Vinyl/tape wear degradation vs. digital

musicphil

Just to throw something out there...
Looking possibly replace my Marantz cd6006 player with a SACD player as some of my early cd's sound dull and also very quiet mainly those from the 80's (eg brothers in arms cd) and also some of the early 90's discs.
Reading up on the reviews of SACD versus CD, it seems there is a listenable difference between both mediums when playing classical music, but not so much when playing anything a bit rocky.
Never had the chance to listen to a very expensive SACD unit to see if there is a difference between it and CD.
Once had a Linn CD player that played HDCD's,  now there was a difference there between normal CD's and HDCD's. But unfortunately not many HDCD disc available at the time.

gibbsy

I think Denon has the entry point for quality SACD playback with the DCD 1600NE, followed by it's bigger brother the DCD 2500NE. Marantz have dropped the entry for SACD from the 8XXX range and their cheapest unit starts around £3000, which is a disappointment.

There is a considerable difference in redbooks on the cd6006 and the likes of the Denon players and I speak from experience having owned a 6006 and now owning a Denon 2500. It will breath new life into those redbooks and even make a good fist of today's highly compressed offerings.

I have very few classics and only one on SACD, the Enigma Variations, but have yet to give it a serious listen. The Planets on CD along with many film soundtracks do sound extremely good with a much wider soundstage and better instrument separation when being played by SACD players.

musicphil

I forgot to mention this in an earlier thread....i have a CD which was replaced free by Polydor about 10 years ago.
Van Morrison 'Hymns To The Silence' double cd purchased circa 91- What happened was the disc started to discolour and looked like the surface it was separating. They changed it without a problem. I do would how many more have had an issues with cd's?
I have around 1000 cd's and haven't come across any more which have deteriorated, hopefully it was a one off?

gibbsy

Commonly known as disc rot. I've got discs going back to the early 90s and haven't noticed it any of mine. I've also bought quite a few old titles from Discogs or my local market stall dealer again with no signs of the infamous rot. I have one disc, an old Beach Boys title, that will simply not play track one after 45 seconds and that looks to have a black dot on it that stops the play. Not too sure I didn't do that one time being a bit careless. That's my one and only problem disc.

SickSquirrel

The problem with disc rot is it can be present but not visible.  If you have the hardware it is a good idea to scan you old CD's for errors.  Here is an example of a CD from 1991 with rot but looks brand new to the naked eye, below is the same disc without the rot, again from 1991....

Both discs are within Redbook specs but the disc with the rot sounds dull and lifeless.

Degraded CD:-
                                                                                                                                               
Normal CD:-
                                                                                                                                       

oldcootstereo

Disc Rot: What Happens When Discs Die

I had heard that optical discs eventually break down, but not to the extent revealed in the article.

Well THAT sucks.  Makes my decision to switch to buying lossless titles online via the iTunes Store (or whatever Apple is calling it this week) seem a whole lot better... just have to be sure the drives that contain the iTunes Library files are regularly backed up.  For the Apple Mac/OSX crowd, Time Machine is your friend.  Besides, the iTunes Store keeps track of your purchases so you can re-download them if your drive or backup crashes.

gibbsy

Interesting article but with a Daily Mail type headline that 'most discs will self destruct between eight and ten years'! I have several titles over thirty years old that play beautifully. I've always been careful with storage and handling. Luck of the draw perhaps. If I buy a new disc tomorrow I doubt I'll worry about it in another thirty years.

dannnielll

I would give my physical copies of my CDs a better bet on longevity than any private company maintaining records of my purchases into perpetuity.  Neither my iPad 2 Original series ,or Itouch 4? can run with any recent Applestore software, as they are deemed to ancient to run current model iOS. All it needs is a single bad glitch in Apple Universe,and the world just disintegrates in bankruptcy....even if you are the largest company.
My strategy is to keep transferring the FLACed versions between computers of different generations ,while the original CDs sit in plastic isolation

oldcootstereo

I doubt Apple will implode in my lifetime, and I agree that keeping local copies of purchased files is part of the strategy. I have my iTunes library on an external drive, which has No Permissions so it can easily be moved to a new computer.  

The graphs, though not really explaining what we're seeing there, apparently points to discs being significantly degraded despite appearing normal and actually still playable.  Aluminum is VERY chemically active, so it doesn't take much contamination or air leakage to start the oxidization or other corrosion.  

Does anyone keep their archived discs in sealed bins, with desiccant to scavenge any stray moisture?  Might be a good idea if maximum longevity is the goal, assuming a desiccant chemically inert to aluminum is used.

Gregsta

I digitally mixed for about 5 years using wav files, that I had downloaded from juno downloads. I think I collected about 500  singlse in the end from junodownloads . I then moved back over to vinyl after having over a 20 year break from it,  The first thing I noticed when mixing with vinyl how much better the sound quality was on vinyl than digital stuff.

When I say digital I mean stuff you download not cd. The other down side to stuff you download digitally it has no re sell value were vinyl does.

Tape I think personally is the worse sound quality out of everything. Tape does wear out over time and a lot of the stuff I listern to you would not be able to re buy.

I have had had vinyl ware out on me but that is not a issue for me, as all can be replaced  second hand from discogs.

I have just bought  myself a cd player because for the last 3 years I have been using a tape deck I did have my cd rom on my computer to listern to my cds using a £150 set of headphones to listern to it on.

I have just  bought myself  marantz cd6006 to listern to my cds on and if it sound anything like the cd6004 it will sound amazing.