"Tuning" CD's
Shaving Compact Discs to improve the sound (?!)
This Youtube will trigger the usual chorus of self-appointed audio rationalists, but I have a much simpler workaround that involves simply sanding the edge of the CD and then blackening the edge of the CD with a magic marker - all in the service of nullifying incident laser reflections bouncing off the glossy edges of CD's.
The results were so impressive that I now perform this procedure on all of my CD's. I should add that my system plays CD's only which are burned from downloaded flac files. The files are converted to .wav files in JRiver and burned at the slowest speed my desktop drive can achieve.
Please let us know what the you hear or do not hear.
I should also point out that the sonic graphs displayed the the Youtuber for comparison between the treated and untreated CD's are not symmetrical if you look closely.
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@armandoday, that is exactly what @edcyn wrote. Some of my cd’s still have the Audioprism’s Stop Light green paint, gave up, never tried it again (funny but it seems that i did only REM at the time). Yes it was mate finish. Sony in 2009 introduced the green labeled SACD’s but i am not sure if they continued that project. |
Tuning CD's is a thing. Many, many hours of experimentation with a variety of solutions gave us very positive results ranging from "notable improvement" to "jaw-dropping". We provided a complementary service to customers and allowed them to bring in a couple of CD's to "tune". This package included CD cleaning, treatments (we used the Ultrabit system) as well as trimming the CD's with a CD cutter. We always performed "before" and "after" comparisons. An unsolicited nearly universal comment/question was: "Did you turn up the volume?" The answer". "No I didn't". Other accolades followed as well. What we didn't hear was: "I don't hear any difference". They may have been trying to be polite and didn't want to hurt our feelings, but we sit there with them, and heard what they heard. We can agonize over the science related to making changes to physical media, but here are some observations after, literally, hundreds of cases: - good CDs sound better - unlistenable, poorly recorded, want to hit the eject button in 3 seconds CDs have some added siblance of detail, reduced harshness, and improved dynamic range - BluRay soundtracks are improved. I kept "untreated" and "untreated" copies around for demo. Always better sound quality -- similar to CD improvements - burned CD ROMS are improved - "audiophile" versions of CDs sound better - Improvements in virtually every CD transport/player we tried including car stereos, entry-level to "very good" players, and BluRay players. |
I have tried many treatments over the decades. They all eventually oxidize, Easy to hear as the music sounds dull. 2 things that work well *SystemDesk edge trimmer, though it's a PITA in use * Machina New Dark Matter. Perhaps the very best (and passive) way to improve the sound. It's a one time insert into your CD tray or well. ccut to shape, comes with gouble sided tape. It absorbs the laser light scattering inside the mechanism. IMHO, it's the best $39 you will ever spend to improve CD sound quality |
