We always appreciate the weird things people do to try and get better audio reproduction. Exotic cables, special amplifiers and higher resolution digitization come to mind. Most of this is dubious at best, but [Techmoan] brings up something we must have missed at the time: shaving CDs with a gadget marketed as the “CD Sound Improver”. The theory is that the poor reproduction of the CD comes from the scattering of laser light. The solution, according to the maker of this vintage gear, is to cut a 36 degree bevel to act as a light trap. You can see the gadget in the video below.
The device claims to have reduced vibration, improved audio and even helped DVDs play better videos. As you can imagine, this has little hope of actually working. The box is basically a motorized turntable, a razor blade, and a port for a vacuum cleaner to suck up the mess. You were also told to color the edge with a marker.
On the one hand, it sounds ridiculous. Of course, it also seems crazy that a marker on a CD could defeat some form of copy protection, but it does. Apparently quite a few people shelled out around $500 to cut the plastic off their CDs. There were also a lot of positive reviews. But as you might expect, there is no real benefit to doing this operation. However, [Techmoan] sacrificed a [Dave Brubeck] CD in the name of science. We don’t think you will be surprised with the results.
There is always a debate about the difference small equipment changes make to your audio. Unfortunately, most easy things probably don’t make a difference you can hear, and making that kind of difference is a lot harder.
