CD Issue

Cuyler

Bright colored pinwheels go 'round in my head.
Hi all,

*sigh*

I have a great copy of Made in America from c. 1984/5 (the CD jewel case is smooth) and my computer CD drive scratched it. Now it has reading errors when I try to rip it with XLD.

So... does anyone know of a safe way to buff out the scratches? Or is there no such thing? :sad:

Thank you,
Cuyler
 
You can buy a cd scratch kit, with buffing cloth, or find a used cd/ video game store that has a refurbishing machine that can resurface the disc.
 
If this were my problem, I'd look on Discogs and eBay and Musicstack to find the exact replacement CD, one that's in better shape. It's not like it's some rare disc that can't be replaced. It may take a bit of searching, but if you're in no hurry, that's what I'd do.

I personally have not had any luck with CD polishers. I once bought a copy of ANTHOLOGY on CD and one of the discs had a nasty scratch error, Since that set wasn't all that common, I invested in a CD polisher kit - and got zero results. That CD would not ever play or rip properly. My solution was to bite the bullet, buy another copy of ANTHOLOGY and pass the bad set on to someone who wanted it, scratch or not.
 
Buffing only works on scratches on the data side. If there is a scratch on the label side, then the disc is likely never going to play. The "pits" containing the digital data are located right beneath the label, so it doesn't take much to damage them from behind. I had a couple with scuffs on the data side and the discs played perfectly after I was able to buff those out. A single, narrow scratch from inside to out also won't affect play, since CDs use both error correction and interpolation to fill in the data if the error can't be corrected. Long (and overly technical) story short, data is spread across areas of the disc, and the "correction" (aka parity) data is safely away from the scratch. Radial scratches, though, cannot be read through since they cover too much data.
 
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