Well, I've dug out my cd singles and the worst affected are the Locked Out and Fingers of Love double disc sets, but I've ripped them to my mac using XLD and I have accurate rips of all tracks, so if anyone needs those please let me know.

I'm unable to get a good rip of the Nails in My Feet tracks, despite that one not looking as bad.

As luck would have it, mine haven't gone south on me yet. One of my "Locked Out" singles is starting to fog up but it's still playing. One of my "Distant Sun" singles is skipping on a 20 year old Sony deck that I have, but that machine has been giving me problems with a bunch of discs so I'm not too worried. It played fine on my Pioneer SACD/DVD deck.

Of course, backing them all up is now on the "to do" list. I can help out anyone who wasn't as fortunate.

Slightly OT but I believe I can answer this:

quote:

Originally posted by gryphon:
A careful wash of the side you play is ok... (same with dvds) and wipe it with a fine cloth. What direction do you wipe again???

Always wipe the play side of CDs/DVDs outward from the middle in a straight line with a soft cloth - don't use a tissue because tissues can still scratch apparently.

I've recently learnt the hard way about 'how' to wipe CD/DVD discs without causing any irrepairable damage to the disc. Luckily, the now completely-destroyed-will-not-play-properly-in-any-player () DVD had nothing to do with Crowdies/Enz/Neil Finn.

Ok. Back to the Crowdie 'Unplayable' CD singles.

I have bought several singles with the same problem from ebay a few years ago (suprisingly they were sold as in good and better condition not mentioning there was something on their surfaces).

When I received them I was worried of the possible nature of this 'frosty' pattern. I hoped this was not kind of fungus and I isolated those from other CDs.

As there was nothing to lose (after trying some other variants) I tried pure ethyl alcohol, [yes, part of 'fun water' people drink sometimes, C2H5OH (I don't remember if the one I used was denaturated though)] for removing this 'stain' and it worked perfectly. All was removed. I wet well the cotton with the mentioned ehtanol and wiped the CD as usually moving from the centre to the edges.

I did that about 2 years ago. I just took out that CD ('Locked Out') and checked - only a little shadow of the 'frost' has returned since that, but no crystals.

So concentrated ethanol works perfectly for diluting and removing that. I am not sure about using vodka (I hope it won't leave the surface of the CD dirty) but it worth nothing (except the cost of the little amount of vodka itself) to try it on the not printed surface of the cd to check if it is of any help (if there is no pure ethanol).
And probably it would be not wise to apply any coloured ethanol containing drink.

I'd recommend, first, to try this on the small spot of the CD on which there is no record to make sure it works.

If it not returns the CD back to the rotation, at least, it will help to make a backup copy of the cd.

Just in case, don't forget to let the surface dry after applying the alcohol before inserting the CD into any reading device.