A completly stupid, pointless and crazy exercise! Nevertheless...

[pastoralguy]

When the wonder that is cd first appeared a lot was made of the fact that the silver discs could be played over and over with no loss of sound quality. The first 2 discs I bought were Uchida's and Tait's Mozart 20th and 21st piano concertos and the late, great Sir Charles Mackerras's disc of Elgar's 'Enigma' and 'Falstaff' with the LPO. I still have those 2 discs and they sound as good as the day I first bought them.

I was leafing throung old 'Gramophones ' the other day and came across the claim that each disc could be played over a million times without loss sound quality. Now, I'm 48 and recently worked out that I have been alive for some 420,000 hours so it's unlikely that I'll manage to be alive for another 1,000,000 hours! However, my proposal is that I'm going to buy a second hand cd player and programme it to play one of the 5 second tracks on 'Falstaff' on repeat until it manages over 1,000,000 times! Then, I want to play the whole performance and see if the track shows eveidence of having deterioted!!

Odd, I know, but I really want to do this!!


Opinions, please...

[MrGongGong]

as its an optical system there's no contact between the CD surface and the reader
so you will probably just wear out the mechanics of the player

[amateur51]

When the wonder that is cd first appeared a lot was made of the fact that the silver discs could be played over and over with no loss of sound quality. The first 2 discs I bought were Uchida's and Tait's Mozart 20th and 21st piano concertos and the late, great Sir Charles Mackerras's disc of Elgar's 'Enigma' and 'Falstaff' with the LPO. I still have those 2 discs and they sound as good as the day I first bought them.

I was leafing throung old 'Gramophones ' the other day and came across the claim that each disc could be played over a million times without loss sound quality. Now, I'm 48 and recently worked out that I have been alive for some 420,000 hours so it's unlikely that I'll manage to be alive for another 1,000,000 hours! However, my proposal is that I'm going to buy a second hand cd player and programme it to play one of the 5 second tracks on 'Falstaff' on repeat until it manages over 1,000,000 times! Then, I want to play the whole performance and see if the track shows eveidence of having deterioted!!

Odd, I know, but I really want to do this!!


Opinions, please...

Well I guess you'll need to get your dog involved as she/he/it may be the only family member who can notice any changes

[amateur51]

as its an optical system there's no contact between the CD surface and the reader
so you will probably just wear out the mechanics of the player

My ol' dad was an optician and he used to swear that one elderly patient said to him that she needed new glasses "because I've had these for years and I think they must have worn out"

[Petrushka]

as its an optical system there's no contact between the CD surface and the reader
so you will probably just wear out the mechanics of the player

Does that mean then, that a CD should last forever?

[MrGongGong]

nothing lasts forever (except a couple of pieces by La Monte Young of course)
no it will decay , depending on where and how its kept etc

[Ferretfancy]

Modern machines have better error correction circuitry than earlier ones, so your second hand machine had better not be too old. There was a lot of discussion not long ago about CDs suffering from decay due to oxidation creeping between the plastic layers, but that argument seems to have gone to ground. I still have CDs bought in 1983, when the first ones appeared, and they have not deteriorated to my ears. Of course, disc mastering has also improved since those early releases, but that's another story.

MrGongGong, Age has its advantages, who exactly is La Monte Young? ( Who are the Beatles ? )

[Tony.Haywood]

La Monte Young - one of the founding fathers of Minimalsim. His 'Well Tuned Piano' lasts a mere 9 hours, give or take....

[mikealdren]

I have my first disc to have aged, my much loved Campoli's choice has 'bronzed' over the outer edges so the last two track no longer play.

Mike