[78-L] Pearl CD bronzing on "Music From The New York Stage" vol. one: 1890-1908

[victrola78s at aol.com]

Well, it's finally happened to me. Sometime in the last ten years I've read on this list as well as the RMCR Google group about the legendary "bronzing syndrome". The past few weeks I've been ordering Lps & CDs from Amazon of items I couldn't afford when they were new. Lots of Gielgud, Dame Judith Anderson, various vintage music, etc. I test them out when I get them, scanning tracks. Today the 3-CD set of "Music From The New York Stage-volume one:1890-1908"  arrived. Imagine my surprise when I opened the bubble package & CD case to see these beautifully colored bronze Pearl CDs. The color is quite nice, & gives an antiqued look as the rim edges are a darker bronze than the main body of the CD. As I stared at the CDs it dawned on me that I had some CDs with "the bronzing syndrome" right in front of my four eyes! So I placed the first CD into a portable Sony boombox player & hit "PLAY". No problem with the first track. Advancing tracks I found that the last track, #32, has an intermittent "static noise" that comes & goes. So much for May Irwin's "When You Ain't Got No Money, You Needn't Come Around" from 1907. I plan to get Archeophone's reissue of May Irwin's recordings, so I'm not too grief-stricken as yet. And I have two or three of the Victor 78s(including "The Bully Song", which contains the "N-word" 8 times in 3:28 minutes!).

I will do some searches of course, but I thought first I'd toss this out there & ask the 78-L family what solutions(if any) there might be for extracting the maximum tracks from these flawed CDs. I will try playing them in computer drives, DVD players, LD players & see which lasers can read the most number of damaged tracks. So far I haven't gotten to discs two & three. I suppose then I should burn them to new CD-R media ASAP. Any tips are appreciated. Oddly, last week I got "Music From The New York Stage-volume four:1917-1920" , & those discs play fine all the way through. They are the normal shiny silver hue. Both Pearl sets say made in UK by PDO & both have a 1993 copyright year on them. I also remember the RCA/BMG Caruso set with the colored batwing CDs that deteriorated & became unreadable. My set from 1995 has the usual silver discs. 

The digital compact disc, "Perfect sound forever". Pressed or burned, it doesn't seem to be a guarantee of permanence at all. Since 2003 I've bought CD-R issues from James Lockwood's "78s2CD", Glenn Sage's "Tinfoil", & several sets from First Generation Radio Archives. The Radio Archives sets used a mix of CD-Rs, all cheapies with brands such as Circuit City, Office Max, etc. All were computer burned CD-Rs & several discs from each of these vendors have tracks that are static-ridden, skip, or are just plain unreadable. Chris Clawson's "Meloware" CD-Rs have held up fine. They are all TDK. I've always had a policy of not burning my own CD-Rs of titles I've bought, & have actually gone back to a vendor to buy additional copies if I want to gift them to someone. But no more. In 2000 I bought a Pioneer PDR-W739 CD recorder, which functions perfectly to this day(knock wood). It came with a 10-pack of TDK music-type CD-Rs, & I bought another 10-pack of Memorex branded ones at the same time. All of them still play today, including the much maligned Memorex discs. 

I got into CDs relatively late, in 1994. I was fascinated by the technology & couldn't wait to get my hands on a CD audio recorder as soon as the prices dropped to a reasonable "component" level. Now I have three(the other two are Sonys). But with CDs & CD-Rs that fail, downloads of unsatisfying bit rates, memory sticks & hard drives that also fail I'm sure glad I've got a few thousand actual 78s & eight Victrolas/Grafonolas to play them on. Now to grab a handful of steel needles & head towards the Credenza! 

Dennis "Shellac-a-phobia" Forkel