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Comment by james-skemp | Hacker News Reader

I've got a pretty significant collection of PlayStation 1 and 2 games, and every time I see an article on disc rot I look to see when I need to be worried.

Has anyone seen a list of when disc-based systems might start showing signs? Something like game consoles and capacitors.

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Not exactly what you are asking but I recently sold off my physical CD collection of about 500, after being in my closet for the past 20 years so no temperature/climate extremes, a few of them had signficant value on EBay, but when I tried to use Exact Audio Copy to verify they still could be read, about half no longer matched the online checksums or the original CD rip I had done before putting them in storage. There were three from Denon Japan that had physically deteriorated inside the disk, I could see there was a problem from a visual inspection.

Aha! This must be why them audiophiles prefer to listen to their music using $$$ cd transport from original media! You can hear the difference!

On a serious note, I’m in a similar boat, we’re in a middle of the move and it appears that my cd collection is in same predicament. So I’m debating whether to throw them to trash, or keep around (mostly for cover artwork, and to keep my Exact Audio Copy -> flac transfers just a bit more legit (I care of such things)).

I dislike CD. My equipment is capable of 192khz/32bit (some only 24bit though), so CD are pretty much trash at 41khz. Better than MP3, solely due to the info MP3 throws away, but not great.

Tidal goes higher, to 96khz on master quality where available (the vast number of tracks are not master quality, sadly).

You might want to read https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

I had a lot of problems with Dreamcast games in particular. I think the black-surfaced PS1 games seem to be a bit better made.

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