[Review] CD lathe update

Fascinated by all this lathe stuff (and frankly not believing a single word of it), I decided, in the interests of science, to try it. Herr Gläss, the manufacturer, offers to lathe up to 3 CDs for you for the cost of return postage. So I bought another copy of my favourite test disc, the marvellous Pinnock/English Concert version of Handel's Water Music, and sent it off to him. It duly returned and I tried it out. And how did the lathed disc sound? Absolutely marvellous. The only slight problem was that the original sounded equally marvellous. In fact, the difference was nothing. More precisely, absolutely nothing. So, for the cost of a CD, another case of mything inaction revealed.

Another thing really concerns me about this thing. The reflective surface of a CD is metallic aluminium. Aluminium reacts with atmospheric oxygen with the speed of greased lightning, which is why it is applied to the polycarbonate base of a CD under conditions of high vacuum and a protective coating of acrylic then applied over the top. This device is cutting away part of that acrylic protection. Somebody said somewhere that the black edging is to prevent oxidation. However, if you have exposed the aluminium, it is already too late to prevent oxidation. And even if you don't expose the aluminium, the fact that you have made that possibility even more possible is completely unacceptable to me, and I wouldn't lathe my CDs, even if I had heard a substantial improvement. To spend a small fortune to give oneself the possibility of ruining a valuable CD collection for no sound gain whatsoever appears to me to border on lunacy.

But what about you folk that say this thing works? I know you to be sincere individuals, even if sincerely wrong, and this is meant to be no reflection on you. However, I feel this is another case of people hearing what they want to hear. Moreover, this seems to be yet another manifestation of a particular desire to exercise some control over technology. On the face of it, CD would appear to have removed all the endless tweakiness of turntables – and we have to remember how important the “toy factor†is to some folk. Apparently, the Flanders & Swann Syndrome:

But I never did care for music much!
It's the high-fi-del-it-tee!

is alive and well. Such devices, plus all the other green pens, CD mats, etc., give the appearance of restoration of control over technology, and I suspect that many folk like this idea.

Now the standard let-out clause appears to be that it may not work well or at all with some CDs/systems and very well with others. Sorry, but to me this is complete piffle. It either works or it doesn't. And to me the answer is clear.

In conclusion, this sounded like the cue for a song – so here is The Lathe Song, to a possibly familiar tune:

Lathe, ill vice
At high price
Skims acrylic from CD
In a trice
Makes sound nice
Say folk happy to fleece thee
Bevel precise said to stop stray light
In its flight to D/A
Better byte
Clean and bright
Differences night and day

So it's said
By those wed
To beliefs in strange tweaking
Plus obscene
Magazines
Golden-eared and self-seeking
Reduced protection for alumin-
-Yum is dim, not clever
Too thin? Then, oxygen
Wrecks your CDs forever.

 

Nice song Tones, the lathe does not expose the CD to Oxygen, it only trims 0.2mm from the disc!
The black pen is to reduce Laser beam scatter, and not as mentioned and corrected by forum member,to seal the lathed edge from oxygen.
So perhaps a rework on the lyrics!

Out of interest, what CDP are you using?

 

Hi Tones,

The guy must be crazy, spending all that money, knowing it makes no difference...

 

Meridian 588.

 

On the contrary, judging by this thread, he's doing rather well.

 

I believe the reason you are not hearing any difference is down to the fact your Meridian 588 uses a CD ROM drive, and it buffers and reads CD's differently than your old of Bog standard CD drive.

 

A very good case for getting a Meridian transport I'd say, if it saves all the aggro of getting the best out of a CD. More seriously though i'm surprised that no one seems to be bothered by the possible the longevity issues that Tones mentioned. If Tones is wrong and lathing does not affect the life of a CD much I'd have expected someone to put up a counter argument.

 

An interesting thought, but one that, I suspect, makes no difference whatsoever - after all, it will be subject to the same alleged reflections and interference, will it not? Nevertheless, in the interests of science, I'll try it on the Mimik sometime and see what happens.

 

P.S. I came across another edgy subject in the Songbook, to the great (grate in this case?) hymn tune, "Abide with me":

Carbide with me as my sound starts to slide
The darkness deepens, but I have carbide
When all my discs have failing frequency
I can restore them, have carbide with me

I need thy presence every passing hour
Only with thee do I retain the power
I take sand, glass, corundum, SiC
And sand my edges, O, carbide with me.

I need no pens to edge with green or black
Nor fancy gadgets my edge to cut back
Goop on the surface? Irrelevancy!
Just need slight roughening, carbide with me.

