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

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...

I had just received the Ayre CD from Music Direct last week and just played it yesterday. I have difficulty with subtle improvements if I am not doing a side by side comparison but I will say my system sounded great and for $20 I will continue to play the CD on a regular basis.

What I can say is that I added Cardas Audio Multi Blocks last month to get all of my cables off the floor and segregated and with that I can say my system opened up with a noticeable improvement.

It is another inexpensive adjustment and I am a believer in the sum of all parts.

Will this also work with a CD transport or is it affecting the dac in the CD player?