Slipping CD's

[Leon74]

I recently bought second-hand CD's from Discogs, all mint or near mint quality but now something strange happens:
My husband's CD-player started slipping on a CD . I don't know better how to describe it. The CD suddenly stopped playing, the time indication froze and the CD made a slipping sound. Several days later the same happened with a seemingly perfect (yet second-hand) CD and I thought the CD player was becoming faulty. The player was rather old and my husband experienced the same with the player a few times in the past.
Now I just had the same happening with yet another CD in another CD player that is very little used. I took out the CD, put it in again and now it works fine.
But it makes me a bit paranoia, lol. What's going on here? Does anyone have an explanation for what could be happening?

 

[Vincent Kars]

Data rot?
CD a bit dirty?
Lens of the player a bit dirty?

A simple test is ripping the CD using any ripping program supporting AccurateRip e.g. try the trial version of dBpoweramp or use Musicbee.
If the optical drive of the PC struggles and/or AccurateRip reports errors, it is the CD having badly readable parts.

 

[Leon74]

Data rot?
CD a bit dirty?
Lens of the player a bit dirty?

A simple test is ripping the CD using any ripping program supporting AccurateRip e.g. try the trial version of dBpoweramp or use Musicbee.
If the optical drive of the PC struggles and/or AccurateRip reports errors, it is the CD having badly readable parts.

Thank you, Vincent.
The CD is clean and looks like new. Data rot shouldn't be the problem either as I ripped the CDs recently with Eac and there were no problems.
With the old Sony player it might be the lens but the Philips built-in player is so little used I doubt it.

I'm flabbergasted as I was already around when the CD was introduced but I never experienced such a thing.

 

[My2Cents]

"I'm flabbergasted as I was already around when the CD was introduced but I never experienced such a thing"... these kinds of issues are not uncommon with CD's
"but the Philips built-in player is so little used"
... but how old is it? Has it been kept in a dusty environment?
You could buy a brand new car and leave it in a garage for 20 years and it would most likely have issues and would need a thorough service before even attempting to start the engine.
Surely the easiest way to check if it's the CD is to play it on a new player.

 

[Leon74]

"I'm flabbergasted as I was already around when the CD was introduced but I never experienced such a thing"... these kinds of issues are not uncommon with CD's
"but the Philips built-in player is so little used"
... but how old is it? Has it been kept in a dusty environment?
You could buy a brand new car and leave it in a garage for 20 years and it would most likely have issues and would need a thorough service before even attempting to start the engine.
Surely the easiest way to check if it's the CD is to play it on a new player.

Oh, it's maybe 7 or 8 years old, I use the set mainly for streaming. It's in a normal room, no especially dusty conditions. If I played 20 Cd's with it, it's a lot.
I am afraid it's going to be difficult to determine the cause with the problem showing with two different players and two different discs and without being able to repeat what happened.

I was wondering, hopefully I was not sold polished second-hand discs. My husband suggested this but I think the costs of polishing would we prohibitive for used discs.

 

[twinkletoes]

and it only does it with these new to you cds? No other cd’s in your collection?

 

[Leon74]

and it only does it with these new to you cds? No other cd’s in your collection?

It only happened twice, with two different "new" second-hand cd's, each in a different player. It happened twice recently and never had it happen with my own old cd's some of which have some scratches, but the ones I am taling about I bought in near mint condition and they also look like that.
Very annoying, I always have such strange inexplicable things happen.
Hope it just happened twice and that's the end of it.

 

[abacus]

It only happened twice, with two different "new" second-hand cd's, each in a different player. It happened twice recently and never had it happen with my own old cd's some of which have some scratches, but the ones I am taling about I bought in near mint condition and they also look like that.
Very annoying, I always have such strange inexplicable things happen.
Hope it just happened twice and that's the end of it.

Rip the discs to your computer using a suitable ripping program (EAC is excellent and free however there are many others) then burn the file to CD-R and you will probably find it will be OK. (As always there is never any guarantees)

Bill

 

[nopiano]

It is skipping, not slipping. Yes, the time freezes because the tracking isn’t progressing. A bit like groove skip on a LP. But it isn’t mechanically slipping I’m confident of that.

Laser may be losing power, CD may be dirty, tracking arm may be sticking. Various possible causes. It may go away or you may need it servicing.

 

[Leon74]

It is skipping, not slipping. Yes, the time freezes because the tracking isn’t progressing. A bit like groove skip on a LP. But it isn’t mechanically slipping I’m confident of that.

Laser may be losing power, CD may be dirty, tracking arm may be sticking. Various possible causes. It may go away or you may need it servicing.

I replaced one of the CD players with another I still had. Let's see if there the problem occurs, too.
Today I had the problem again in the Philips micro set. The CD was clean and no scratches and the laser should not be losing power already but well, while the sound of that microset was very reasonable for the price and ythe sound is quite sweet, it's not truly HiFi and it's all made in China, not even by Philips themselves; they just give others the rights to use the brand name, so maybe it was faulty from the start.