[redbook]

Well I'm going through my cd collection today and I played a disc that repeatadly comes up "ERROR-stop" on display! When I goofed around with the various buttons it played but upon reloading wouldn't play again. Other discs are fine. Could this be a fault with the particular recording perhaps due to some hidden code in the record.? Anyway, the player sounds better than any other I've ever owned. Has anyone had this occur ? Thanks for any insight...redbook.

[FullRangeMan]

Well, there is many possibilities here, humidity on the CD, a bad pressed CD, dusty/scrath CD, or a hard to read Index, I have some CDs and SACDs that are from a hard to read Index/TOC media type.
The 90s years CD machines I know, when the CD transport are some years old, it need some tuning on tracking and focus, because the various media types made a dysregulation on the laser system, (this your Bryston CD player is a new one, maybe it is different).
This is my two cents.

[Daniel Datchev]

Hi redbook,
I have 3 CD in my collection which cause the problem you have described in your post.
What I do is play the second track and then "previous" using the button on the remote controll.
If you push the button "1" this will cause again "ERROR-stop"
Daniel

[Moon Doggy]

I have 2 or 3 that have been difficult or unable to play in my CD player. One was due to DRM. I found that if I burnt a CD-R copy there would be no problem playing the copy in my CD player. Of course your PC or Mac has to be able to read it. My Mac was able to in all 3 cases. Keeping in mind that CD-R copies only last 2-3 yrs before they need to be burnt again. So I always mark the date they were burnt.

[James Tanner]

Hi Folks,

The BDA-1 is a REDBOOK CD Player 'only' so if the CD has any media data like pictures, album art, lyrics and such the redbook CD player will not see it.  Usually this data is on the first track so sometimes hitting the forward button to play track 2 will work.  Also some CD's come with 'copy protection' - more in Europe than anywhere else in the world and sometimes they may have issues on a Redbook only player. The solution is to make a CDR which will ignor the media data and for some reason will bypass the copy protection most of the time.

Moon Doggy I was not aware that CDR's will only last a few years - why is that?

james

[srb]

Keeping in mind that CD-R copies only last 2-3 yrs before they need to be burnt again. So I always mark the date they were burnt.

Not sure where you read that piece of information, but my real-world experience is that I have many CD-Rs that are 10+ years old and play the same now as when they were originally burned.
 
Although I can't speak to the ultimate lifespan of CD-Rs versus factory CDs, the rumor that they last only 2-3 years just isn't so.
 
Steve

[Moon Doggy]

Not sure where you read that piece of information, but my real-world experience is that I have many CD-Rs that are 10+ years old and play the same now as when they were originally burned.
 
Although I can't speak to the ultimate lifespan of CD-Rs versus factory CDs, the rumor that they last only 2-3 years just isn't so.
 
Steve

Hi Steve,

I heard from a computer tech that the ink degrades after 2-3 years with CD-Rs. Where did you hear that this isn't so? Was it from experience having CD-Rs that are 10 years old? Maybe the error correction on your CD player is working overtime! 

That would be great not having to re-burn my CD-Rs every 3 years!

Thanks,
James

[Moon Doggy]

Moon Doggy I was not aware that CDR's will only last a few years - why is that?

james

I heard and read that the ink layer is organic and will deteriorate over time. Accelerated by increased heat and humidity. I also have back ups of all my media on my servers because ( as you know) even data on HD can deteriorate.  Due to earth's magnetic fields? solar radiation?

Regards,

James

[srb]

I heard from a computer tech that the ink degrades after 2-3 years with CD-Rs. Where did you hear that this isn't so? That would be great not having to re-burn my CD-Rs every 3 years!

I didn't "hear" or read it isn't so.  I am saying from my personal experience with 10+ year old CD-Rs, that it isn't necessarily so.  I have read, and agree with, that the lifespan of CD-Rs is not as great as stamped CDs.
 
The difference is that stamped CDs have physical depressions or pits in the aluminum substrate layer, whereas CD-Rs have a photosensitive dye layer on top of the aluminum layer that is turned opaque when the laser heats it.  This makes the CDR less permanent.
 
