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

Tony w said it...use xlo and ayre.

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

I saw this and I immediately thought the answer was 'use it'.

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

I immediately thought "play a record or two to see how far you still have to go...'

My little brother was a Manufacturing Engineer at Sony for 25+ years.  He is a Purdue graduate but the little snot has as many patents as I do.  (I worked in both Aerospace and Automotive in R&D and Design/development for my career).  He took me on a tour of their CD manufacturing line back in the early 90s.  Back then it cost less than a dollar to make a CD as I recall.  The discs are injection molded polycarbonate with the pits that define the digital information molded in place.  So that part is very similar to the manufacturing of vinyl records- just instead of pits the record has the grooves molded in place.  Next the discs are inserted into a special vacuum chamber and pure aluminum is sputtered onto the disc just a few atoms thick to make a perfect mirrored surface.  A UV cured clear coat lacquer is bonded over the mirrored surface to protect the mirror finish.  I remember him telling me at the time that CDs were not considered archival because the aluminum is not perfectly sealed and can eventually oxidize.  CDs are estimated to last 100 years, he said.  So its not a bad idea to rip them into FLAC files.  I have a gold CD and I imagine it is the same process just sputtered with gold as the source material instead of aluminum.  Hopefully it will last a long time since it was expensive.  Finally, the labels are silk screened onto the discs and they are packaged into their jewel boxes.  He said they produced 3 million discs per day back then.  CDs had a 2.5 second cycle time and DVDs were 3.5 seconds.  The master disc is made by laser etching a photo film on a glass plate, the residual material washed away and then nickel plated.  This plating with the pits (digital information) is about 0.25 mm thick.  The positive master is molded from the original master disc and then the working molds pressed from the positive master.  

Just did the Ayre disc..like it a lot...XLO arrives this afternoon...got a bunch of friends lined up to borrow both...fun stuff...