If you have a CD Player, you need to do this periodically...

Itsnotjustyou, an awful lot of audiophiles also don't know CD is not digital. Anyways, not on me to explain how or why something works, just that it does in fact make a difference I can hear. The rest is on you.

Acoustic sounds has the Cardas Ayre disc in stock

Just ordered one

 Best tweak post on here in months

Thanks Willy-T

Thanks for the recommend brauser. Thanks for finding places for us to get one zimick and Willy-T. Mines now on order. Sight & Sound in Atlanta carries the Densen De-Magic Demagnetizing CD. Can’t vouch for S&S having never purchased anything there. New owners, please report here how well your disc works after it arrives, or prior to that if you’re prescient.

Mike Muad’Dib

@millercarbon 

Seriously?  Like you haven't seen my posts or followed my links on why the "digital" input signal is in fact quasi-analog. Anyhow.

That assertion carries a HUGE caveat; whether it is truly digital or quasi-analog depends where and when in the signal chain. 

When the signal hist the DAC chip, timing matters nad that's analog.  Until then, no.  And in the magnitude domain (what's coded in the 16, 18, 24 bits), why yes, it is purely digital and very robust.

Now, the optical CD itself is different yet again, and no traditional digital.  You either ignored my reference to EFM or don't know what i is.  EFM (eight-to-fourteen modulation) is the coding format of pits on the CD.  It is in fact quasi analog, but has full error detection and then correction after decoding - so impacts are known. And uncorrected ones are very rare.

So, at that point:

1. The "digital stream" is minimally, if at all, at risk

2. it is optical not electrical, and therefore magnetism is even less relevant

So yea, it is on you to explain this. Arguments like the one you mad here continue to confuse the issue and give naysayers ammunition.  Yes!  We need to deal with the analog timing component.  No! i doesn't matter anywhere except right at the input to the DAC (assuming, for simplicity, a traditional PCM ladder DAC).

So all, we need to be careful about this - details matter.

I have been using a bulk tape eraser on my CDs since the mid 90s.  It makes a difference.  I remember back then I had a buddy come over with some duplicate CDs to mine.  So we were able to listen to his untreated discs compared to my demagnetized discs and then demagnetize his and listen again.  Since then I demagnetize all of my new CDs.  The bulk tape eraser was about $20 at Radio Shack back then.  Turns out it works.

CDs have a thin layer of Aluminum sputtered onto the polycarbonate disc.  Aluminum is paramagnetic.  We also figured some of the CD label inks may have metal in them.  Perhaps even weak spinning magnetic fields jostle the laser head.  Who knows?  Demagnetizing CDs works so i just do it.

My brother worked at Sony making CDs then DVDs until they moved it out of the country.  He says CDs have an analog component to them.  Part of it is that the time domain is mechanical (The spinning disc) but the part I don't understand is why does a clean disc play louder than a dirty, smudged disc.