Sanding or smoothing the edges can only achieve so much. I too was skeptical of all of this stuff ( I do NOT believe in "green marker mumbo jumbo") until i tried the Audio Desk Systeme. You know, the "CD circumsizer". It's a motorized platter with a variable speed control ( up to 9000 rpm's ) and an arm equipped with a tapered blade on it. You clamp the CD in place TIGHTLY and proceed to motor the disc up to speed while applying light pressure with the cutting arm. This does several things to the CD. First of all, it actually trues the disc. You would not believe how much "wobble" some of these discs have from the manufacturer. It also removes any burrs or rough edges. It also adds a downard taper to the edge of the disc. All of this adds up to a disc that is better balanced, has less diffraction / reflection problems while offering quicker data retrieval / read times. The results were a great improvement in terms of detail and resolution with a decrease in upper midrange / lower treble glare. Bass was also cleaner and especially improved on "muddy" or "murky" recordings. Pace actually seemed to pick up after cutting these discs especially, probably due to the bass not dragging any more. We tried this using several duplicate discs within the same system and came up with pretty consistent results. My girlfriend, who thinks all of this stuff is "goofy", noticed the difference right away. She told me that i better NEVER cut any of her discs before we did a few comparisons. After we did the first few comparisons using duplicate discs that i had and she heard the difference, she asked me to cut one of hers that she listened to all the time. She is no longer afraid to cut her discs and now thinks differently of SOME of my tweaks. Sean >
