What are you all doing to modify your cds?

I gave up my muscle car, GTO, a while ago but now have the new Z. Maybe I will add a blower or two on it in a year or two. Oh yeah, I have also tried some juice and edge markers and sometimes they do make a difference but for the price they are all worth a try. Someone told me that the different edges on the CD is the reason why the edge markers work or do not work.

Happy Listening! YMMV!!!

Buscis2: As far as the point / counterpoint goes, the article the i linked to provided repeatedly verifiable information from an unbiased source i.e. test equipment. The article that you referenced is pure speculation based on subjective opinions of humans. Humans that are susceptible to pre-conceived ideas. Not exactly an "apples vs apples" type of debate.

Having said that, i DO believe that there are benefits to some specific "CD tweaks". I would consider SOME of these tweaks to offer both sonic and technical / measurable advantages. That's why i said that i did not agree with everything that was contained in that article.

To put things in black and white, i don't believe that anything that makes it harder to retrieve data from the recorded source is beneficial to high fidelity reproduction in any form. As such, i avoid using any type of "device" or "tweak" that does nothing but corrupt the signal that the system is trying to reproduce. In my eyes, increasing the number of errors / corrupting data to the point of reduced readability could never be considered a "positive". Given that the CD mats tested in this article and "CD Rings" & "markering" have all shown to produce verifiable and repeatable negative aspects into data retrieval, i consider them to be a "plague" to digital reproduction.

Having said that, i don't believe that something that is a negative on its' own can help the situation at all, even when combined with something that may be a positive. This is not "chemistry" and we aren't seeing "magic" take place. As such, adding a negative to a positive just gives you less of a positive. In some cases, the negative may actually outweigh the positive and the drawbacks of one tweak may negate the benefits of another.

As such, we'll have to disagree about certain CD tweaks. I don't have a problem with this since i'm listening to my CD's in my system and your listening to your CD's in your system and we will probably continue to do so. For those that aren't familiar with our previous conversations or haven't had time to check out the thread that you referenced, there are several factors of "CD tweaking" that we do agree on. As such, i think that this is something that most people have to check out for themselves and see what they think. It's quite possible that "the truth" lies somewhere between our two points of view. Then again, it's also positive that we are both off our rockers and we are chasing our tails. Only time will tell : ) Sean
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I just rub them against my shirt. Seems to work just fine.

Well, Sean and Ed, neither of your articles really PROVES much of anything. As a side note, if small scratches, fingerprints, smudges, etc., etc. effect the quality of CD playback THAT much, they have more in common with the lowly LP than some might lead us to believe! HA :-)

Hi again Sean, if you really think about it, what fun would it be if we were not off our rockers. In terms of these CD tweaks, I have no explanation whatsoever why they work. In theory, they really should make no difference. But they do. And, I'll put my ears up against any piece of test equipment any day of the week, for the simple reason, that is ultimately the criteria I use.

I also would have to question whether you can actually hear error correction. If I did hear it, I doubt I would actually recognize it. But, then again, there are some things I will probably never understand.

I mean, why did Kamikaze pilots wear crash helmets?