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Rain-X as CD Enhancement Treatment

I have used the Auric Illuminator treatment on my CD collection for several years now. I am a believer in the AI, and repeated A/B tests of identical treated/untreated CDs bore out significant improvements after treatment with AI.

I ran out of the fluid and my marker dried out, so I was searching for mew treatments on the market before buying another AI kit or choosing something new. That's when I ran across this article by Greg Weaver at Soundstage, where he talks about having used Rain-X and a green marker(Staedtler Lumocolor 357, price about $3.00) as a treatment on his CDs to great effect.

http://www.soundstage.com/synergize/synergize200005.htm

Being the complete geek that I am, I had to try it for my self. I found the marker at Office Depot, and picked up a little bottle of Rain-X for $2.99. I treated a couple of CDs that I have ended up with duplicate copies of (Grant Green's Green Street, Frank Sinatra Sextet Live In Paris)and tested the Rain-X/marker treated vs. untreated disks.

Well, low and behold, the treated disks sounded notably improved; the music was clearer and louder, especially the midrange, the soundstage was larger with better definition and separation of instruments and the bass was tighter and deeper.

I can't say that the Rain-X treatment was or was not better sounding than the AI, but at the least very it is close, for a fraction of the price.

Has anyone else ever tried the Rain-X treatment?
craig_hoch
psacanli
535 posts
 
The problems with rain-x on plastics can be seen on motorcycling sites since the windshields are not glass.
The comments I've read indicate effects which would ultimately be degrading to our CDs. Google in Rain-x and explore. Happy listening. Pete
tbg
5,263 posts
 
This was quite the rage about five years ago. Rain-X is cheap, but I found other products are better, notably Walker's Ultra-Vivid.
douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
Shadorne, surely you're not going to let a lousy buck or two for some soft car polish or Rain-X, or whatever, stop you from such a discovery?

Take your oldest, worst, disc my friend, and try it. :)
oldcar63
145 posts
 
I have tried many different tweaks for cd playback, but have not tried rain-x. I have some in the shed and will give it go . These are my finds . Stoplight helps mostly on poor quality cdp,s. Green pen similar to Stoplight but not as effective. Finyle surface treatment has the same effect on good and poor player,s(not always an improvement depending on the disc)sometimes over softening of attack or transients. The best I found is a zerostat used for LP,s . Use it the same as you would for an album on both sides of the cd. Don,t discount until you try it. I read research paper on this back a while,that stated when a cd/dvd is manufactured it will have a static charge on the suface that has negative impact on the reading of the lazer.
shadorne's avatar
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shadorne
7,477 posts
 
Shadorne, surely you're not going to let a lousy buck or two for some soft car polish or Rain-X, or whatever, stop you from such a discovery?

True the money would not stop me. However, you would be amazed at the effects of years of scientific conditioning and brainwashing. I simply can't bring myself to perform what my preconditioning tells me would be a senseless task. It may seem strange but I will not waste one minute on car wax or green markers but I have spent many hours reading most of the orginal papers by Sony and Philips on the CD format and CIRC coding and countless technical documents from AES. People are wired differently.See this. The two camps often have trouble understanding eachothers behaviour. Each spends hours doing things that the other would think is pointless. Depending on where one sits in Myers Briggs one could have completely opposite opinion about the value of double blind testing.
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