Members Beck Posted May 8, 2014 Members Share Posted May 8, 2014 Yup Mike Rivers, we know that now in retrospect, but apparently Sony did not when they promised us, "Perfect Sound Forever" with CD. It is anything but perfect or forever. I didn't even mention "CD Rot." All in all it is a complete failure as a long-term storage medium. A robust medium would be more soldier proof. At this point in time the medium proven to be most soldier proof is still open-reel tape. It doesn't matter why CD's/DVD's are prone to failure... mishandling or whatever. All that matters is they don't last the one hundred years they were supposed to. The average user is lucky to have a 10-year-old CD that still plays without some skipping or freezing up. Audiophiles have always been more careful with whatever medium they use, but we have to judge a medium based on how it fairs in the hands of the general public. The National Archives and Library of Congress still rely heavily on analog tape because it has stood the test of time for archival purposes. I like my CD's and I take care of them, but I'm in the minority of those that know how to take care of CD's or any other medium, and the equipment that uses them. But again we can't base the reliability or unreliability of a medium on anecdotes, but as with anything else we rely on statistics based on real world use in non ideal conditions. In the real world optical discs like CD or DVD have done piss poor in living up to the promises. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RockPianoman Posted May 8, 2014 Author Members Share Posted May 8, 2014 I did want to be clear that when I say audio CD's, I don't mean MP3's......MP3's are small like data and I have had a lot of data CD's with those go bad....when I say audio CD's, I mean the format you buy at the store with music on them....audio CD's songs are about the same size as wave files which are huge.... ....and I'll continue to watch and wait but it's 16 years and NOT ONE audio CD or DVD have gone bad yet.....NOT ONE....not even on cheap media What's funny is that until (if ever) one of my audio CD's or DVD's does go bad, I have proof as to when every disc I ever burnt was burnt as it has the burn date burned on it.....I have audio CD's so old (the ones that were green instead of silver on the record side).....and they all have dates as to when they were burned....no guessing.....no assumptions.....proof of the actual time and day and year they were burnt.....every single one plays like the day it was made....even if it was 16 years ago....I know data shifts on CD's over time to a point, but when it's made of huge pieces like songs on an audio CD, it doesn't seem to be able to shift to the point where it can't be played because mine all play perfectly on all my players.....it's possible that 320 bitrate MP3's on CD's might be large enough to last but I haven't tested this so I can't say.....I always put them on DVD's...... It's not theory Mike.....small data on CD's goes bad.....that's a fact.....large data on CD's hasn't ever gone bad for me yet (audio CD's are like 30,000 MB or more per song....very large).....I'm not asking you to believe me.....test it for yourself....but you must burn it so it gets verified after burning or you don't know if it's good to begin with.....if you've had audio CD's or DVD's go bad, they probably weren't verified and had burn errors to begin with......I don't see how it could possibly work for me and not everybody....also, maybe some burners burn more accurately than others....(I'm trying to figure it out myself)..... Also, burnable DVD's are way different than the technology used to make CD's or mine would be going bad .......even tiny, tiny stuff I burnt is perfect like the day it was made and some were burnt MANY years ago..... If I ever have any go bad, I want to let people know as my number one goal is sharing facts and I honestly don't know the facts yet..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 8, 2014 Members Share Posted May 8, 2014 Though I took my first programming class in 1973, I've been working professionally with computers since 1986. I started working as a recording professional (now retired) in 1982. I took my multitrack project studio from 8 track analog to 16 track digital starting in 1993 and set up my first then-8-channel DAW in late '96. I have, literally, thousands of optical disks. There is no reason -- repeat, no reason whatsoever -- that a CD-R holding MP3's or other data files would become corrupted sooner than a CD-R burned in the Redbook format. However... What does happen is that audio CD players are designed to put a priority on continuous playback at all costs -- so they have 'error recovery' systems that in effect play through or skip over small data gaps and keep on playing. If the corrupted data is significant enough, it may be perceived as a glitch or even a longer gap in the audio by the listener. In extreme cases, the playhead may, in a sense 'lose its place' and seem to skip 'ahead.' So, for playback at all costs -- as a delivery format, as we say in the trade -- CD audio makes good sense. But for archiving invaluable original masters -- one should use a data format and burn either full WAV, AIFF, or a truly lossless format like FLAC. And, since optical disks DO get damaged* -- at least 3 copies stored in separate places. Storing