optical units comparison

[Ellenika]

Hi everyone,

I am new in this forum. Here is my question, which is mainly for my knowledge rather than to solve a problem: a music CD of mines wasn't working with my boombox, but on my laptop it did. I have cleaned it and after this it worked also in the boombox. So I was wondering which is the feauture which makes the difference! Can anyone suggest me a good tutorial about comparison among several kinds of optical unit, typical behavior, depending if they are on a computer, on a boombox, HI-FI and so on? THANKS!

Ellenika

 

[capt_taco]

My best guess was that the boombox was simply older (or more frequently used), and therefore had more gunk accumulated on its own lens. It doesn't matter where the dirt is; if it's on either the lens or the disc, it will get in the way and make it harder to read.

Think about it as if there's a total amount of dirt that needs to be present before it will make the disc unreadable. If you're starting out with a dirty lens, that means you've filled up 20% or 60% of your dirt quota (no telling, really) so there can be less dirt on the disc before it goes over the total amount. Cleaning the disc removed enough of the dirt from the equation that it worked again.

Try using one of those lens cleaning kits on the boombox and see if it helps anything.

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_player Yes cleaning the lens and laser diode can be done with rubbing alcohol and swabs, but access to them, sometimes you must take the housing off the unit. In the past, The lower cost units typically used only one DAC chip in them.

 

[Ellenika]

Hi,

the boombox is brand new (August).
The CD wasn't working neither in my previous boombox, which worked almost properly with other CDs (even if I had noticed something was not going well with it), while the laptop is much older (several years).
@Ironsounds thanks for page, I don't know why I didn't find it, maybe wrong research key.

Ellenika