OK, OK, Just a Little Pinprick
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: freeze, audio, discs | Themes: Digital Entertainment
- 1. Seriously Cool Tunes
- 2. Twice Chilled
- 3. Going In Blind
- 4. Magical Results?
- 5. Common Sense Strikes
- 6. From The Horse’s Mouth
- 7. Methuselah or Mosquito?
- 8. OK, OK, Just a Little Pinprick
8. OK, OK, Just a Little Pinprick
The first two CDs I ever owned (in 1987) were Prince’s Purple Rain and Led Zeppelin I. Holding the Prince album up to the window, there it was—a pinprick! Houses of the holy, Batman! But before I went into total meltdown, I popped the disc into my PC and gave the whole thing a listen. Thankfully, there were no obvious errors, which surprised me.
But hold on. I observed one pinprick upon casual examination during the day. That’s what you can see in the photo. But when I returned to the CD at night in an otherwise dark room, I held the disc up to my desk lamp’s fluorescent bulbs, label side to the lamp, and suddenly observed at least eight pinpricks. That’s not good.
How about Led Zeppelin I? None of the other nine CDs showed visible pinpricks during my daytime examination, but sure enough, Led Zeppelin I had a bevy of minuscule light dots when brightly backlit in a dark room. And yes, there was one spot on the CD, during “Black Mountain Side,” when I heard the music distort and grow faint for a moment, particularly in the left channel. All told, nine of the 10 discs showed some evidence of pinprick wear, with The Beatles’ White Album showing the fewest of these. Only Back to Basics by now-defunct and little-known Portland band Back Porch Blues showed no pinprick damage, an interesting note given that this was the only CD produced by a non-major label. One disc, Pink Floyd’s Delicate Sound of Thunder, also exhibited flaking of the label around the disc edge under its outer coating. This is called delamination, and, as per Verbatim’s description, “this will occur when the media is poorly produced and improperly sealed along the outer edge. This allows for atmospheric (air, moisture) interaction with the materials used in the manufacture of the media.” 
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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!