CD rot / wear

http://members.cox.net/surround/uhjdisc/bronze.htm

If it's a concern back up your CDs every few years. Video tape oxidises after about 15-20 years so your old Blake's 7 videos are probably dead too.

If by "possibility" you mean "certainty" and by "my CDs" you mean "my body," then yeah... that is scary.

Some of the Return To Sender (Giant Sand, Steve Wynn, TFUL282, etc) discs had this problem. Something to do with the ink on the discs &/or packaging. They advised cleaning them with washing-up liquid/dish detergent/whatever your part of the world calls it. Seemed to do the trick on some of mine.

CD-R discs unreadable in less than two years?

"Good" brands of CD-R? (or...have I been buying my brand for all the wrong reasons?)

What are the best CD-Rs?

How Are Your Compact Discs Bearing Up After All These Years? BBC Online Report.

Oh fuck...

instead

I'm sure Albini has more issues than that with digital recording!

I wrote to PDO about my bronzing Nick Drake CDs a few years ago and their binary response was 0000000000000000.

(And ask her out.)

More worrying is the longevity of CD-R - I've had a large number suffer from the same sort of problem. From experience, TDK seem to be almost the most reliable - but never stick labels on discs - this seems to make them go off even quicker! I've had some fail in a matter of weeks.

I have yet to see this happen to any of my CDs, some of which are over 10 years old, but I fear it is just a matter of time...
Has this happened to you? Please post your pics here and frighten me silly!

Hasn't happened to any of mine yet. I checked a couple of my oldest, from 1991-1993 a couple months ago and they were all fine. So, 17 years in for some and still going strong.

I've had CDRs crap out, but never any real CDs yet.

it happens to certain cds that came from certain manufacturing plants; nimbus in particular.

or, I guess, these were PDOs. but a lot of them say "mastered by nimbus" on the inner ring.

lots of vinyl japan stuff is deteriorating. i have a couple of their discs that won't play or copy the last few tracks. frustrating.

a bunch of 'commercial' cd-rs don't play well for me either, eg a couple of fence comps, a freed unit album. but then the concept the electricity cdr on clairecords ripped like a dream

I have had a couple CDs seemingly deteriorate -- unplayable on any CD player I had w/o massive skipping -- but then later return to apparent normalcy.

were there scratches on them? I've never experienced this...

I have a really rotting CD but it still works fine. Just looks orange. It's an old, cheap compilation of early 1960s Isley Brothers stuff.

I just looked at a bunch of Vinyl Japan cds that I own and they look fine, I did sell Girls At Our Best last year, but that ripped perfect in EAC with test and copy. I don't think I have experienced this either.

I've seen old CDs that have become kind of tarnished on the label side (the one I'm thinking of was a Queen album from right at the early days of CDs), but as far as I know they still played fine.

The 'Bronzing CDs' where manufactured by PDO's Blackburn plant. Normally they go 'bronzed' from the outside in - this results in modulating noise (worse than a 78) that gets louder with the music - toward then end of the CD. I am please to say that PDO have always been keen to replace any I have returned (and that's about 30 or so - quite a few long deleted title included).

This thing has been researched and apparently it's only the CDs manufactured in this plant during a certain period that actually suffer from "CD rot", due to a flaw in the manufacturing process. For other CDs the idea of "CD rot" is a myth that no one has been able to actually prove. For example, I have several CDs that were pressed 20-25 years ago, and there's absolutely no sign of "rot" in any of them. CD-R's are of course a different case.

as linked above : one of my wiseblood cds is definitely suffering this.

As for the little holes in CDs mentioned upthread, that has happened to a few records of mine too, but I think it results from mistreatment of CDs, not just general aging. (For example, in my case this happened specifically to CDs I used to carry around in a CD wallet, which I don't do anymore.) If you treat your CDs well, it shouldn't happen.

I've had a few 80s CDs go wobbly, had a bunch of 'commercial' CD-Rs be unplayable, and one PDO disc fuck out completely - unfortunately it was on KLF so can't be replaced....

oh yes.
my KLF Shag Times cd is going down this route - thanks for the reminder.

I've got a Skullflower CD and a Soft Machine Peel Sessions CD crapping out with rot.

my oldest cd: Henrix's Live at Winterland--bought way back in paleolithic 1987--still just works just fine. ;^)

I think my oldest CDs are Beatles ones, probably bought in 1988-1990, and they're fine.

**just works just fine**

I've got a Skullflower CD and a Soft Machine Peel Sessions CD crapping out with rot.

my copy of ruins is bronzing, i think, but i've got a cdr and a copy on my hard drive. taking no chances.

So there seems to be a distinction between 'CD ROT' or bronzing (which is limited to CDs from a specific manufacturing plant) and other forms of deterioration. What are the other sorts of deterioration do you guys see?

Has anyone checked the checksums of rips of your CDs against other people's rips to see how well the data on it has held up down to the bit level?

My Seventeen Seconds and Louder Than Bombs - the first two CDs I bought, in about 1989 - are both slightly tarnished but they play fine.

Got several PDO/Nimbus ones bronzing or showing white streaks. One of the Island Fairport Convention CDs, Mercury Rev - _Yerself..._ (few other Mint label releases too), the original Mute Swell Maps reissues. There's probably more, but I have way too many CDs to check, so just a case of discovering them or other people mentioning theirs.

Damn, I posted on this thread back in '05 & here I am just signed up again!

sorry, those are Polydor/Rough Trade issues, both Nimbus I think.