defective cds

Is it just me, or have others noticed more defective cds than usua?

The last three times I purchased recordings (from Musical Heritage Society, from Amazon.com, from a record store), three out of four recordings would not track.

It is not my cd player

I was just thinking about this and it occurred to me that I have not had a defective CD is around 2 years. Every time I happen to run across a particularly hard-to-find disc, or one that is OOP, I usually listen with great trepidation thinking that statistically my run of luck has to end soon and hoping that it is not THIS disc that breaks the streak. But I think I have purchased, new or used, several hundred CDs without incident.

I have had this problem occasionally, but it's grown slightly worse in recent months. Not only have occasional CD's proven unplayable, but recently a CD I've owned for more than a year has stopped tracking. However, these same CD's will play in my computer, my car CD player, and in my recently acquired Norcent DVD player. I suspect the problem may be a slow deterioration in my primary CD player. But I don't know enough about how it works to be sure this is possible. Try out your problem CD's in another player to see what happens.

I wonder if it could possibly be some kind of anti-piracy thing ?

Sounds exactly like what i'd expect if there was some sort of lame protection on the disk. Pirates continue to copy, consumers continue to suffer. Keep taking/sending the disk back until you get one that works. It *has* to play on a red book player, or its not a cd. Does it say 'compact disk digital audio' on it? If not, then its not actually a true CD. More info, and a list of known 'corrupt' disks here: http://www.fatchucks.com/z3.cd.html

although admittedly its not really classic orientated.