master recordings also as audio may not be a bad idea, either, since, as noted, it may be possible for a damaged disk to still be played to some extent, where a corrupted data disk will be rejected as corrupted by a host computer. With data, a corrupted disk is rejected because you can't risk allowing BAD data into your system -- if, say, it was a program, it would be (remotely) possible for a single byte of data to have disastrous results if a corrupted file was accepted instead of rejected. And if it was money... well, I think we all appreciate what an 'extra zero' on the left side of a decimal point can mean. * by exposure to sunlight, physical damage to the photoreactive layer, and sometimes, particularly in the case of 'white label' cheapo spindle blanks, sometimes just passively sitting in a stack , it seems like. For a casual use playback format, mp3's of a reasonable bitrate* will allow you to pack anywhere from 4 to 10 times as much music onto a given disk -- but because mp3 or other non-Redbook CD's are data disks, any errors will likely cause the disk to be rejected as corrupted. So, it's a tradeoff. *192 kbps works well for a lot of folks, 256 is hard to differentiate from CD by most folks, and with 320 kbps properly made mp3s, it's arguable than almost no one can reliably tell them from full CD quality in ABX blind testing, although there are a few commercially released tracks known informally as 'codec-killers' that mess with the perceptual encoding algo significantly enough to cause relatively noticeable anomalies -- but those tracks are rare and usually the result of unusual studio/mix techniques one does not normally find in 'real world' of sound transmitted through air; that is to say, these codec-killer tracks are usually electronically created sounds that could not actually 'exist' in airborne sound, IOW, the signals on the original source files, when transduced by the speaker into airborne sound would no longer have these 'codec-killing' electronic signal components in their original form. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RockPianoman Posted May 8, 2014 Author Members Share Posted May 8, 2014 Yeah....wave files are awesome with no compression.....I've had CD's given to me filled with 128 bitrate MP3's and as time went by, they all disappeared....the disc appears blank but right clicking and selecting Properties, you can see they're all there....320 bitrate would be the safest bet as they are the biggest......big files seems to be what survives.....little files on CD's disappear.....on DVD, everything survives (at least so far)..... it's funny because some programs tell you how much of the original file is present in an MP3 using %.....128 bitrate was about 23% if I remember right..... The VLC Media Player (it's free) is the only player I have that plays FLAC files (I think) I should look closely at file types in all my players before saying that ......the quality of FLAC files is usually second to none and usually they never have even the slightest error.....(I don't remember ever hearing any with errors).... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 9, 2014 Members Share Posted May 9, 2014 Honest, RP, the size of the file, the type of file -- they have no affect on longevity/durability in normal CD-R creation/use. The audio CD playing back in an audio CD player even though damaged, that's an entirely understandable thing, for the reasons I cited. Now, maybe you have some particular piece of hardware that delivers the sort of behavior you describe, I don't know. But once the human brain thinks it recognizes a pattern, it's very hard for it to 'unsee' that pattern -- it's a form of cognitive distortion. We humans, even the most disciplined observers among us, are all subject, in one form or another, to such cognitive distortions, preconceptions, spurious pattern recognitions, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RockPianoman Posted May 9, 2014 Author Members Share Posted May 9, 2014 I have to disagree.....I've been burning discs for 16 years and there is a definite pattern.....small data on CD's becomes corrupted or disappears from view and larger files, whether they are wave files or large files on an audio CD remain good......some data CD's do not become corrupt, or at least haven't yet, but when they do, it's the smaller files that will.....always..... DVD's have never, ever gone bad for me no matter what size the data is..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 9, 2014 Members Share Posted May 9, 2014 Well, that's a very interesting observation that I've never heard anyone else make or ever noticed myself burning and using thousands of disks, both CD-R and DVD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RockPianoman Posted May 10, 2014 Author Members Share Posted May 10, 2014 Extensive testing of discs showed the amount of data CD's that had went bad was discouraging (some were a total loss), but not a single audio CD or DVD had gone bad other than CD text disappearing on some of my audio CD's (CD text is tiny data) and every disc has the date & year it was made burnt on it....some are as old as 16 years....the discs where the CD text disappeared still played perfectly.... When I say audio CD's, I don't mean MP3's......MP3's are small data and I have had a lot of data CD's with those go bad....when I say audio CD's, I mean the format you buy at the store with music on them....huge data..... When I say DVD's, I don't mean movies.....I use blank DVD's to store computer data... