Cleaning CD's

Is your music jumping around, skipping, repeating when it's not suppose to? Are you finding it hard to enjoy listening to your favorite CD's because of it? Are you ready to toss them out because you feel you might have just played them too often, to the point they are no longer functional?

Before you throw away your CD's and spend hard earned money to replace them, find out first if maybe they just need a good cleaning.

A Right and Wrong Way to Clean CD's

However, there is a right and a wrong way to clean your CD's. Unlike the old vinyl records (which you may or may not remember), you cannot clean your CD's in a circular motion, as one might have a propensity to do, being they are circular. The information stored on a CD disk is not imbedded in the disk in the same manner that music was recorded into the grooves of the old vinyl records, so you cannot clean them in the same manner.

To properly clean a CD, take a clean, dry, soft, lint-free cloth and gently wipe the CD in downward strokes, starting from the center of the CD. Continue this motion all the way around the CD, from the center, downward. By doing so in this manner, you are not destroying the important information that is stored on the disk, causing it to skip and jump around even more.

I find that this procedure also helps to alleviate some of the frame freezing on movie DVD's.

Just by properly cleaning your CD's and DVD's periodically, they can last you through several more continued plays and continued hours of enjoyment. This will also help to save you a lot of money by not having to replace CD's and DVD's that didn't really need to be thrown away... they might have just needed a good cleaning.