Has the quality of CD-RW degraded over the years?

[Jimi77 Premium Member]

Mini Disc were cool.

I ditched my Gen 4 Ipod for a portable Sony Minidisc because the Minidisc sounded noticeably better.

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

I ditched my Gen 4 Ipod for a portable Sony Minidisc because the Minidisc sounded noticeably better.

I still have a pricey back in the day Sony portable mini disc player I bought from a Service Merchandise store. I will have to look for it. I had a burner as well that was the size of a home CD player.

 

[Jimi77 Premium Member]

To get back on topic, I do wonder if the quality of RW CDs have dropped. The quality of just about everything has dropped in the past few decades. I can say because I have a ton of old blank RW-CDs and those seem to work fine.

 

[highfigh]

In this case neither since "the reflective layer is, however, a silver-indium-antimony-tellurium (AgInSbTe) alloy with a polycrystalline structure and reflective properties in its original state." I actually did a report on CD-RW many decades ago and remember the laser altering the structure, but didn't remember the specifics. Did a little research on Mini Disc to see if perhaps I mixed up the two technologies, but Mini Disc also used an alloy to store data. Too bad Mini Disc died - yet another superior technology from Sony that Sony let die trying to horde it to itself. Sony was almost (iirc) 5 years ahead of the curve and yet managed to lose out to inferior technologies.

You want some MiniDiscs? I have a few. Can't play them, but I have them (...my Precious!).

 

[Jimi77 Premium Member]

You want some MiniDiscs? I have a few. Can't play them, but I have them (...my Precious!).

Thanks, but no thanks. I lost my MiniDisc player snowboarding many years ago. Now-a-days we can get pretty damn good performance from an Android phone, SD card, thumb drive, etc.

 

[highfigh]

Thanks, but no thanks. I lost my MiniDisc player snowboarding many years ago. Now-a-days we can get pretty damn good performance from an Android phone, SD card, thumb drive, etc.

But, but, but NOSTALGIA!

 

[Old_Slapper]

I know this is month old post, but to answer the question, CD-RW were never designed to be high quality. Due to the way they are designed to be able to be re-written, their sound quality cannot be as good as a regular CD. Also, over time, information can drop off them. This is what happened to my wife and I. I didn't know the photographer put our wedding pictures on a CD-RW. A few years later, we went to get photos off it, and they were all gone.