I only have a portable CD player, but I'd definitely like to have a hi-fi system separate one in the future, it's an interesting topic to keep up with and practice. Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
Hey Tuturtle, just wanted to say thanks for your videos. I was skeptical about these cleaning videos, but I cleaned a CD last night using this hand washing method, and lo and behold, it sounded noticeably better! Thank you so much for enlightening me! Now I just have to go through my CD collection and clean them all, lol. That's going to take some time... Thanks again for your videos, they are articulate and incredibly helpful.
Thanks for the tips. We use to do this at a music shop where I worked. We used 70% alcohol mixed with distilled water mixed half/half in the bottle, and we used those round cotton pads that girls use to take off their make up, we also used cotton balls. I am sure you could use paper towel to dry the disk but I wouldn't push to hard since the paper towel is a bit abrasive. I use a micro fibre cloth or those clothes used to clean camera lens which are thin and hold no lint or little fuzzies. Its all about how you do it if your careful paper towels do a wonderful job. The spray you used at the end of the video is probably only alcohol/distilled water mixture. The same ingredients are used in those products to clean you tv screens with. Why pay $40 bucks for a cleaner when you can make it your self at home for a couple of bucks.
The only critique would be to get away from the paper towels for microfiber (only air dried towels), but I know people have been plenty successful with paper towels even with vinyl. It might come down to quality where people are; I've always found they left very tiny scratches and shed, but maybe I am buying the wrong kind.
Informative as usual, Tudor! I enjoyed watching you clean those discs, very easy when you have the supplies, heh I HAVE PAPER TOWELS... bwah! ;D Anyway yeah, maybe cleaning mine'll make them play in my laptop again... it's odd how they aren't shot at all in the boombox (well, most; I have a few that skip, but 'cause of residue or something else that got on them); play fine but maybe I'm missing some of the quality :P
I tried a clear audio concept and had the same issue as you. Digital was easily better than vinyl. Switch to a Rega RP6, however, and the reverse is true. You get a far better power supply with it, too.
tuturtle I got rid of mine due to the number of problems I'd had with it. As you say the power supply and feet are a joke. I also think supplying a £1000 turntable with a bottom of the line £100 cartridge isn't doing it any favours. For me, however, the build quality was an issue. The motors are known to develop faults, as are the cartridges themselves - with many people reporting the stylus falling clean out of the cartridge during playback. The subplatter bearing also isn't of particularly high quality. While the Rega certainly isn't perfect, it's infinitely better. Thanks for your comments on the website. I'm actually currently working on a complete re-design and a few new features including a music store and some great discounts on hi-fi equipment and accessories. :)
tuturtle I agree if you get a working one and upgrade it, it makes a fine table. And it helps that you had yours at a good price. But I certainly wouldn't buy one new. That said - I hope yours continues to work, as I'm sure it will, and happy upgrading. It'll be interesting to see what results you get :)
Hi iv'e only just found you and love the info you give and record and cd recomendations , could you tell me if i need to clean computer CD's before i burn music onto them . Thanks
+tony sewell Hello, Thanks for watching and commenting on the video, it's much appreciated! I have found that there is a slight improvement sometimes. Sorry a vague answer, but cleaning the CDR will improve the playback of the burnt CD on a Hi-Fi CD-Player. So you may as well clean the disc before burning rather than afterwards. So my advice, is YES! Cheers Tudor
question, i tried to get dust out of my CD by blowing it and accidentally got a small drop of saliva on it and because i was afraid of scratching it i left it to dry, its noticeable but doesn't seem to affect play, could the saliva damage the cd overtime? and am i better off trying to wipe it off? it looks like its gonna take some force to get it off.
Hello Tudor! Great video,as always! ***Question:Should we clean a CDR CD before we actually download information onto the CD? Can this improve the sound quality?*** Old,Uncle Marty
More hoopla. You're saying the red book standard spec could not be used with CD-ROMs for computers because they are "prone to errors, prone to data errors and it is prone to timing errors known as jitter", and "they couldn't use the red book format simply because it wasn't good enough to transfer the computer data". Well, that's complete bullshit because the data stored on CD-ROMs is the SAME standard data encoding as CD-DA. I quote from the yellow book standard: "Data stored on CD-ROMs follows the standard CD data encoding techniques described in the Red Book specification (originally defined for audio CD only). This includes cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon coding (CIRC), eight-to-fourteen modulation (EFM), and the use of pits and lands for coding the bits into the physical surface of the CD. Boom.
