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Treating CD's before ripping?


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Is anybody treating or cleaning their CD's before they rip them? I know there are some benefits when you play them through a CDP, but would it help to treat before ripping? Some of the products out there are very inexpensive and they sure couldn't hurt. Just wondering.

Aaron

 

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Hi to all of you.

you all need to try UltraBit Platinum™

Digital Systems & Solutions

George S. Louis, CEO

1573 Kimberly Woods Drive

El Cajon, CA 92020-7261

Phone: 619-401-9876 http:www.ultrabitplatinum.com/

 

read the review on his site by Robert Harley of (the absolute sound)

and the white paper. he offers a money-back guaranty that includes

shipping both ways plus $5 just for trying it. and yes! i think its that

GOOD!!! and then some. use it before you RIP and on CD-Rs before

you burn it.

 

 

 

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With my CDs (and DVDs for that matter) I just look at them for debris and if it looks like it might help, I use one of those little velvet sort of cloths that come with a monitor or TV screen these days to wipe them off, using a motion from the inside out on the disc, not circular (I heard somewhere that you're not supposed to "go with the grain"). Other than that, I make sure I have error correction on when I rip.

 

Shirt is good too, 'Tuber. Do you have a particular fabric or thread count for optimum noise-to-signal reduction?

 

TheOtherTim

 

 

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I use EAC in secure mode with Accurate rip.

If a rip is flagged as no errors, and high confidence, then there CAN BE NO BENEFIT from any treatment whatsoever.

 

In fact, I have had a couple of CDs recently unable to rip perfectly because of small scratches, so I treated them (to some funiture polish), and they worked just fine ;)

 

 

“Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul” - Plato[br]

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Well, after a lot of testing I think I can conclude with at least a 95% confidence level that a shirt with beer stains works better than one with fresh blue cheese dressing and Hooter wing grease. I'm also pretty sure that after the 3rd pitcher of brew, the fabric doesn't much matter anymore and you'll probably forget you either a) did b) wanted to clean the CD in the first place.

 

After a fourth pitcher you will probably begin training for the CD Frisbee toss. Ziiiiiiiiingggggggggg!

 

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The Bits are bits is one thing but jitter is something else again. Unless you try ripping a CD to a hard drive with and without UBP you'll never now for sure what the difference if any sounds like. Be sure to double-blind test the results. None so deaf as those who will not hear and in the Land of the deaf the one eared man or women is king or queen.

 

George S. Louis, CEO

Digital Systems & Solutions

 

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Are you for real GSL?

 

What has jitter got to do with a secure rip?

 

I can't wait for the day hard drive, or better still solid state drive completely replaces optical disc, and then foo products such as this will dissapear. Unless you want to try making a hard drive platter cleaner from whatever random ingredients you come up with.

 

“Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul” - Plato[br]

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Hi guys - I pride myself on keeping this forum enjoyable and a notch or two above the other forums in terms of the collegial atmosphere. We all benefit from the honest opinions but this conversation is very close to becoming a typical pissing match that takes all the fun out of our wonderful hobby.

 

Thanks again for the honest opinions. Please make certain not to take it a step further into the sophomoric world of forum pissing matches :-)

 

Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems AudiophileStyleStickerWhite2.0.png AudiophileStyleStickerWhite7.1.4.png

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Okay here's what I really do ........

 

I have a little empty bottle of Dawn dish soap

 

I fill it with a 50/50 mixture of:

 

isopropyl alcohol (get the 99.9 pure stuff, you can order it from Walgreens pharmacy for about 3.50 per bottle.)

 

distilled water

 

To that I added a drop of non foaming detergent

 

I use that to clean vinyl all my vinyl and any CD's that are messy. For vinyl that has mold or is really rough I use a little steamer you can order online again from Walgreens for about 30 - 35 bucks. I don't have to bring out that piece of heavy artillery often, but some of my records were stored for years and years and we're in the mildew capital of North America - Florida.

 

I use plain ole dish soap and a sponge on the jewel cases I find at garage sales to remove the crud.

 

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Sorry I opened such a can of worms. I am getting ready to start ripping all my cd's to a hard drive and I wanted opinions before I started the process. My question about treating cd's was based more on my ignorance of the ripping process. My total ripping experience, to date, has been putting audio book cd's into my wife's iPod. Sound quality not being an issue.

 

I have read a number of papers on the subject of how a cd is read and how imperfect the surface of a cd really is. Cleaning and treating a cd for use in a CDP does make technical sense to me, but I have never tried it. I take the previous statement back; I have used the beer-stained shirt method before.

I am skeptical of most audio tweaks, but I think I will try this one. It is very inexpensive and my cd's need cleaning anyways. I think it will be fun to see what results I get. Worst case scenario- I'm out a few dollars and have some cleaner cd's.

 

This is what I propose to do:

1a) I will rip a few untreated cd's and time each rip.

1b) I will treat those same cd's, rip them again and time each rip. This should confirm whether or not treatment affects error correction. I'll use a small mix of regular labels like BMG, Columbia,Elektra, etc. and some audiophile labels like Chesky and Mapleshade

2a) Listen to untreated rip vs. treated rip through my stereo system. I don't consider myself a "golden ear", but my system is very resolving.

3a) Pop an untreated cd into my CDP(Naim CD5x) and listen.

3b) Treat that cd and listen again.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no right or wrong in this, because I just don't have an opinion-yet. I will give you guys my results, if you are interested.

 

Aaron H

 

 

 

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It is possible that properly cleaning a CD will benefit playback in your CD player.

 

But. For ripping, if you are using the right software. EAC on the PC, dont know about Mac, then you can guarantee a 'bit-perfect' rip.

Again a cleaner CD may rip quicker, but if the software reports a good rip, then comparing the 2 rips is pointless. Do a file compare, they will be identical, so any comparison will a waste of time.

 

“Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul” - Plato[br]

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Hey Aaron - I think you are right on. There is no right or wrong on this. If someone hears a difference then that's cook with me and if they don't that is also cool with me. Whether the difference is based on empirical data or it's just in their head is really uninteresting to me. As long as someone says - here is what I did and here is the outcome, we all benefit. We are all smart enough to pick and chose what we want to believe.

 

As long as we are on this topic: Do you guys remember when one of Eminem's albums was released with so-called bullet proof copy protection. All it took to defeat the copy protection was a magic marker. Coloring the edge of the CD worked wonders on that high-dollar encryption scheme. I would never have guessed something this simple would work so well.

 

Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems AudiophileStyleStickerWhite2.0.png AudiophileStyleStickerWhite7.1.4.png

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  • 1 year later...

dude, that is hilarious!

 

\"It would be a mistake to demonize any particular philosophy. To do so forces people into entrenched positions and encourages the adoption of unhelpful defensive reactions, thus missing the opportunity for constructive dialog\"[br] - Martin Colloms - stereophile.com

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