"Shaving" optical discs

[mikusguitarius]

Anyone tried www.russandrews.com ReVeel and ReleeS spray? An audiophile friend and I spent way too many hours one night doing A/B comparisons on our favourite CDs and..... there was DEFINITELY something happening. Curious!!

 

[François]

Beware of the confirmation bias!

 

[surroundsoundman]

Don't shave the disc... That does nothing. I recommend putting an open but full gallon jug of Evian in front of the front left and right rear surround speakers. 2 Poland spring 16 Oz bottles open and at room temperature should be placed in front of the main subwoofer. Mix a solution of Windex and Liquid Plumber and place 2 drops in each ear while chewing gum. Wait 22 minutes then wipe out excess with a Q-tip. I promise you that you will hear things that you never heard before. Or buy a good DAC. Also I would like to make the point that if these modifications are real, wouldn't the disc mastering engineers (and I think that they know a thing or two about error correction and scattered light) employ them especially with the more expensive box sets? Any way thank you for dealing with my satire.

 

[marpow]

I have one story. I had a universal disc player from McIntosh this was around 2014 or so and I purchased the surround disc of Quadrophenia, from Amazon, it wouldn't play, returned and new one wouldn't play, returned and 3rd one wouldn't play. At that time Charlie Russel and gang representing McIntosh where at a local HiFi shop, he heard me talking about my disc that wouldn't play, came over to me and said, sand the inner hole, lightly and it will play, something about the inner hole being to tight with that particular player.
Went home did it and wa-la it worked, I was happy. since then I have had 1 or 2 other discs that needed that, even with my now Panasonic Universal player. If I pop a disc in the tray and it doesn't play just a light 220 sanding in the center and all fixed.

Regarding all other disc treatments, I have tried only different brands of liquid wiping materials. I for the most part, with critical listening have the opinion that they certainly don't hurt and have felt there was a little improvement, maybe placebo?

I have not done any disc treatments in about 5 years, the #1 reason is I am just to lazy to do it, work vs reward.

 

[barfle]

I’ve found that a glass of Chivas Regal placed next to the sweet spot improves almost every parameter in my room. And the second one helps even more. The third one, well, I don’t remember much.

 

[Doug G.]

Speaking of wobbly discs, the first CD player we had was a Fisher CD-823 in 1985 and it had a little window in the door and you could watch the disc spinning. When Ken Pohlman, in Digital Sound magazine reviewed it, he generally liked the player but said the window made it look cheap.

There was more than one CD saved by that little window as when the player erred, I looked and the disc was wobbling. Inspected the discs and there was flash in the hole. Cleaned that up and they were fine. I otherwise would have been making a trip to the record store to exchange the discs.

The same player could "fix" discs that wouldn't play in my friend's Technics player. He initially brought one into work and wanted me to try it in my Fisher player to see if it would work and it did. When he again tried it in his Technics, it worked in there, too. He brought in two or three other discs that wouldn't play in his player, they were fine in mine and then fine in his after, also. No real explanation but we joked that Fisher should have advertised that player as a player/disc repair device.

Doug

 

[Doug G.]

I guarantee this whole "treatment" thing for CD's was started by high falutin' audiophiles who just couldn't stand the thought of the common man gaining great sound so simply and without a lot of fuss and bother and thus, had to complicate matters and it was all downhill from there, especially money-wise.

Doug

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

Don't shave the disc... That does nothing. I recommend putting an open but full gallon jug of Evian in front of the front left and right rear surround speakers. 2 Poland spring 16 Oz bottles open and at room temperature should be placed in front of the main subwoofer. Mix a solution of Windex and Liquid Plumber and place 2 drops in each ear while chewing gum. Wait 22 minutes then wipe out excess with a Q-tip. I promise you that you will hear things that you never heard before. Or buy a good DAC. Also I would like to make the point that if these modifications are real, wouldn't the disc mastering engineers (and I think that they know a thing or two about error correction and scattered light) employ them especially with the more expensive box sets? Any way thank you for dealing with my satire.

And never forget, Evian is Naive spelled backwards!