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Iamthesky Posted May 13, 2014 Members Share Posted May 13, 2014 Extensive testing of discs showed the amount of data CD's that had went bad was discouraging (some were a total loss)' date=' but not a single audio CD or DVD had gone bad other than CD text disappearing on some of my audio CD's (CD text is tiny data) and every disc has the date & year it was made burnt on it....some are as old as 16 years....the discs where the CD text disappeared still played perfectly....[/quote'] Unless you've set up a double blind controlled test, that could be mere coincidence. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BushmasterM4 Posted May 14, 2014 Members Share Posted May 14, 2014 If one googles longevity of CD's there is plenty of scientific studies on data integrety with age. This is a copy/paiste from wiki that deals with "shelf life" of CD-R's Real-life (not accelerated aging) tests have revealed that some CD-Rs degrade quickly even if stored normally.[5][6] The quality of a CD-R disc has a large and direct influence on longevity—low quality discs should not be expected to last very long. According to research conducted by J. Perdereau, CD-Rs are expected to have an average life expectancy of 10 years.[7] Branding isn't a reliable guide to quality, because many brands (major as well as no name) do not manufacture their own discs. Instead they are sourced from different manufacturers of varying quality. For best results, the actual manufacturer and material components of each batch of discs should be verified. An example of a CD-R burned in 2000 showing dye degradation in 2008. Part of the data on it has been lost. Burned CD-Rs suffer from material degradation, just like most writable media. CD-R media have an internal layer of dye used to store data. In a CD-RW disc, the recording layer is made of an alloy of silver and other metals—indium, antimony, and tellurium.[8] In CD-R media, the dye itself can degrade, causing data to become unreadable. As well as degradation of the dye, failure of a CD-R can be due to the reflective surface. While silver is less expensive and more widely used, it is more prone to oxidation resulting in a non-reflecting surface. Gold on the other hand, although more expensive and no longer widely used, is an inert material, so gold-based CD-Rs do not suffer from this problem. Manufacturers have estimated that the longevity of gold-based CD-Rs to be as high as 100 years.[9] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RockPianoman Posted May 14, 2014 Author Members Share Posted May 14, 2014 I've actually had data CD's go bad faster than that.....as far as audio CD's and DVD's, it can't be coincidence because the results were exactly the same for every single one and I tested soooooooo many......every one worked.......there wasn't one exception in all the testing and the dates every disc was burned is burnt on each one and shows very clearly on all of them.....some are as old as 16 years so I can't say what will happen beyond that.....that is an unknown at the point.... If anyone wants to know the absolute facts with their own discs, you MUST use a program like Nero 6 that I use or one like it that verifies burnt data against the source upon completion of the burn or you could have disc errors from the start.....no discs I have started out with have disc errors as I dispose of discs that don't verify immediately and then I re-burn the project......I verify every disc I burn with no exceptions.....you can only verify discs by telling the software to verify them upon completion of the burn.... they can't be verified after the fact... You could compare the size of items on the finished disc and compare them to the size of each item on the source, but verification used by the burning program may use more criteria than size to verify discs.... When you do compare size on items by right clicking and selecting Properties, I have found that the top line of text in the window that opens is often the only line that is the same on both but this is accurate....sometimes the burning program can include little hidden icons that weren't on the source like "desktop" and "thumbs" and this will make it look like it's a different size.....set your computer to show hidden files and exclude extra things like this and you should be able to get an accurate measurement, but as I said, there might be more involved than just measuring size of each item that was burned when a disc is verified....(I know the burning program also verifies file and folder names, but maybe even more than these things and size)......I know burning programs can also detect when files are corrupt too....if files on the finished disc are corrupt, it doesn't mean that the source files are definitely corrupt....it could be as simple as the burner was burning at a speed that was too fast for it and by re-burning at a slower speed, there might not be any corrupt files at all on the next disc.... I've heard a lot of opinions on the subject, but from my experience, the slower you burn, the better..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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