I ply abrasive before doubtful eyes
Lifts tone from gloom and raise it to the skies
All is improved, cynics’ vain shadows flee
All sounds well when I have carbide with me.

 

LOL. Another masterpiece Tones

 

strange I know a chap that bought a lathe ....and he owns the meridian too...

As we have discussed before and I'm certain Tones won't mind me mentioning.

He borrowed a silver ic cable of mine...and was unable to hear any difference against his current [then] cable.

Not wanting to upset tones ....

Ic's of the same metal but different topologies can be hear to sound different in my system ..humble as it maybe. Which suggest
any reasons must lie elsewhere.

The differences are clear in my system and now over fifteen others that I have demonstrated the effect of identical original discs one lathed one not.....not to mention the couple of dozen disc I've done for other people.

I'm affraid you pays your money [or not] and makes your choice ...

those that can't hear it are missing a treat !

I think the 0.2 mm is the closest that the cutter gets to the plane of the data encoded layer ....but can be 2-3mm away from it horizontally.

 

Not in the slightest upset, ol' bean (who gets upset over hi-fi?). Those who can hear it are inventing their own treat (IMHO of course ). But if it gives you pleasure, I'd be the last one to deny you hat pleasure.

By the way, I actually tested your (very nice) silver IC against a cheap freebee of the type that comes with Japanese cassette recorders (it was the only spart one I had at the time). There was no difference, which made me, cheapskate that I am, very happy.

 

Some of my CDs are valuable and rare film soundtracks and am a little concerned about longevity/ distress etc - so I have now decided to burn on to lathed black CDR - and sorry Tones I also do hear a difference - in sme case a BIG difference. As for psychologically wanting to hear a difference - guesss what, I DONT want to hear a difference as it's a bit of ritual and having been upgrading I could then sell the lathe on - but afraid it's staying. BTW I am an ex psychologist! ;-)

 

Could this be why you're an ex-psychologist?

 

Come on guys we all know the simple truth here...

it has nothing to do with light scatter or any of that hi-tech hocum. it's about the stability of your cd mech and the quality of the servos and the interactions between these and other parts of the cd player.

i'd put good money on the lathe making no difference on any multi read buffered pc based cd player and also next to nothing on the VRDS transports as well.

 

One of the downsides of the Meridian 588 and other models is that it uses a CD/DVD Rom,the disc is read at a faster speed,this may be better for advance detection of errors via a buffer stage, however jitter dosen't register itself as a error. With a Old or Bog Standard CDP,it's read at the correct speed, from a pure mechnical point of view,this has to be better,less mechnical noise etc.
Another easy way of thinking, and it's been demonstrated for many years, that a CD-R burn't at x 40, is pretty poor in audio quality terms comapaired to one burn't at x 1 speed.

This is why I believe that some users of the lathe are struggling to hear a difference, the 588 reconstucts the audio, in what it believes is a perfect sound, by buffering. IMHO this may be flawed because of the fast extracton speed.

And just to echo Zanash thoughts, it also depends on how good your set up is at exracting detail, you only need something to be weak in the chain eg.amp, speakers or cables and your nice CDP may never be fully realised.

Shame there couldn't be some type of Bake off, believers V non believers !!

Another point, of interest with buffered staged CDP, I wonder if the type of memory makes a difference, thats a thought and another tweek, upgrade your CDP with Gamers fast memory Ha Ha!

 

Not sure what you mean by "fast extraction speed", ol' spud, but if you mean the speed at which the player reads the CD prior to playing, the 588 is staggeringly slow! One of the frustrations of comparing CDs is the fact that it takes forever between unloading one CD and having the next one ready to play.

But perhaps I'm not understanding what you mean. Anyway, I'll have a go with the Mimik, if I get a moment over the weekend.

 

Funny enough "Wadia Meister" demo's the Lathe and the Nespa Pro to his customers using VDRS transports, and many forum members have reported to have heard an big improvement.

I use a Meridian 500 Transport, which is a good old fashioned Phillips based transport. It also has a larger clamp,it clamps the disc down magnectically as well.

 

maybe it is magic then...

 

The 588 seems slow, simply because it's running through a triple buffer stage, the disc may be spinning at x 4 or 8 or faster "A guess hear",it will re read the disc at a faster speed to make sure it has read the data correctly, if there is an error, it can correct it, and you wouldn't have noticed it, as it reconstruct the data.

Some high end players have varible buffer stages, where you can use more memory "buffer", the downside being the more memory used "buffer" the longer it CDP takes to react.

TBH I think this one of those subjects that needs someone like "Paul Miller" to get his teeth into.

Like it or not, Modern CDP have embraced some working parts of your PC !