Oh not that old chestnut again......

Please try it !........

all I'm doing is stopping you reinventing the wheel........

Also the staedtler lumocolour permenant ....green, black and purple all have an effect .....

You can use the purple one to put spots on the ends of your fuse caps too....a la peter belt ......[ tongue firmly in cheek....but there is something in that too] If nothing else they look pretty !

 

When you've made a real mess of your entire cd collection, you know your a proper audiofool.

 

I shall try it with two identical CDRs ~ no 'mess' that way ~ unless, of course, there is an improvement!

 

Assuming of course your two CDR’s are actually identical. You have to look again at the explanation given for greening the edges of the CD to see the significance of this.

As previously described; greening the edges of a CD causes a reduction in pit jitter and a consequent reduction in sideband phase noise (aka jitter) at the analogue output. Or so the theory goes. Pit jitter is real enough and part of the specification for optical storage formats.

Two burned CDR’s will be near as dammit bit for bit identical however the amount of pit jitter will vary due to the burn process. Thus you have a variable in the very thing you are trying to evaluate.

I recently tested a polycarbonate polish (with a similar refractive index as polycarbonate) as a CD treatment. To do this I used two store bought CD’s (two copies of David Bowie’s Heathen CD that were going cheap). The CD manufacturing process *should* give less variance in pit jitter compared to CDR burning, AFAIK quality controls are applied.

Subjectively I thought I could hear a difference but as yet I’ve been unable to pass a blind test in identifying the treated vs. untreated CD.

 

I am no physicist, but I would have thought that getting any stray light out of the disc would be better than have it scattered around all over the place inside it, where presumably it would have a greater detremental effect than if it were happily bouncing around inside the player's case?

Persoanlly, I have had a demo many years ago of one of these pens, and quite frankly could not tell any difference whatsoever..

However, if anyone would like to try one let me know and I will source one for you at a reasonable cost... :kneel:

 

Very interesting ~ thanks. Does the pit jitter vary on CDRs due to 'variations' in the burning process or because of slight differences in the physical make up between blank CDRs?

But I take your point. I do have two copies of 'Rain Dances', so I can compare a treated vs non treated (well, I shall ask my partner to do the listening)

 

Kub3 ......

I assume your speaking from experience ?

 

The answer for the sceptics is just to try it out for yourselves- that's the only way to find out if it works or not. Sounds like a pretty safe and cheap experiment.

 

Well said !

I'm even offering the pen so they don't have to leave home !

 

Different brands of blank CDR media show different amounts of pit jitter. This is largely due to the type of dye used in the dye layer and the general quality of manufacture. There's plenty of good comparative tests of various brands of blank CDR media on the interweb.

When burning using the same brand of CDR any differences in pit jitter or other error types are due to the burner as much as the quality of the media. Not to mention CDR's don't have true lands and pits (as CD's do) rather melted bits and unmelted bits!

 

well If I can add my two pennyth when zanash came round to my place we where both quite surprised by the difference the green pen made not sure if it was much better personally but very certainly and most definitely a clear difference

 

Wonder if it would make a difference on a cdr if you green penned it before burning?

Hmmm....

 

Consider this, from a computer review:

Fair use excerpt, original here

Now, that's a computer component manufacturer claiming a similar effect. Maybe there's something in it?

 

LinearMan - does this mean you are a Camel fan?

 

Hello there,

I read about this technique recently, and was quite impressed with the results - it did extend to drawing black stripes on top of the cd - again to cut down on the amount of light flashing around.

When I tried it I felt sure there WAS a difference but I didn't do an A/B comparison to prove the point.





cheers,



David

 

Yes, indeed.

 

Wow that takes me back .......[nostalgic pause]

I've a couple of pens left [of this box, another is on its way] so if any one wants a go ....pm me.

 

An alternative is to take a bit of roughish sandpaper and use it to score vertical grooves in the edge of the CD. This is claimed to stop the light reflecting back from the edge of the CD. Then we have trimming the CD edge on a sort of lathe to put an angle on it, adding coloured light from an LED etc etc.

As regards the earlier comment that it may make a small improvement but you won't notice it six months on, there is some truth in that. I find even big improvements in my system sort of get forgotten about in a few weeks. Buta system is the sum of all the parts and even though we aren't necessarily aware (or remember) a small tweak we did last year, it's still there, working with other tweaks and upgrades to provide the quality of sound that we are hearing.

In short, don't write off small improvements because you think that they will 'go away' after you have forgotten about them!

 

Tried the sand paper but for me its too destructive with the potential for diaster....green paint can be bad enough.

I've seen the lathe but that must only refract a portion of the beam away ?

keep meaning to redo the lED thing........

Nuuk you dead right about the sum of its parts .....every little helps in my opinion.

 

I have several green edged discs in my collection dating back to the early 90s when this was around the first time. I gave it a go but could not reliably detect any improvement.
Foillowing a suggestion from Pete somewhere on this forum I recently fitted blue/green illumination into the CD disc tray and I think it sounds better, but again I'm not entirely convinced.
Looks cool though, or tacky depending on your POV