cd's and latheing, illuminating, etc etc

Borats Baby

Wammer
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May 2, 2006
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I've heard of cd's being lathed, some being treated by an "Auric Illuminator" along with some other treatments I cant remember the names of.

Can someone enlighten me as to what these do exactly ?

 

JANDL100

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Dec 5, 2006
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Jerry
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I've tried quite a few CD polish-on tweaks .... including Russ Andrews various snake oils - none have made any difference IMO.

Painting the CD edge green does improve the sound IME. More focus, enhanced dynamics, blacker background.

Some of the mats work quite well too - e.g. the SID, but the best of them IME is the Audio Technica AT674 metal disc that sits atop the CD. Hasn't been marketed for many years, occasionally seen on eBay - well worth a punt!

Pic showsmy green plastic SID and the thin metal AT674.

 

Napoleon

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Aug 13, 2006
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Heard some before and after disks with the lathe. Thought they were better before....

Tried some Russ Andrews spray stuff I got free. Took some of the life away. Tried a Russ Andrews wipe I got free. No difference.

 

rockmeister

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this is clearly snake oil territory...ie an area where its 'I heard it' vs 'you have no proof'..so the best advice is treat one of an identical pair for yourself and see if you can hear a difference.

 

meninblack

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Be careful with those lathes! Over-enthusiastic lathing will strip off the protective plastic coating at the CD edge and expose the aluminium layer to creeping oxidation and eventual de-lamination.

Rip the CD, burn a copy and lathe that! At least that way you will only f*ck up a copy...
smile.png


 

Sastusbulbas

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A cd is pretty transparent apparently, with the laser being able to "see" the print on the other side ?

Apparently this observation was proven by some german company, who had developed some sort of way to read the data which correlated that where the distortion/jitter was worst was painting an almost identical layout of the printing ? Sorry for being vague I am sure this was also mentioned in one of the recent HiFi comics ?

Edit to add,

Early reviews of Krell CD players had reviewers claiming the players sounded better within a darkened room or with a black cloth over the transparent lid, so maybe there is something to all this CD tweak stuff.

And we all know how much an unbalanced or off centre disc can wobble or vibrate, hence the reason for a CD laith.

 

meninblack

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Sastusbulbas wrote:

Early reviews of Krell CD players had reviewers claiming the players sounded better within a darkened room or with a black cloth over the transparent lid, so maybe there is something to all this CD tweak stuff.
MF and 47 labs clearly don't think so: they both make transports where the CD spins outin the open air...

 
S

sq225917

Guest
re the jitter positioning on a disc, i remember that article,they had what looked to be a very poor copy of a led zep cd label. they claimed it was the map of the jitter, so it they weren't bullshitting it was good correlation to the disc print.

in my experience cd lathing works, well enough to be able to spot the lathed disc in a blind test against the same disc unlathed pretty much 95% of the time. but at the same time there have been a few disc i couldn't hear the differnece at all, but only a very small number. so i figure it is disc dependant and whatever it fixes is variable according to who made the disc, or whatever.

cd mats, i've tried a few and am currently messing with adhesive .5mm copper foil which does something, at least i think it does, its not night and day like the lathe is when it works.

what did work massively though was shielding the inside of the motor cutout on a Rega deck and wrapping the motor. now my Rega has no motor-induced end of side hum. none. which is pretty fucking exceptional as Rega's hum like a bitch.

well at least my P5 did. ( took about 3 layers to do it though).

 

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