Methuselah or Mosquito?
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: freeze, audio, discs | Themes: Digital Entertainment
7. Methuselah or Mosquito?
Myth: Your CD music collection rot into coasters while sitting in storage.
According to the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 5:21-27), Methuselah lived for 969 years. The mosquito averages a lifespan of about one month. Somewhere between these two sits the average lifespan of optical discs. While researching the last section, I came across a page on T3.com (no, not the T3 Girls section) reading, “Some say disc-based media can live for more than 100 years, others that CDs could even be immortal if stored in ideal conditions (not piled high and out of their cases by your telly). However, CDs and DVDs left on a shelf can deteriorate after just five years.”
No way! I remember in 1982 when the compact disc arrived, we the public were told these little platters were practically indestructible and would last forever! And for my own purposes, I can’t think of a single CD in my collection, which began in 1987, that has ever “gone bad.” So when I spied this T3 blurb, I thought, “Ah ha! There’s a false myth for sure. Easy pickins.” Then I found a BBC article detailing ample instances of poor disc manufacturing and chemical deterioration causing enough defects to make discs unplayable. The article’s opening in particular scared the hell out of me: “Earlier this year, US web designer Dan Koster found 15% of his 2,000 CDs had begun to rot, and were unplayable and worthless as a result. Holding his CDs up to the light, he said: ‘I was shocked to see a constellation of pinpricks, little points where the light was coming through the aluminium layer.’”
Pinpricks? What pinpricks?!
With a ball of panic building in my stomach, I realized I hadn’t actually listened to my oldest CDs in many years. In fact, I hadn’t touched them since about 2000 to 2001 when I ripped my entire collection into 320 Kbps MP3. They’ve been sitting in boxes and on shady shelves ever since. Quickly, I pawed through the collection and grabbed 10 of the oldest discs I could recall, all of which I owned in high school. All were manufactured in or before 1989, putting their minimum age at 20 years. If any of my discs would show signs of aging, it would be these.
- Previous page From The Horse’s Mouth
- Next page OK, OK, Just a Little Pinprick
Pink Floyd was enhanced not by putting it in the freezer. It sounded better because of the ice cubes you took out to add to your alcoholic beverage.
Well i worked in a hospital as an anesthesia tech over the summer. Although the hospital did have a no cell phone policy, this was consistently ignored. In fact, there was a cell phone in each room for the anesthesiologists. I asked the head tech about this and he said that once upon a time, cell phones could cause interference in things like an EGK. However, they would never render a machine unusable. Furthermore, modern machines are shielded and are not significantly affected by a cell phone.
CDs are stored digitally. The data is encoded with redundancy that allows for error detection and correction.
Again if all the errors are correctable then the music stored on the disc is 100% identical to the original.
If you want to measure disc quality you can run a utility that will graph the number and types of errors found on the disc.
So Willy Winkle, Third Stage is among your oldest albums, but Boston's debut is not. Was it lost in the sands of time or did you actually own Third Stage and not Boston? If the latter, then, I really don't know what to say. :|
If you really think there's a difference, rip ta piece of both CDs to uncompressed .wav files, and compare the digital data...
A quick point... cellular phones were moderately dangerous to medical equipment and certain navigational computers on aircraft. When i say cellular phones, i mean the analog bricks we carried around in 1991 when the law was made. The phones we're using now are technically all digital PCS phones, not the analog cell phones those laws were written for.
Jitter. Also, your headphones are crap.
0 and 1, but timing: jitter. Also, your headphones are crap.
I remember trying to burn a backup of data on my Computer before sending it in for repairs. I was using CompUSA branded CD-Rs (really really cheap stuff). I saw pinpricks in the CD media before I even burned it. The reflective layer on the CDs was actually the backside of the label on the top surface, which was actually brittle and cracked with too much pressure (the reason they tell you to use a felt-tipped pen when writing on them). Oddly enough, the disks burned just fine and could be read back a few months later. I don't care about them anymore, but I still have them, and it would be interesting to see if they aren't just completely dead by now.
The part of the story I dont understand is how you made it through high school listening to Prince. I am suprised you didnt get beat up on a daily basis.
So Willy Winkle, Third Stage is among your oldest albums, but Boston's debut is not. Was it lost in the sands of time or did you actually own Third Stage and not Boston? If the latter, then, I really don't know what to say. :|
I went back for the prior two releases on CD later because I already had them on LP. ;-)
The part of the story I dont understand is how you made it through high school listening to Prince. I am suprised you didnt get beat up on a daily basis.
It pays to be taller than the other kids. Moreover, Prince was cool in the '80s. If I'd gone around listening to Air Supply and
Manhatten Transfer, yeah, it could've gotten ugly.
Back in 93 they had leaking gas fridges, that could add to the reason why pink floyd sounded so much better after sticking your head in there.
I am a pilot and cellphones on planes are not allowed to be used NOT because they interfere with instrucments (because they dont) they interfere with Cell network/carriers coverage range thats the ONLY reason!
hmmmm, so if i were to freeze a dvd would i get bluray quality? =P
You know, you gotta wonder where there stuff comes from. I mean, at some point, someone had to have come up with the idea, "Hey, I wonder if putting my CD in the freezer would make it sound better?"
You know, you gotta wonder where there stuff comes from. I mean, at some point, someone had to have come up with the idea, "Hey, I wonder if putting my CD in the freezer would make it sound better?"
I've thought that about many things. Look at escargot. How hungry did that first guy have to be, huh?
It pays to be taller than the other kids. Moreover, Prince was cool in the '80s. If I'd gone around listening to Air Supply and Manhatten Transfer, yeah, it could've gotten ugly.
ACDC, Metallica, Iron Madien, White Lion, Poison, those were cool, I do remember people listening to him. I just never could get over how much of a dousche he was. And I liked metal better.
They did the phone on the plane one on mythbusters. The solution they came up with is that it does have the potential to screw with things, but really that would only happen if wires/equipment were not shielded properly. Realistically this isn't an issue, but we are still taking the "better safe then sorry" route.
cell phones in a hospital are the same as on an airplane, "better safe than sorry" ... that being said, my wife is an ER nurse and she and her coworkers use their cells at work regularly, given they have any bars.
The part of the story I dont understand is how you made it through high school listening to Prince. I am suprised you didnt get beat up on a daily basis.
Prince rocks!