 

[Quadmon]

I have one story. I had a universal disc player from McIntosh this was around 2014 or so and I purchased the surround disc of Quadrophenia, from Amazon, it wouldn't play, returned and new one wouldn't play, returned and 3rd one wouldn't play. At that time Charlie Russel and gang representing McIntosh where at a local HiFi shop, he heard me talking about my disc that wouldn't play, came over to me and said, sand the inner hole, lightly and it will play, something about the inner hole being to tight with that particular player.
Went home did it and wa-la it worked, I was happy. since then I have had 1 or 2 other discs that needed that, even with my now Panasonic Universal player. If I pop a disc in the tray and it doesn't play just a light 220 sanding in the center and all fixed.

Regarding all other disc treatments, I have tried only different brands of liquid wiping materials. I for the most part, with critical listening have the opinion that they certainly don't hurt and have felt there was a little improvement, maybe placebo?

I have not done any disc treatments in about 5 years, the #1 reason is I am just to lazy to do it, work vs reward.

My Quadrophenia Blu-ray does the same in the Oppo. I’ll try sanding the center hole.

 

[surroundsoundman]

And never forget, Evian is Naive spelled backwards!

You win!

 

[JediJoker]

...wa-la...

Ugh... One of my pet peeves. It's French for, "there it is," and it is spelled, "voilà."

 

[Doug G.]

Ugh... One of my pet peeves. It's French for, "there it is," and it is spelled, "voilà."

Are you sure it's not "viola"?

 

[DuncanS]

Are you sure it's not "viola"?

That'll string them all along

 

[François]

Are you sure it's not "viola"?

Viola in french is a verb in the past tense. That verb means rape.

Please use the correct spelling if you mean "there it is", and don’t try any humour. Thank you.

(I see this incorrect, and very inappropriate, spelling for voilà everywhere on english forums. I don’t understand where it came from. Because there’s absolutely no ambiguity in the pronunciation of those two words: in french io is pronounced yo and oi is pronounced wa. And about that musical instrument: in french it’s violon, so no ambiguity here either.)

 

[Doug G.]

The joke is "Viola" is the musical instrument in English, a bit larger than a violin. The humor has nothing to do with the French meaning. It's just the juxtaposition of the two letters. The French word "voila" is actually used quite often here, too, to mean exactly what it means in France. We switch the two letters around to make it appear the writer doesn't know the difference but we, mostly anyway, do. It's just a silly thing.

Doug

 

[tonyE]

I’ve found that a glass of Chivas Regal placed next to the sweet spot improves almost every parameter in my room. And the second one helps even more. The third one, well, I don’t remember much.

Yeah, that reminds me of Tony's Rule of Audio Value (*):

Each drink is worth 5000 bucks of audio equipment. (**)

But you can only save $20,000 because after that it becomes mono.

Why? You say?

Because on the 5th drink I fall sideways onto the couch and one side of my head is buried in the pillows. Oh, the imaging also goes sort of bad... I only hear sound bounced from the ceiling. Maybe Atmos might help?

(*) Which was published as a Letter To The Editor on TAS in the late 80s... when you had to make an effort to type it and snail mail it...
(**) After inflation, that would make it about $10K today.

 

[Doug G.]

I shaved today and the letters on my lap top were ever so much clearer. It wasn't subtle. And, I could understand the "You've got mail" exclamation so much better, as grammatically incorrect as it is.

Doug

 

[Sal1950]

I guarantee this whole "treatment" thing for CD's was started by high falutin' audiophiles who just couldn't stand the thought of the common man gaining great sound so simply and without a lot of fuss and bother and thus, had to complicate matters and it was all downhill from there, especially money-wise.

Doug

Man did you hit the nail on the head there.
Thank the Lord for the CD and digital audio in general.
It brought us that which we had always dreamed of, having the sound quality of the original master to listen to right here in our own homes.

 

[Owen Smith]

Thank the Lord for the CD and digital audio in general.
It brought us that which we had always dreamed of, having the sound quality of the original master to listen to right here in our own homes.

Until loudness wars and other stupidity kicked in and ruined the sound quality for everyone.

 

[Doug G.]

Until loudness wars and other stupidity kicked in and ruined the sound quality for everyone.

Yes. You would think professionals would have more common sense and discrimination but noooooo.