Windows is known to have horrible play back on audio media. Use Linux, the engineers who created the algorithms that play back audio managed to route the DSP in such a way as to reduce noise on the motherboard. When listening to music Linux is the way to go. BSD systems also offer great playback thanks to the "breadth first" implemented into their sound system.
Hoopla. This digital media has heavily redundant encoded error detection and correction as specified in the Red Book. If a CD plays fine without skipping or audio drop-out, that means the CIRC encoding is doing it's job regardless of the individual bits being misread presumably due to small obstructions on the surface. The data that gets passed through to the DAC will be bitwise perfect because missing/unread bits or even entire bytes in a frame of data will be corrected from the redundant surrounding 'good reads'. If it skips however, then there is a problem which cleaning may or may not help with.
Hello, the only way I've removed scratches is with a proprietary sanding machine for CD scratch removal. It makes the disc surface matt and isn't recommended but it does allow unplayable discs to play and be copied in a computer. I no longer own it so I can't remember what make it is, sorry.
I found one from Q-Sonic. google for cd cleaner with this Brand... However... Customer satisfaction seems to be very mixed. I would probably just use it to be able to make a copy with a good PC CD Drive. I would recommend to use exact audio copy if the disk is somehow readable before trying to polish it. Or buy a new cd for 3 Bucks on Amazon or use a streaming Service and have a nearly infinite collection of everything with you at all times.
Also, wiping paper towels across the CD is a BAD idea, no matter how gently you do it. It's like 2000 grit sandpaper or worse. Jesus. And don't even get me started an Russ Andrews stuff, how much did you pay for those wipes?! I have a 24k gold CD, only one I must admit, and I got it today believe it or not. But I understand chemistry. You said (about the Russ Andrews cleaning product) "...this is guaranteed to be 100% safe on CDs so if you've got any sort of very collectable CDs or special (lofi?) limited editions made of gold or whatever then yeah probably worth, uh. using the hifi thing..." Um, I would think about the reactivity of gold compared to the standard aluminium reflective layer and if water or even air got in there then you'd get CD rot. Gold does not react with water or air so the rare expensive gold CDs would be safe as houses compared to the cheap ones which need looking after very carefully. I like to think when the Sun turns into a red giant and the Earth gets destroyed, there will be my Pink Floyd Mastersound gold CD floating out there still intact waiting for the Mars resident humans to pick it up and start listening (presumably they would rather listen to that than ripped FLAC copies!!!)
Again. Thanks for the detailed video on your process and I am looking forward to the rest of the series.
I've been listening to CDs for years and it never dawned on me to do anything like this. Great videos. Cheers
Hi Tudor. Great tips. I'm glad I'm not the only one that. Still buys cd singles. I love those and get really excited when I see them in thrift stores.
I only have a portable CD player, but I'd definitely like to have a hi-fi system separate one in the future, it's an interesting topic to keep up with and practice. Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
Another AWESOME and informative video. I'm looking around my music room right now thinking...my water bill is about to go up 500% lol.
Wow, all this really helps/work for ripping CD's too. wow.
idk about sound quality? but I do believe in keeping my music clean CDS and my albums are what I listen to!!!! nice going mate keep it clean! !!!!!!!
Hey Tuturtle, just wanted to say thanks for your videos. I was skeptical about these cleaning videos, but I cleaned a CD last night using this hand washing method, and lo and behold, it sounded noticeably better! Thank you so much for enlightening me! Now I just have to go through my CD collection and clean them all, lol. That's going to take some time...
Thanks again for your videos, they are articulate and incredibly helpful.
Thanks for the tips. We use to do this at a music shop where I worked. We used 70% alcohol mixed with distilled water mixed half/half in the bottle, and we used those round cotton pads that girls use to take off their make up, we also used cotton balls. I am sure you could use paper towel to dry the disk but I wouldn't push to hard since the paper towel is a bit abrasive. I use a micro fibre cloth or those clothes used to clean camera lens which are thin and hold no lint or little fuzzies. Its all about how you do it if your careful paper towels do a wonderful job. The spray you used at the end of the video is probably only alcohol/distilled water mixture. The same ingredients are used in those products to clean you tv screens with. Why pay $40 bucks for a cleaner when you can make it your self at home for a couple of bucks.
