Cracking SACDs

[Claude]

As has been widely discussed, the Pink Floyd Dark side of the moon SACDs had problems with cracks appearing after some time (weeks, months) in the center of the disc. Responsible for this is the Crest National pressing plant.

My copy of DSOTM has a few cracks which appeared a month after I received it, but it seems that many more, and even much more recent titles are concerned. So the problem isn't solved yet. My copy of Bob Belden Black Dahlia also has 2 cracks (2 mm long). My Blue Train SACD is still ok (so I can safely get rid of it on ebay )

So be warned, check your Crest-made SACDs regularly and keep the receipts.

Here is a thread from the Steve Hoffman forum discussing the topic in detail.

Edited June 29, 2003 by Claude

[jacknife]

My Dark Side Of The Moon disc is cracked at the center but still plays for now. I'm holding off on buying Blue Train as it sounds like that one has the cracking problem. I wonder how many other of my sacds are going to self destruct

[Guest GregM]

I understand that Crest needs to be more liberal with the use of a sealant in some stage of the manufacturing process. It stinks, but the cracks in my DSotM and Blue Train are far too small to be prohibitive and I've played these discs many times with nothing bad to report but a tiny (1 mm squared) plastic flake sloughing off from the inner spindle hole of DSotM. I understand others have the cracks radiating into the data area. Maybe due to the presence of the puck covering the spindle hole area when discs are placed in the SCD-1, this hasn't been a problem for me. I do hope Crest gets it right for their next manufacturing run, and I bet they will.

For perspective, this puts tiny, barely visible cracks in the non-data area of 2 of the ~200 SACDs in my collection. Big deal.

[A Lark Ascending]

I've read that after a couple of years they start to develop inner groove distortion and audible crackle and pop sounds that increase every time you play them. After five years they only play at 78 rpm!

[J Larsen]

Not to derail the thread, but another complaint I've heard about this release is that the cd layer sounds awful, much worse than the previous cd release. Would you agree with this?

[Guest GregM]

Are you talking about DSotM or one of the Blue Notes? Generally I don't listen to the CD content of my hybrid SACDs anymore.

[Claude]

Stereophile wrote that the DSOTM CD layer has very compressed dynamics. I haven't checked it yet.

My listening tests showed that "Blue Train" is compressed on the SACD layer too, compared to the MFSL CD.