I just reread the thread, and I keep seeing one word and one phrase that really bother me. The word is "if" and the phrase is "proper care." As a consumer, I like to think that I do take proper care of my CDs. As a vendor, can you take the gamble that all your customers will take proper care?

Urban myths aside, CD and CD-R are two different technologies. CD-R is light sensitive. CD is not. I have in my possession a CD-R that works fine in my computer, is not recognised on my home stereo, and some songs will play (sometimes) on the car stereo. I also have a CD-R which was labelled with a Sharpie marker, and you can now see thru it where it was written upon. If anyone wants to make the trip to the Midwest I'd be happy to show these to you.

Ron said, "...leave their CD-R in a hot car ..." I am guilty of this. I do most of my disc listening in the car. I have a 10 CD changer in my car, and no air conditioning. I almost always have CDs loaded. So my discs do get subjected to heat and light (while I'm driving as well as when the car is sitting). While CD isn't impervious to this, it is not nearly as sensitive as a CD-R is. So CD-Rs rarely go in the car with me. As a consumer, if I can't take a group's disc with me and listen to it where I want, it is worthless.

All that being said, I also have some CD-Rs that have handled quite a bit of rough treatment and still work. I also have a CD that was commercially pressed in '87 that will no longer play. If you hold it up and look thru the back side, you can see right thru it. I don't know if it was a cheap pressing or if it's deteriorated or what. I've kept it just because it's the only CD I've ever seen do that.

I was talking to an audio guy the other day and he showed me a new type of CD-R put out by Memorex, I think, in which the dye layer is black. I'd commented on it because I thought black was not supposed to reflect light. He said not only do they work well, but are highly resistant to tracking errors because of scratches. He picked up one of his CDs and scratched the hell out of it with his fingernail, then stuck it in a CD player and it played fine. He said they've switched to those exclusively because, "When you're playing the intro for the CEO of a multimillion dollar corporation to walk out, you can't afford for the disc not to track." I don't have any experience with them, but it might be worth looking into.


Bev and Jerry - yes, the site seems a little paranoid to me, but look at the intended audience. It was written for people who use CD-Rs for archival purposes. These are people for whom that data has to be there years later when they return to that CD-R.