Wow, I never heard of a mold removal agent. Interesting, thanks for posting.
The only critique would be to get away from the paper towels for microfiber (only air dried towels), but I know people have been plenty successful with paper towels even with vinyl. It might come down to quality where people are; I've always found they left very tiny scratches and shed, but maybe I am buying the wrong kind.
You have reignited my interest in my CD collection. Must clean some of them now, but can you honestly see a time when CDs will regain their value?
I used an orbital sander with a buffing pad and compound to successfully remove scuffs and minor scratches that made the laser skip
Great sensible video thank you. I just wonder whether hard water makes a difference?
Informative as usual, Tudor!
I enjoyed watching you clean those discs, very easy when you have the supplies, heh
I HAVE PAPER TOWELS... bwah! ;D
Anyway yeah, maybe cleaning mine'll make them play in my laptop again... it's odd how they aren't shot at all in the boombox (well, most; I have a few that skip, but 'cause of residue or something else that got on them); play fine but maybe I'm missing some of the quality :P
tuturtle :)
Honestly? - tap water? kitchen towels - full of lint and can scratch easily. Use a dedicated cleaning product and microfibre camera lens cloth.
Thanks for the tips! I need to redo this video, and some of the others
I tried a clear audio concept and had the same issue as you. Digital was easily better than vinyl. Switch to a Rega RP6, however, and the reverse is true. You get a far better power supply with it, too.
tuturtle I got rid of mine due to the number of problems I'd had with it. As you say the power supply and feet are a joke. I also think supplying a £1000 turntable with a bottom of the line £100 cartridge isn't doing it any favours.
For me, however, the build quality was an issue. The motors are known to develop faults, as are the cartridges themselves - with many people reporting the stylus falling clean out of the cartridge during playback. The subplatter bearing also isn't of particularly high quality. While the Rega certainly isn't perfect, it's infinitely better.
Thanks for your comments on the website. I'm actually currently working on a complete re-design and a few new features including a music store and some great discounts on hi-fi equipment and accessories. :)
tuturtle I agree if you get a working one and upgrade it, it makes a fine table. And it helps that you had yours at a good price. But I certainly wouldn't buy one new.
That said - I hope yours continues to work, as I'm sure it will, and happy upgrading. It'll be interesting to see what results you get :)
I heard the Shine-Ola leaves Residue
Try Novus Acrylic Cleaning Kit
I’d love to find some OptriX it even feel different than that Shinola, which really screws up my CDs sonically
Hi iv'e only just found you and love the info you give and record and cd recomendations , could you tell me if i need to clean computer CD's before i burn music onto them . Thanks
+tony sewell Hello, Thanks for watching and commenting on the video, it's much appreciated! I have found that there is a slight improvement sometimes. Sorry a vague answer, but cleaning the CDR will improve the playback of the burnt CD on a Hi-Fi CD-Player. So you may as well clean the disc before burning rather than afterwards. So my advice, is YES! Cheers Tudor
I have just ordered some shine-ola and noticed that it actually directly mentions the benefit to cleaning new cdr's before first use. Hope this helps.
Thank you for this video! I will try this today. But when I play a CD there is a jarring sound from from.some.of my collection,would cleaning help?
Is the Shine-Ola good enough to clean the cds without doing the other stuff in this video?
Yes!
Thanks and is it true that it protects the layers from the CD and makes my CD last longer?
question, i tried to get dust out of my CD by blowing it and accidentally got a small drop of saliva on it and because i was afraid of scratching it i left it to dry, its noticeable but doesn't seem to affect play, could the saliva damage the cd overtime? and am i better off trying to wipe it off? it looks like its gonna take some force to get it off.
Hello Tudor! Great video,as always! ***Question:Should we clean a CDR CD before we actually download information onto the CD? Can this improve the sound quality?*** Old,Uncle Marty
Thanks,Tudor! I'll certainly do this in the future...Cheers! Ol' Uncle Marty
Should I do ''Step 2'' as well?
