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-- The Life of the CD

The Life of the CD

Here is my concern and I'm 100% sure many other CD DJ's out there probably have the same question in the back of their minds....


I have made the switch from vinyl to cd and now I am 100% cd. I love cds but I am concerned about an older (heavily used) cd coming to the end of its life right in the middle of a live set. ie.... skipping/freezing up right in the middle of a set.

I have had only 1 cd so far start skipping just temporarily after using cdjs heavily for a year now. I use cdj1000 mkIIs only.


One solution I was thinking of was to reburn all of my cds (from the original source on my HD) once per year. I really do see this as being incredibly wasteful but how else can I ensure that all my cds stay "fresh"?


Another solution that came to mind was serato, but I don't really want to lug around all the gear and set it up etc... i like cds dammit



Anyone else have any comments on the longevity of their cds? Any bad experiences such as the one I have addressed above? Any solution to overcoming the problem?

Unless you tour as a DJ, I don't see this being a problem, because if you're a local DJ you can burn a fresh CD when you get home. However, if you do tour, I'd suggest carrying a laptop with you with all of your MP3s on it. Not necessarily to the club, but at least keep it at your hotel in case there's the off-chance that a CD should fail.

I, personally, have never had a CD fail on me, and the only time I've experienced skipping is if the MP3 itself is shoddy.

Never had a CD skip on me. You just gotta get into the habit of taking care of your CDs. Some people just leave them lying around on dusty shelves uncovered, put their fingers on them, throw them on the floor.. I know they're disposable and cheap, but I still treat all my CDs as if they were porcelain. I always make sure they're protected when stored, and pick them up from the edges or the center only. Some CDs I've had for over ten years, and they still don't have a single scratch on them.

yup! don't rape the CDs. the whole's there for the player.

a cd will never get worn out! the reason it will skip is cos of either the cd player or a scratch. i read somewhere that a cd will last longer than a human life if played repeatedly...

quote:

Originally posted by idoru Unless you tour as a DJ, I don't see this being a problem, because if you're a local DJ you can burn a fresh CD when you get home. However, if you do tour, I'd suggest carrying a laptop with you with all of your MP3s on it. Not necessarily to the club, but at least keep it at your hotel in case there's the off-chance that a CD should fail. I, personally, have never had a CD fail on me, and the only time I've experienced skipping is if the MP3 itself is shoddy.

+1.

oh the woes of being poor with a large amount of bandwidth at ones fingertips...

the whole point of my post was to try and minimize the occurence of a cd skipping while playing live because it could kinda ruin the set


it would be cool if the cdj (while reading ahead to analyze the wave form) would detect any bad sectors to warn the dj that this track may skip

quote:

Originally posted by mylespower the whole point of my post was to try and minimize the occurence of a cd skipping while playing live because it could kinda ruin the set it would be cool if the cdj (while reading ahead to analyze the wave form) would detect any bad sectors to warn the dj that this track may skip

You may want to search, in finding out what a CD goes through to actually read a disc.

The majority of Disc Errors are due to user Error than the Disc.

If a store bought CD doesn't skip, but a burnt CDR skips, the person who created the CDR is the one to blame.

There was a time that CD Players pre 1990 had difficulty
reading CDR discs. In 2006, all players are designed to read CDR Discs.

However, the user still needs to know how to properly record a disc.

Many handle discs wrong and blame the player for not reading
the disc properly.

A disc's longevity depends on how the user stores and handles the discs upon playback.

I have store bought CDs that date back to 1987, and CDR Discs dating back 1999, and they still work.

not much you can do to see an error before it occurs, but I've found my cd deck more sensitive to scratches than the cd drive on the laptop. Find an error, just copy/burn it to a new cd.
or invest in a very large external drive just to backup your cd tracks. chances of the drive and the cd dying at the same time are slim, and it's an awful lot more reliable than a record collection

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