). My copy bronzed and became unplayable after just a few years.

Probably. Most of the discs I've seen like this have been theirs. And only the UK PDO- the discs from the German plant were fine, I think.

[Mr.Krautman]

My collection is over 2000+ CD's and only a dozen became defective. ALL were manufactured in Italy by OPTI.ME.S and sold under various labels. They slowly changed color, turning from silver to gold and no CD players can read them anymore. This was obviously due to a manufacturing process issue. Unfortunately, all these were (expensive) RPI import CD's I bought in the late-80ies: gone are Delirium, Citta Frontale , Festa Mobile, Opera Prima, Quella Vecchia Locanda and many others... not sure I'll ever buy them again. (Actually I did, but only for Opera Prima)
Not a SINGLE other (factory made) CD from my collection has failed (so far...)

[Tangram]

Strange. Maybe we should investigate.

Nah. I think we’re good.

[PixelDelirium]

I have over 4000 CDs (multi disc albums counting as one) and have never had a problem. Granted, I ripped everything I own to FLAC about 10 years ago so I haven't touched most of them since then. But, I have bought many used CDs and have never had an issue (unless they are scratched to hell). CD-Rs are an entirely different story (and DVD-Rs even worse). Most of them you are lucky if they last 5 years. There are definitely better quality CD-Rs than others (Kodak Gold being the best I've seen). As with all backups, store them on redundant hard discs (magnetic, not SSDs) and/or cloud storage and you should be safe for the long term. Hell, you can get a 4 TB USB hard drive for around $100 now so there's really no reason not to rip your collection at this point. I also have everything stored in AWS S3 Glacier (plus my 2 TB photo archive) for around $40/month.

[Kai]

My collection is in multikilo class, too, and the only case of CD rot has been Now and Then by Easter Island, which was fine when bought new but became unplayable in just a few years. I later acquired a second-copy of the same title and it seems to have held fine. I have a few PDO-pressed albums from the "bronzed" era, like Jade Warrior's Breathing in the Storm, but they have shown no deterioration in the about twenty years I've had them.

My oldest CD-Rs are old enough to vote*, but none have failed or shown glitches yet. Probably some will, but then no media lasts forever. And the human one will most likely fail first.

* And they crumble about being stored in boxes next to the cassettes and not in the same drawers as the CDs, and demand a referendum on the storing arrangement on audiovisual media in the household. However, as the CDs outnumber them about 12 to 1, I don't think there will be any great shift in the immediate future. Unless they can form some strategic coalition with other potentially dissatisfied minority media, like the DVD-Rs or the MDs...

[3LockBox]

CDs have a limited shelf life of just over 130,000 years, depending on the condition they are stored in. That's why as a precaution, I always make a cassette recording of every CD I buy to have a fail-safe copy to keep when that unfortunate day arises.

That quite funny

You should make a YT video on how to use your cassette deck

[progmatist]

CDs have a limited shelf life of just over 130,000 years, depending on the condition they are stored in. That's why as a precaution, I always make a cassette recording of every CD I buy to have a fail-safe copy to keep when that unfortunate day arises.

On a more serious note, Compact Florescent Light Bulbs were also touted as having a long lifespan. How many of those do we see on the store shelves now? Theoretical lifespans often prove to be woefully inaccurate.

[Gruno]

That quite funny

You should make a YT video on how to use your cassette deck

Then I will make and upload a reaction video of me watching ManInTheMountain's video.

[rcarlberg]

On a more serious note, Compact Florescent Light Bulbs were also touted as having a long lifespan. How many of those do we see on the store shelves now? Theoretical lifespans often prove to be woefully inaccurate.

Ummm, because they were superceded by LED bulbs coming way down in price? SFAIK CFL lifespans are still what they claim.

[progmatist]

Ummm, because they were superceded by LED bulbs coming way down in price? SFAIK CFL lifespans are still what they claim.

I've had many CFLs fail. Just sayin'.

[NogbadTheBad]

CDs have a limited shelf life of just over 130,000 years, depending on the condition they are stored in. That's why as a precaution, I always make a cassette recording of every CD I buy to have a fail-safe copy to keep when that unfortunate day arises.