[rmurray]

  A member on the 'demise of bcd1 post' mentioned errors and decay on cds. I haven't had  this so far. ;touch wood . Have others experienced any problems other than skipping and misreading caused by copy control on certain discs? All my recordings are happy and well. My oldest ones are over twenty years old. .....  sorry ,it was the post about Jitter  or nor Jitter.

[Diamond Dog]

I can honestly say that I can't remember having a CD issue that wasn't related to a problem with either the player or the player's design philosophy ( ie: unable to read discs which deviate from RB ). I also have some pretty old cd's and the dreaded "CD Rot" has yet to manifest itself here so far...I'm pretty careful about how I handle my CD library so I guess the fact that I don't leave them lying around loose or use them as coasters doesn't hurt. Can't speak to the reference Sasha made to issues with ripping CD's in that other thread.

D.D.

[spinner]

 That's good to hear..........

[BrysTony]

I have close to 1000 CDs that I have bought over the last 27 years and all are as good as new.  "CD Rot" is still way out in the future if it exists and most of mine have been ripped.  I am not worrying about it.

Tony

[sfraser]

i don't listen to CD's much anymore, having everything ripped to a server. However i can honestly say i have never had a cd "go bad" on me, other than ones which have had tour of duty in my car, or my kids rooms.

Cheers,

[srb]

Whatever the lifespan is for the silver discs, I believe that in the end the commercially produced CDs manufactured with physical pits will ultimately be longer lasting than recorded CD-Rs that are created with a laser chemically turning a dye layer non-reflective.
 
Just as certain photos will fade over time, those CD-Rs that use a really cheap or unstable dye layer will be the first to fail.  That being said, I still have working CD-Rs from when they first appeared on the market, but I think the longevity question probably applies more to long-term irreplaceable data storage.
 
Steve

[SoundGame]

I believe CD rot is just an urban-myth.  Except for some very rare and funky bacteria that consume plastics, I'm not aware of any natural decay of "pressed" CDs.
 
This however, does not go for CD-R (recordable CD) that you burn on a CD burner.  These use organic materials / dyes which do definitely break down over time with some brands becoming full of errors in a matter of a year or two.  I'm not in the practice of burning CD so no worry for me.

[redbook]

 Yes, same opinion here...no bad ones over 24 years of collecting.

[Anonamemouse]

Out of my approx 1250 CD's I have one that is corroded.
It still plays the first three tracks, then it dies.

[Phoenix]

I've studied plastics engineering.
Every plastic will degrade over time. Humidity, UV-radiation, elevated or often changing temperatures will eventually lead into failure of the plastic (mechanical failure during spinning, stress cracks within the material, delamination of the aluminium layer, etc.).

However, if you keep your CDs away from sunlight and within the case under normal ambient conditions I guess they will live longer than all of us here.

[Marius]

Never had issues with cd's rotting away. Did have issues with cd's handled in the Car when reaching under the chair with the disc changer beneath it. And with one disc that got slammed in a suddenly closing drawer of my BCD1.....

And I've punished the rest of them severely now and then. Some do get hot in a SACD player I use once in a while, as do some dvd's in that same player, sometimes I wonder whether that won't hurt them, but up until now, no problems.

Marius

[Sasha]

  A member on the 'demise of bcd1 post' mentioned errors and decay on cds. I haven't had  this so far. ;touch wood . Have others experienced any problems other than skipping and misreading caused by copy control on certain discs? All my recordings are happy and well. My oldest ones are over twenty years old. .....  sorry ,it was the post about Jitter  or nor Jitter.

Try to use good ripping application and you will see that majority of audio CDs will have errors, most of them shown in single pass, what does not represent a problem for ripping but does for real time playback and its poor error correction, and although these are not the same as unrecoverable errors that result in clicks you do end up with playback errors which are not present in ripped tracks where you have a luxury or multiple passes and better error correction.
CD rot implies a catastrophic failure, that may be decades away, what I am talking about is undeniable fact that CDs, even brand new ones, have problematic sectors that will in almost all cases render CD playback more error susceptible and inferior to playback from PC based transports as far as loss is concerned.
In other words, audio CD is not as reliable and lossless as you may think.
If someone tried to use this kind of technology with its inherent limitations for data storage it would be disastrous.

[dubya]

Hi back in the 90's I bought some Island cd's by John Martyn, Bob Marley, etc all had the same degenerative fault.
They started with a minor hiss that developed into full distortion then failure.
I have had this with poor cdrs but never with 'proper' cds. It must have been a bad run of reissues.

W