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Rain-X as CD Enhancement Treatment

I have used the Auric Illuminator treatment on my CD collection for several years now. I am a believer in the AI, and repeated A/B tests of identical treated/untreated CDs bore out significant improvements after treatment with AI.

I ran out of the fluid and my marker dried out, so I was searching for mew treatments on the market before buying another AI kit or choosing something new. That's when I ran across this article by Greg Weaver at Soundstage, where he talks about having used Rain-X and a green marker(Staedtler Lumocolor 357, price about $3.00) as a treatment on his CDs to great effect.

http://www.soundstage.com/synergize/synergize200005.htm

Being the complete geek that I am, I had to try it for my self. I found the marker at Office Depot, and picked up a little bottle of Rain-X for $2.99. I treated a couple of CDs that I have ended up with duplicate copies of (Grant Green's Green Street, Frank Sinatra Sextet Live In Paris)and tested the Rain-X/marker treated vs. untreated disks.

Well, low and behold, the treated disks sounded notably improved; the music was clearer and louder, especially the midrange, the soundstage was larger with better definition and separation of instruments and the bass was tighter and deeper.

I can't say that the Rain-X treatment was or was not better sounding than the AI, but at the least very it is close, for a fraction of the price.

Has anyone else ever tried the Rain-X treatment?
craig_hoch
douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
I know the word Kudos; I didn't know you two have a history. By all means, carry on with the repartee. :)
tbg
5,263 posts
 
I used Rain-X many years ago on many cds. I have seen no adverse effect on any of them. I have used UltraBit Platinum after discarding George's linty rags. It is not as good, IMHO, as his earlier products. I used his ClearBit as a cleaner until I ran out. For a while I used the Jena Labs cd cleaner, but the Walker Audio Ultra-Vivid is clearly superior. At some point in all of this I also used AudioTop digital, which was quite good but not the equal to Ultra-Vivid.

I have a music server now from Exemplar. I have found that treating cds to rip has no advantage. Sometimes I actually preferred the untreated cd. I fully realize that others might not have my experience.

I have two badly scratched cds that cannot be replaced. One of them I did not have when I was using Rain-
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Somehow this was posted before I finished. I was only going to say that the Walker Ultra-Vivid did allow cd players to play both.
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
Rodman99999...FYI...Bose pilot's noise-canceling headsets are almost universally preferred by pilots over other noise-canceling headsets which cost less.
rodman99999
6,125 posts
 
Mr E- Yeah, There's no doubt that they do work, and very well(hard for me to swallow, given my reactions to some of Amar's past concoctions). Did he learn advertising at MIT too?
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