Conference cookie::notes$archive:cd_v1

	Re .0

	Unfortunate coincidence?  Maybe.  I have the "No Jacket Required"
	and it hasn't skipped once.


						Jim

    same as .1  I've got a copy with no skips.  Maybe a bad batch??

    I bought 4 copies in july for me and some friends (they were on
    a grand opening sale at a store called the WIZ for 9.99). None of
    us has had any problems with them.
    						Chris
    

    I took the cd back to Strawberries and it played with no skips.
    P*ssed me off.  So I exchanged the player.  Using the same cd, the
    new player did not skip.  I played a couple of other cd's that didn't
    skip with the 1st player and they sounded fine also.  Therefore,
    it seems that the bad player must have been adjusted to the "hairy
    edge" so that it took a particular cd to throw it off.  What else
    could it be?  Also, I don't know if it's my imagination but, the
    new player sounds better.  Anyway, I'm very happy with it now and
    I will try to forget that I had to exchange it!
    
    Thanks for those who replied.  Actually, I was hoping for a few
    responses from those technical guys who tear apart their cd players
    to get $1000 worth of sound out of a $179 player.  If you guys can
    manage to put down your soldering irons for a minute, I'd like to
    know more of what the problem really was.  Please don't tell me
    how to modify my player!
    
    Thanks again.
    _John

    
    
       I got a copy of No Jacket about 9 months ago,when it was very
    hard to get.I rushed home put in my player (a Philips 104) and shut
    the drawer.The player thought about it for a while,then put on
    the error light,wouldn't even read the index.Did I fel a dick when
    I took it back to the shop and said it didn't work.The salesperson
    gave me one of those 'he's taped it looks'.The replacement copy
    seems to be ok.

    I bought a copy of 'No Jacket Required' at Strawberry's in Shrewsbury
    last week and noticed before playing it for the first time that
    there were 'stress' marks in the plastic for the first 1/8 inch
    on the inside edge of the track. They weren't really marks as much
    as waviness noticeable from reflection.
    
    Anyhow, my CHEAPO Emerson CD150 had no tracking problems with it.
    
    There were 10 copies available at that time and my guess is that
    Strawberry's got ahold of a marginal batch.
    

    It might not have been your imagination that the replacement player
    sounded better.  While the player was making it's problem obvious
    on that one CD when it skipped, it is possible that the player was
    losing or garbageing the data coming off the CD in such a subtle
    way that it wouldn't be obvious on other CDs.

    I have an Asia/Alpha CD that doesn't quite get a long with my player
    in a couple of places.  The noise created sounds so much like the
    rest of the music (sounds like electronic cymbols...) that I didn't
    really think anything of it until I listened to it with headphones.

    					Alan
    

    My understanding of CD technology is that the players try REAL HARD
    to recover data.  There are ERCC bits in the code used by the CDs.
    If those fail, and it's a short gap, the player will interpolate
    from the data it has.
    
    Since the interpolations are really only guesses, if a player is
    missing bits frequently, the music would probably not sound quite
    as good.  Perhaps the laser in your first unit was far enough off
    alignment that it frequently missed bits.  The error correction
    would get many of them fixed up, but sometimes it would have to
    rely on interpolation.  You finally got one disk that was beyond
    the interpolation capabilities, and could hear the problem.
    
    Your new machine probably has a better aligned laser, and does not
    have to interpolate often.
    
    At any rate, that's my guess.
    
    		Picking up his soldering iron,
    
    			  Paul
    

    Thank you Alan (.7) and Paul (.8) for your replies.  It eases my
    mind to know that it's not my imagination that my 2nd cd player
    sounds better than the one that I returned and I was lucky that
    I got a cd that that surfaced the problem while the player was new
    and not 6 months later.  It makes me wonder, though, how many people
    have cd players where the laser is not perfectly aligned and not
    getting the sound that they paid for, even though they don't have
    any skipping problems and don't realize that the error correction
    is compensating for the misalignment.  I guess that it's all in
    ones' ear.  Thanks again.
    
    _John

    Well I have a skip story too....
    
    I recently purchased P. McCartneys "Pressed to Play" cd and it 
    skipped like heck.  Examining the disk I found little eansie
    weansie (teck lingo for tiny) black specs on the disk. They wouldn't
    wash of, this junk was under the plastic.  I looked at it under
    the Microscope here a DEC and it looks like two concentric circles.
    
    So if it skips check it out, a magnifying glass would make it easier
    although I spotted it with out any help.
    
    Mike

    RE:10
    I have P. McCartney's "PRESS To Play" and it is fine.  Is yours
    an import?  Mine is an import from England (Parlophone), perhaps
    there might be a difference in the way they are produced.
    

Mine is fine, too.

Time for a tangent.  .-1 says his copy is an import from England, Parlophone.

Mine says Parlophone on the disk itself, says Made in Japan on the disk, too.
But the booklet says Capitol Records and Printed in U.S.A.

/john

    
    This would seem to indicate the booklets are printed in one place
    and the discs pressed (?) in another.  I have a couple of Phillps
    classical discs where the the booklets were printed in the Netherlands
    and the disc was pressed in West Germany.
    
    Dave W.

    
    How to go bananas: First, travel to the USA. Then buy several CDs.
    Then get home. Then discover that Vivaldis' "The Four Seasons" skips
    like billy-oh at the end of track 5 and the beginning of track 6.
    Back and forth it goes, where it ends up nobody knows...
    
    So I wonder if the Harvard Coop takes returns via mail?
    
    I'll also try it out on another CD player, but it's the only one
    of 25-odd I have now that exhibits this behaviour. I've washed it
    in soapy water to get rid of any grease, etc but to no avail.
    
    As they say, suggestions welcomed.

    re .14	You weren't blunt enough !   
    
    What you have to say is something more like, "Wanted, a volunteer to
    return a flakey CD to the Harvard Coop and exchange it for a good
    copy, I can't get there myself due to the distance".   I would guess
    that they'll get all hung up with the international mail issue if
    you send it in to them.  I'd offer to go myself, but its about 30
    miles and I hardly ever go into the square these days.
    
    	If no one else volunteers send me mail, I'm sure we can work
    something out, maybe international mail to me and then local US mail to
    Harvard. 

    	Reg
        

    Thanks to all those who offered to take it in.
    
    However one person went further, contacted Harvard Coop and they'll
    exchange by mail so I'll do that.
    
    (many thanks to John Pesenti)