I would also suspect that cheaper, lower quality CD-Rs may be more prone to failure depending on the quality of the photosensitive dye.  All of my CD-R burns have used a decent quality brand name disc.
 
The computer tech has probably adopted a 2 - 3 year re-burn routine to be on the very safe side, as he is usually dealing with valuable irreplaceable data.
 
Steve

[srb]

I heard and read that the ink layer is organic and will deteriorate over time. Accelerated by increased heat and humidity.

I will agree that heat is a factor, but I doubt that humidity affects the dye as it is sealed within polycarbonate layers.
 
Steve

[Moon Doggy]

Thanks for confirming that Steve. Glad to know that I'm not re-burning them for nothing. The vast majority of my music is on regular CD so its not much of a problem. Although some claim that CD-Rs sound better than regular CDs because they are no pits on the surface. So they copy all their CDs to CD-Rs. But, I can't hear a difference.

James

[srb]

Maybe the error correction on your CD player is working overtime! 

Maybe!
 
When CDs first came out, some said that they wouldn't last due to the aluminum layer somehow oxidizing or breaking down, but I have CD's that are 25 years old.
 
Also, those that are into data archiving with CD-Rs use specially formulated CD labeling pens, as the solvent and chemicals in the Sharpie pen ink is said to be able to break down the polycarbonate layer over time.  I have both data and music CD-Rs (both labeled with Sharpies!) that I will hold on to to see if they go bad in the coming years.
 
Although error correction in the CD Player may interpolate missing or bad data on my music CD-Rs, the data CD-Rs will be able to be compared to the original data to see if any bits are missing or have changed value.  I'll report back in another 5 - 10 years.
 
Steve

[HsvHeelFan]

I have a number of CD's that I bought in 1984 (I bought my first CD player in March of 1984) and they're still playing fine.

The first 2 CDs that I bought were Pictures at an Exhibition (Telarc) and Alan Parsons Project - I Robot.

I bought them at the same time as the CD player.

I have had CDs that got scratched up by my kids and I've ripped them to CD-Rs and some of those are probably 10 years old and still playing fine.

HsvHeelFan

[redbook]

Thanks to all for the feedback on this. It is comforting that it isn't the player. The record in question is Delerium's CHEMERA album. It has copyprotection on some type labelled on the disc! Ahaaaaa, we're on to something here I think folks. I did get it into gear once but forgot how. I may have used the remote  and I did start with track 2 now that you mentioned it. At first I figured it may becuase it is a so called Enhanced disc but other enhanced and HDCDs in the collection seem to do fine. Good listening to all

[Moon Doggy]

Although error correction in the CD Player may interpolate missing or bad data on my music CD-Rs, the data CD-Rs will be able to be compared to the original data to see if any bits are missing or have changed value.  I'll report back in another 5 - 10 years.
 
Steve

I was joking about your CD player's error correction working overtime.

I'm not referring to the longevity of CDs. Just CD-Rs.


What is really happening Steve is that you are not noticing the Data loss on you're CD-Rs that are getting old. Especially those 10 years + IOW, its really what you are NOT hearing!

While not a directly equivalent analogy because the data loss in the former case is probably significantly less. Kinda like when many( most?!) of us have a hard time hearing the difference between a lossy file eg. 320 kbps and a lossless file. But over the long term the musical satisfaction is significantly diminished.

I talked to my computer tech friend... and I quote from our conversation.

There is a way to check for data loss on CD-Rs. Go into your terminal on your Mac or Linux OS. If you have a PC you will need to have CYGWIN installed. You must install cdparanoia on Mac using a package manager like darwinports or fink. On Linux use whatever package manger comes with your distro. On Windows you might have to compile from source but too complicated for this post. Once installed run this command: cdparanoia -wXBz
It will rip the CD to the current folder/directory and it will abort if it encounters any read errors it can't fix.

those that are into data archiving with CD-Rs use specially formulated CD labeling pens

Also, few  people archive data on CD-Rs anymore due to the breakdown of the dye over time. Preferring multiple back ups on hard drives. Insuring proper parity data is maintained.
 
 Hope this helps.

Regards,

James