Improve CD Sound by Shaving?

We always enjoy the odd things that people do to try to get better audio reproduction. Exotic cables, special amplifiers, and higher resolution digitization come to mind.  Most of this is dubious, at best, but [Techmoan] brings up something we must have missed back in the day: shaving CDs with a gadget that was marketed as the “CD Sound Improver.” The theory is that bad CD reproduction comes from light scatter of the laser. The solution, according to the maker of this vintage equipment, is to cut a 36-degree bevel to act as a light trap. You can see the gadget in the video below.

The device claims it reduced vibration, improved audio, and even helped DVDs playback better video. As you might imagine, this has little hope of actually working. The box is essentially a motor-driven turntable, a razor blade, and a port for a vacuum cleaner to suck up the mess. You were told to color the edge with a marker, too.

On the one hand, this seems ridiculous. Of course, it seems crazy that a marker on a CD would defeat some forms of copy protection, but — of course — it did. Apparently, quite a few people plunked down around $500 to trim the plastic of their CDs. There were plenty of positive reviews, too. But as you might expect, there’s no actual benefit to doing this operation. Nevertheless, [Techmoan] did sacrifice a [Dave Brubeck] CD in the name of science. We don’t think you’ll be surprised at the results.

There’s always debate about how much difference small changes in equipment make to your audio. Unfortunately, most of the easy things probably don’t make a difference you can hear, and to make that kind of difference is much more difficult.