Thanks,Tudor! I'll do only Step 1!
+tuturtle
Is Shine-ola good for removing the mold release grease, or is it just for fingerprints and dirt?
Thanks
even if the Cd's dirty, it still plays 99.8 percent of the time.
I notice that you don't apply black marker to the edges of CDs?
I do sometimes, I just didn't make a video about it, I had 20 videos about CD tweeks lined up but never got around to making them. Maybe one day!
@@tuturtle Please do.
Or.. spray with can of air.
Do one even spray on disc of water based mild alcohol solution (mild).
Wipe centre out.
Like new. Total time, 30 seconds.
does this have the same effect before ripping or is it play back only?
+tuturtle thanks mate, hope to see more videos from you soon.
More hoopla. You're saying the red book standard spec could not be used with CD-ROMs for computers because they are "prone to errors, prone to data errors and it is prone to timing errors known as jitter", and "they couldn't use the red book format simply because it wasn't good enough to transfer the computer data". Well, that's complete bullshit because the data stored on CD-ROMs is the SAME standard data encoding as CD-DA. I quote from the yellow book standard: "Data stored on CD-ROMs follows the standard CD data encoding techniques described in the Red Book specification (originally defined for audio CD only). This includes cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon coding (CIRC), eight-to-fourteen modulation (EFM), and the use of pits and lands for coding the bits into the physical surface of the CD. Boom.
I've been fascinated by your replies. I wish you would do a video on CD care or CD information
Windows is known to have horrible play back on audio media.
Use Linux, the engineers who created the algorithms that play back audio managed to route the DSP in such a way as to reduce noise on the motherboard.
When listening to music Linux is the way to go.
BSD systems also offer great playback thanks to the "breadth first" implemented into their sound system.
Hoopla. This digital media has heavily redundant encoded error detection and correction as specified in the Red Book. If a CD plays fine without skipping or audio drop-out, that means the CIRC encoding is doing it's job regardless of the individual bits being misread presumably due to small obstructions on the surface. The data that gets passed through to the DAC will be bitwise perfect because missing/unread bits or even entire bytes in a frame of data will be corrected from the redundant surrounding 'good reads'. If it skips however, then there is a problem which cleaning may or may not help with.
Just a question: have you ever gotten rid of any scratches out of CDs? if so what did you use?
Hello, the only way I've removed scratches is with a proprietary sanding machine for CD scratch removal. It makes the disc surface matt and isn't recommended but it does allow unplayable discs to play and be copied in a computer. I no longer own it so I can't remember what make it is, sorry.
I found one from Q-Sonic. google for cd cleaner with this Brand... However... Customer satisfaction seems to be very mixed. I would probably just use it to be able to make a copy with a good PC CD Drive. I would recommend to use exact audio copy if the disk is somehow readable before trying to polish it. Or buy a new cd for 3 Bucks on Amazon or use a streaming Service and have a nearly infinite collection of everything with you at all times.
Also, wiping paper towels across the CD is a BAD idea, no matter how gently you do it. It's like 2000 grit sandpaper or worse. Jesus. And don't even get me started an Russ Andrews stuff, how much did you pay for those wipes?! I have a 24k gold CD, only one I must admit, and I got it today believe it or not. But I understand chemistry. You said (about the Russ Andrews cleaning product) "...this is guaranteed to be 100% safe on CDs so if you've got any sort of very collectable CDs or special (lofi?) limited editions made of gold or whatever then yeah probably worth, uh. using the hifi thing..." Um, I would think about the reactivity of gold compared to the standard aluminium reflective layer and if water or even air got in there then you'd get CD rot. Gold does not react with water or air so the rare expensive gold CDs would be safe as houses compared to the cheap ones which need looking after very carefully. I like to think when the Sun turns into a red giant and the Earth gets destroyed, there will be my Pink Floyd Mastersound gold CD floating out there still intact waiting for the Mars resident humans to pick it up and start listening (presumably they would rather listen to that than ripped FLAC copies!!!)
It's funny how you say it beats analog when they are mastered from analog tape if you want less error buy a better dac
Do not work