Topic: Bronzing of CD's.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Did not play it, P. Second-hand is different but this is a new item. It will play perfectly for all I know but for how long?

Irons (and others here),

I've wondered at times as to different colored CDs...as in how much variation is there which is normal and not an issue (unlike bronzing)?  Yours, to me, doesn't look like bronzing..at least comparing it to online photos that I've googled.

Does anyone here know?

By the way, what does Dutton go by on eBay?

And good luck!

PD

[Irons]

Irons (and others here),

I've wondered at times as to different colored CDs...as in how much variation is there which is normal and not an issue (unlike bronzing)?  Yours, to me, doesn't look like bronzing..at least comparing it to online photos that I've googled.

Does anyone here know?

By the way, what does Dutton go by on eBay?

And good luck!

PD

deramnut

[aligreto]

deramnut

Interesting. Thanks for that.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Thanks Irons! 

[Irons]

Irons (and others here),

I've wondered at times as to different colored CDs...as in how much variation is there which is normal and not an issue (unlike bronzing)?  Yours, to me, doesn't look like bronzing..at least comparing it to online photos that I've googled.

Does anyone here know?

By the way, what does Dutton go by on eBay?

And good luck!

PD

It does look as if you are correct, P. After examination, Simon at Dutton informed me the disc is not faulty as the colouring is caused by the disc being a SACD with two layers of code, one for CD and other SACD.
I should mention Dutton have been perfectly reasonable and polite. 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

It does look as if you are correct, P. After examination, Simon at Dutton informed me the disc is not faulty as the colouring is caused by the disc being a SACD with two layers of code, one for CD and other SACD.
I should mention Dutton have been perfectly reasonable and polite.

Oh, good!  And nice to know that too!  Trust that it will be back in your hands soon? 

PD

[Irons]

Oh, good!  And nice to know that too!  Trust that it will be back in your hands soon? 

PD

Arrived (back) today.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Arrived (back) today.

Yeah!  Hope that you enjoy the music! 

PD

[Brian]

Warning - a friend of mine just found a bronzed Hyperion CD released in the mid 2000s. Stephen Hough's Rachmaninov concertos. He found it today and just emailed the label.

[Jo498]

Incredible!
Supposedly the bronzing only affected a limited number of CD pressing plants around 1990?!? I have been "burned" several times by buying used/"as new old stock" CDs from that time, hyperion, Tactus, ASV but this was my own fault because I should have known about the danger with CDs from that vintage.

[DavidW]

Yes I think that it is highly unlikely.  No offense, but I don't find a single anecdote as reliable evidence.  Especially when it flies in the face of common knowledge.

[Jo498]

Of course it does not help that the slightly golden hue is standard for many/all? Hyperion disc. But the "real" bronzing was a fairly specific fault, AFAIK.

[Brian]

He checked by playing the disc first and encountered sound problems. He is a professional musician and professional critic, and a past chair of the Pulitzer composition prize jury, so I don't distrust his judgment  . He sent them photos. Hopefully it was somehow a one-off manufacturing error and not evidence of another problem on the horizon.

[Brian]

Update from Hyperion directly: the first SACD pressing (discs made in 2004) of that specific recording (Hough Rachmaninov concertos) has shown signs of corrosion in other copies as well. No subsequent pressings, CD pressings, or other Hyperion SACDs show the defect so at this time they think it was specific to that batch of discs.

[Jo498]

There are several possible defects and even several types of corrosion. Maybe even the 1990s "bronzing" covered several somewhat different effects. (The official story then was that it was only a few pressing plants and also related to a reaction with the ink of some booklets, I think.)

Of the half dozen or so affected discs I have had/seen, only one or two showed the characteristic color pattern one finds as examples in the web. The others had only an overall slight discoloring (that was identical to the color of some unaffected discs, namely the slighty golden-hued ones). I have also encountered a few disc become unplayable at least in some tracks without any visible clue to what the problem could be... This is from 1000s of discs within 30+ years, so the problem remains fortunately quire rare.

[Scion7]

the few discs that I've had that ever did that were easily wiped off, and the effect never returned

[Jo498]

Real bronzing is not on the outermost layer only, I think, it cannot be wiped off. You get clicks or skips, usually starting on the last few tracks of the discs. Sometimes one can still make a copy, sometimes this is not even possible anymore.