Snake oil thread

I once put green marker pen on the edge of a few CDs. Hey, it didn't cost anything.

I even wiped all my cables (and contacts) with some magic solution. That cost a little bit.

I might have been on the edge of the audiophool hell hole. Looking back on that, it's a bit like cocaine: I'm just so, so glad that I could absolutely not afford it!

 

I used to put peanut butter on really scratched CDs and then wipe it off to try to fix skips. I can point you towards some very affordable audiophile PB, they even accept food stamps.

 

My gear chasing has been more like heroin. I very rarely get that high, it's more of a "feels good man" kinda thing. Except over time it just doesn't feel *as* good y'know? and then I feel dissatisfied. Then "regular" gear sounds worse and worse. I need more, I need bigger, better, fancier, pricier, dammit Jim just hook it directly into my veins...

 

Auric Illuminator can help a CD that may have a minor scuff or debris that causes a misread. My cds are in fine shape so no improvement, although at one time I thought an application made a cd or 2 sound smoother, however unlikely to survive a blind test. Looked just like the blue liquid car polish and would not be surprised if was or something similar.

What Aric Illuminator is great for is DVD or Blue Rays that cannot play right. Back in the old DVD by Mail days eg Netflix, this worked great to make those beat up disks play perfectly.

 

When CDs first blasted into a world of so-easily-damaged vinyl records, many claimed they were indestructible. You could fire a bullet through one, and it would still play.

Of course, it wasn't true. I've had heaps of CDs that wouldn't play, or would reach a sticking point, and, for all the polishing, oils and magic solutions, there is usually nothing one can see, and nothing one can do about it it. At least with vinyl, a stuck groove could sometimes be fixed.

Having said that, they do have an amazing amount of error checking and ability produce the right data

 

A lot of processing is involved to read a Redbook CD, even without surface imperfections. The data encoding is very sophisticated and was state of the art for signal processing at the time. I used to work with Phd mathematicians who developed encodings for data storage and transmission. The raw data on a CD isn't like an audio stream. The audio data is encoded into interleaved, redundant data blocks designed so that a significant proportion can be lost from a surface imperfection, yet recovered 100% during real time playback. The processing is performed by dedicated integrated circuits, not general purpose processors.

 

And that's still not good enough for audiophools!

Just like ethernet's reliable stability is not enough for them.

Hey ho, a phool and his money are soon parted. Hey, yes. It's their money.