How should you store a cd?

[bobashep]

My wife's uncle and aunt sparked this debate: Maybe you guys can settle this quandry:
How to do you store a CD in it's case?
Say the CD we are trying to put back in it's case is Harry Connick Jr's Songs I Heard,
which says the title of the album in red paint. Do you place the CD red face up or do you place the CD shiny side up?
The aunt says shiny side up prevents scratches on the CD causes by the case when putting it in. The uncle says it really does'nt matter how you do it, but he prefers red side up becasue the red face is the side that counts if a CD is scratched.
Which way is up?

[Cem]

Originally posted by bobashep
Which way is up?

damned if I know...

[Cem]

I'm the wrong one to ask. I've gotten really bad in the last few years...I stack 'em high, cd's, dvd's, let alone right side up in the tray. I vote for shiny down.

[Gary Sisco]

It's the shiny side that holds the music.

[Clay Fink]

One suggestion comes to mind...

[John L]

I usually flip the CD. Heads - face up. Tails - face down.

[Chris D]

As was said, uncle is wrong on which side holds the music. It's the shiny side.
Face down should not be a problem, as a proper case will hold the disc away from the surface.
Shiny side up would seem to provoke more damaging fingerprints on removing the CD.

[Gentle Giant]

It's true that on a CD-R, if you scratch the top side (or write on it firmly in ballpoint pen rather than felt marker), the CD will not play properly. I'm not sure if this is true with pre-recorded discs.

Either way, the bottom side doesn't get scratched when you put it in the case, unless you're drunk and you miss a couple of times. Even then, it has to be a pretty good scratch; I've never had a problem with scuff marks. As with records, I prefer to arrange CDs vertically, although due to space constraints, I do have some laying horizontal.

Anal as I am, I also insist that all my discs be straight up in their cases, so that the writing and/or graphics are in the proper viewing orientation at all times.

[Jonny Miner]

I used to manage a used CD store where the owner, in an attempt to penny pinch, bought a CD resurfacer, which was meant to buff scratches off of beaten-up discs. He actually bought a couple, but all brands sucked equally.

Anyway, what I learned was this: the metal disc on which the digital info is encoded in surrounded by the plastic of the disc. The metal piece, which is very thin, is way closer to the top (or label) side of the disc than to the bottom (or shiny) side. Therefore, it is easier to harm the disc by scratching the top. You can tell you've done this if when you hold a CD up to light, there are scratches that you can see right through it (also, older CDs, particularly ones on the Island imprint, often have holes throught them which are caused by deterioration. Remember when they said CDs last forever?). Still, you'd have to give it a pretty good gourging to hurt it.

I often orient my discs so they're readable, too. Soooo lame...

[Peterdubya]

In the freezer in a zip lock bag....

[Lois Gilbert]

Starting next week we're going to be advertising CD/Media Storage cabinets that will be discounted to JC folks - I ordered 2 before the discount and I really like them. Hold on for a week and you'll see what I'm talking about
Best Lois

[Bill Barton]

In the freezer, next to a zip-lock bag full of coffee? If it's Harry Connick, Jr. you might want to butt it up against the caffeine.

[craigz]

Scratching the label side of a CD-R ruins the disk because that is the reflective surface that the light bounces off of. A CD-R is basically a transparent disk of plastic with a layer of photosensitive dye in the middle and a reflective surface on top. Burning the disk leaves the dye transparent in some places and opaque in others, corresponding to the lands and pits on a pressed CD. When you play the disk, the light enters from the bottom and reflects off the underside of the label in the places where the dye is transparent. If you scratch off the reflective layer, pits gets mistaken for lands. ones get mistaken for zeroes, and the disk is ruined. Actually, I suppose you could try to repair it by applying a similarly reflective surface to the top side, but I've never tried it.

There, isn't that more than you wanted to know?

[GoodSpeak]

Hold the CD from the edges.

Clean it with a soft cloth moving from the center to the edge.

Store it in the jewel case title side up.

Be careful how you pull it out of the jewel case and equally as careful how you place it in the CD changer tray.

Stay away from extreme heat or severe cold.






































Relax. Have a glass of wine/brandy and a good cigar. Listen.

[Ron Thorne]

Originally posted by craigz
Scratching the label side of a CD-R ruins the disk because that is the reflective surface that the light bounces off of. A CD-R is basically a transparent disk of plastic with a layer of photosensitive dye in the middle and a reflective surface on top. Burning the disk leaves the dye transparent in some places and opaque in others, corresponding to the lands and pits on a pressed CD. When you play the disk, the light enters from the bottom and reflects off the underside of the label in the places where the dye is transparent. If you scratch off the reflective layer, pits gets mistaken for lands. ones get mistaken for zeroes, and the disk is ruined. Actually, I suppose you could try to repair it by applying a similarly reflective surface to the top side, but I've never tried it.

There, isn't that more than you wanted to know?

No, it was quite informative actually, Craig. That might also explain why some CDRs I've received from friends are not recordable because there's a label on the top surface with the artist/album name, thus blocking the passage of the laser beam. Right?

[Tom Storer]

Obviously you should put the CD into its case with the label side up. That's how they are when you buy them, right?

Originally posted by Gentle Giant
Anal as I am, I also insist that all my discs be straight up in their cases, so that the writing and/or graphics are in the proper viewing orientation at all times.

I know there are other people who suffer from this condition--Mwanji does this too, I think. It never ceases to amaze me. How much time do you spend gazing at your CDs in their cases before playing them?

[mke]

Originally posted by Tom Storer
I know there are other people who suffer from this condition--Mwanji does this too, I think. It never ceases to amaze me. How much time do you spend gazing at your CDs in their cases before playing them?

Well, at least I'm no longer alone! It's not about gazing at CDs, it's... it's... it's just the way things have to be!

[Gentle Giant]

Originally posted by mke
Well, at least I'm no longer alone! It's not about gazing at CDs, it's... it's... it's just the way things have to be!

Absolutely! I never did/do this with vinyl, mind you, but it's just so easy to do it right with CDs. Also, I have more than a few where the times are listed only on the disc itself (not on the back card or booklet), and when I'm burning a compilation it's convenient to be able to just open it and see what I'm looking for.

Whenever someone gives back a CD that I've loaned to them, the first thing I do is open and correct it. People who know I prefer it right side up and return it to me in that condition have my immense gratitude. Most often, though, people just make a face at me when I straighten it.

[Gentle Giant]

Now that I think about it, though, it occurs to me that with vinyl, I've always tried to put the record in the sleeve with Side 1 facing up (or the lowest number on multi-LP sets). I can't vouch that they're all like that, but if you were to pull out random CDs from my collection, I'd be very confident you'd see it stright up and down.

[Vince Kargatis]

Originally posted by Jonny Miner
the metal disc on which the digital info is encoded in surrounded by the plastic of the disc. The metal piece, which is very thin, is way closer to the top (or label) side of the disc than to the bottom (or shiny) side. Therefore, it is easier to harm the disc by scratching the top.

Where the data layer resides isn't really so important, since the laser has to pass through the shiny-side plastic to get to the data - scratches in that plastic can cause errors as easily as actual data-layer damage. And I'd bet that most errors in reading the data are due to plastic-later scratches rather than actual data-layer damage (which is why polishing can often remove read-errors). So I'd still work harder to safeguard the shiny-side than the label side.