In the
Olden Days of cassette players, the play/record heads would get dirty over
time. You would buy a Tape Head Cleaner.
If you were
really uptown, you would buy a Tape Head Demagnetizer.
Of course,
if you were a post-teen newlywed without a lot of bucks -- the way I was around
1980 -- you cleaned your cassette heads
with a Q-Tip. An illo from WikiHow:
Beginning
in the 1980s, we had the CD revolution.
A laser which reads music from a little silver disc? What a concept!
Turns out,
dirty human hands tend to touch the PLAY side of CDs. Eventually, some of that grime gets onto the
lens. This leads to bad reproduction and
other problems.
Enter the
CD Cleaning Disc!
This is my
“original” one, bought from Staples.
This item has no CD front inser
Yes, it’s
more than five years old. I kept it my
car, because the factory CD player in my
beautiful car needs it every eight months to a year. CDs would skip, or alternately the CD-Text
would be missing, on discs that I knew DID contain that info. Evidently you can wear out a CD disc cleaner!
After six
or more years, I became very familiar with the format of this tool. After a few seconds of cheesy soft-jazz
music, a woman’s voice announces:
“Thank you for selecting the CD Cleaning Disc to clean your CD
player. You can enjoy music while
cleaning your CD player at the same time.
When you hear the high-tone beep sound, please forward the cleaning CD
to Track Five.”
If you
check out Tracks One-Three, you hear the same gal talking in other
languages. If you are a good (English-speaking)
camper, and forward the disc to Track Five, you hear a repeat of the cheesy
music, then:
“The cleaning process is now completed. Please enjoy the following music. Your CD player will work much better if you
use the CD lens cleaner regularly.”
Just for
fun, I ripped this disc using EZ-CD
Extractor (a great product, by the way).
These are the tracks and their factory labels:
STAPLES Lens Cleaner
01 - Intro - English language
02 - Intro - French
language
03 - Intro - Spanish
language
04 - Blank Track
05 - Outro - English language
06 - Outro - French
language
07 - Outro - Spanish
language
I don’t
know what’s in the blank Track Four, but it’s about 20 minutes long, according
to the CD extractor program. Also, Track
Four was full of “errors,” according to the CD extractor. It’s probably some sort of data track, not
audio:
You can still buy a “STAPLES CD/DVD drive cleaner” that
appears identical to my old one, at:
Well, after
lo these many years, I had to buy a new one.
I went to Best Buy this time.
This item
has a CD case front insert, but no rear insert.
When I
opened it and popped it into my car CD player, I found that Track One opened
with cheesy music. This time, instead of
cheesy soft jazz, I heard cheesy soft synth.
Then a voice asked me to FF to Track Two for English instructions. Keep playing Track One, and you’ll hear the
voice tell you (I guess) the same thing in different languages, directing you
to various tracks.
Fast-Forward
to Track Two, and guess what you hear?
THE EXACT SAME WORDS
AS THE STAPLES DISC.
Yep. Different label, different music, different
voice; IDENTICAL SCRIPT. Of course, I
can only vouch for the English version, but every word is the same, except that
the INSIGNIA disc from Best Buy directs you to Track Nine.
But the
best thing about this item (besides its fine performance) is the humor used in
creating the track names. Yes, MusicBrainz has a listing for the INSIGNIA
disc. Check out the track title for
Track Eight!
Silver Line - INSIGNIA CD Lens Cleaner
01. Introduction (0:36)
02. English Information (0:27)
03. German Information (0:34)
04. French Information (0:30)
05. Spanish Information (0:30)
06. Japanese Information (0:37)
07. Chinese Information (0:27)
08. Empty Track - Come on you're playing a CD-Cleaner!
(40:05)
09. English Music (2:05)
10. German Music (1:54)
11. French Music (2:00)
12. Spanish Music (1:59)
13. Japanese Music (1:53)
14. Chinese Music (2:01)
Like the
Staples disc, the empty track was read as containing “errors.” EZ-CD said the track was forty minutes long
as I ripped it, but the resulting mp3 is only a couple of seconds long.
You could buy one here:
So, even
when your CD player skips, keep smiling while you’re playing your “CD-Cleaner”!
If you want to hear the audio yourself for
some April Foolish reason, w\here is a link to the audio tracks and photos:
See you next Monday!
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