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Car smashed; SOME CD-Rs skipping / Player or media?

PostPosted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 9:45 am
by VEFF
My parked car (less than a year old) was hit hard a couple of months ago.
It came back looking as good as new, although I think the tires need to be balanced and the wheels, possibly, need to be aligned. Both minor issues all things considered.

In any case, while I was test driving it, I noticed that two CD-Rs (one admittedly with a number of fingerprints on its mirrorlike top surface)
were skipping several times per song.
One was a Nashua CD-R (3 years old or so) and one was a 3 year-old Verbatim color disc (purple).
At first I thought it might be the player, since these discs, to my knowledge, were NOY skipping before the accident.
However, there might have been dust in the body shop and the heat of the discs being in the car for 9 summer weeks with no air may have been enough to cause sun spots and or very slight warping of the discs.

Last night I tried one disc (AT&T CD-R, which I think is Ritek or Ricoh made) that had NOT been in the car, and it played back flawlessly, even over small bumps in the road.
I then tried a Samsung CD-R 80 gold top, that had been in the car, and it also played back flawlessly.

I am pretty confident that it is NOT the player that cause the first two discs to skip.

Any comments or thoughts? I wanted to know what others here thought

PostPosted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 9:53 am
by pranav81
Did you try playing the discs that skip on some other CD player?And how does the recorded surface look?Is it normal or is there some chipping of the recording surface?BTW,you mentioned that the discs were about 3 years old,so I would say that the problem is related to media,as other discs played back without any problems.



::Pranav::

PostPosted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 11:00 am
by VEFF
pranav81 wrote:Did you try playing the discs that skip on some other CD player?And how does the recorded surface look?Is it normal or is there some chipping of the recording surface?BTW,you mentioned that the discs were about 3 years old,so I would say that the problem is related to media,as other discs played back without any problems.



::Pranav::


Thanks for the feedback.
I also concluded that it was pobaby the discs themselves that had become faulty over time, especially being in a locked car for 9 weeks in the sun and summer heat, humidity.

I haven't had a chance to try them on another player, but I know car players can be more sensitive to imperfections than home players, such as my Technics MASH 110+1 CD changer or other home players.
The TOP surface of the Verbatim (I happened to check it this morning when I picked it up of the floor of the car where it had fallen) seemed like it *might* have some sun spots. The bottom looked okay.
I'll do some more testing this weekend, with BOTH players and multiple discs, to get a good statistical sample size to be able to draw conclusions.

PostPosted: Sun Aug 22, 2004 1:26 am
by pranav81
I would say the the problem is related to the media.


::Pranav::

PostPosted: Mon Aug 23, 2004 4:13 pm
by digitaldoc
Most likely a media problem. CD-R's don't do well in locked cars in summer heat. If the cd player is fine on regular cd's, and cd-r's that were not locked in the hot car over the summer, than it is definitely the media. You can try reburning the disc to see if it can be saved.