[Dixielandjazz] CD question

[John Farrell]

Yesterday a Swiss friend sent me two jazz piano CDRs which he had burned for
me, both were the same brand. One plays fine on my hifi, the other doesn't -
yet it plays perfectly on my PC. I solved the problem by burning a new copy
of the refusenik - my copy plays normally on the hifi.

This is weird stuff.

John Farrell
http://homepages.tesco.net/~stridepiano/midifiles.htm

----- Original Message -----
From: <Andy.Ling at Quantel.Com>
To: <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2003 10:06 AM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Fw: CD question


> Bob Romans asks :-
> > Have you ever had someone tell you that your cd's would
> > not play in the cd player?
>
> There are several reasons for this. The CD is read by shining
> a laser at it and looking for the reflections.
>
> Originally CDs had a nice shiny silver surface with small
> indentations for the "digital" bits. The difference between
> these two areas was large and so was "easy" to see.
>
> When writable CDs came along the colour was changed. Some
> were gold, some green, some even still silver. Also the
> indentations became holes burnt by the write process. All
> this made it more difficult to read and sometimes a more powerful
> laser was needed. Most CD players could cope, but some didn't
>
> Then along came re-writables. These use a different technique
> again which makes it even more difficult to read. The upshot
> of this was that most audio CD players couldn't read them.
>
> Newer CD players are now designed to cope with CD-Rs and CD-RWs
>
> Another factor is that the laser slowly degrades. As it gets
> older it loses its brightness. I have a CD player which is
> 1983 vintage. It stopped playing some CDs. When this first
> happened, a tweak of a "brightness" control fixed it. The next
> time it needed a new laser. It now needs another laser and
> has been retired.
>
> DVDs pack the data in tighter. To do this they need a smaller
> beam of light to do the reading (amongst other things). This
> is partly achieved by using a different colour laser. A CD
> player will not even come close to reading a DVD.
>
> If you are producing CDs for others, then commercial pressings
> will work for 99.9% of people, but obviously have a high
> initial cost. CD-Rs will work for most and are cheapest for
> low volume production. CD-RWs should only be used if you
> really do need to make changes. Even then it is probably
> easier to just create a new CD-R
>
>
> Andy Ling
>
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