OK to leave CD in CD player/stereo?

Nothing touches the CD except for the transport and the spindle. If you leave the CD in that is less wear and tear instead of constantly inserting and removing. Think about it...

Sure you can---it's not like leaving a cassette in the player where the little rubber roller can get deformed. It's probably better for the CD to leave it in there rather than potentially scratching it by excess handling.

That's a relief - I've been leaving them in there for years, and my husband has always scolded me - I get to go "nyah" to him now.

:-)

Natalie

I guess you have a choice, my toy manual says( remove discs when not listening to them). No reason given for their recomendation.

Of course it is. As compared to leaving a CD laying on the seat, keeping it in the CD player is probably better. It certainly will not harm the player, and I'm at a loss to see what harm could come to the disc itself.

Regardless of the advantages which others have suggested, I would not leave a CD in a player whilst a car is left to get hot. This applies especially to homebrew (eg CD-R) disks. The foil on them lifts off easily; indeed, Saab advise not inserting those at all.

To put it in perspective (and I'm sorry if this is stale news), I tried leaving a CD-R, that I was ready to throw out but otherwise was okay, on a windowsill at home here in the UK on a summer day. Within half an hour the foil was coming away in scabs and sheets. Imagine that inside your nice new CD player. :-(

Cassette tape boxes left on the dashboard are inclined to warp in strong sun heat. :-( Try it some time. It's amazing that parts of the car don't go funny -- or sooner than they do.

So: by all means leave it in while you are in the car but take it out and box it between drives. Store it away from major warmth.

FWIW, I once measured the boot (US:trunk) temperature of a rental GM Malibu (ie, wide and shallow but quite capacious) during an AZ late June and logged 50 degC (122 degF) after parking for roughly an hour. When you get into a car then go ouch-hot-ouch for a few seconds, remember: it's been like that in the car for far longer. Things (babies/dogs/CDs) can soon perish inside parked cars.

Interesting; thanks!

Natalie

You guys beat me to this one - the proper answer to the question depends on the Location and Season. In the winter, no problem. In the summer, in Fairbanks, no problem. In the summer in West Texas or Southern California, take the CD out of the player and take it inside with you - or if you must leave it in the car, put it in a cooler with ice in it.

Or if you are only leaving the car for an hour or two at a time you can put your CD's in a cooler without ice, the insulation will keep them from reaching critical temperatures for quite a while.

If you had a CD-R shed the reflective surface like that your head unit would at best need to be taken out and properly cleansed out with swabs, solvent, and canned air - there are several optical sensors inside that won't work if they get blocked, the player mechanicals will fail in the eject or accept moves.

If the metallic bits got in a bad place and shorted out something critical on a circuit board, they could blow a circuit in the head unit and trash it.

CD cases and the CD's are made of the same families of plastics. With the CD you don't even have to warp it normally - all it has to do is warm up and shrink the CD substrate in one direction and let it become slightly ovoid, and it will act like an LP record with the center hole punched off center.

An LP tonearm can follow the track on an old and warped-but- flattened record in those situations, you may get some tonal distortion but it will play. (Though you may have to tape a few pennies on the headshell and crank up the tracking pressure to where the groove is being damaged by the needle.)

But the CD pickup laser will barf trying to follow a track that's wiggling back and forth - the error correction can't work that fast, and it's not set up to follow the track outward. It's meant to follow the track as it slowly spirals inward at a steady rate, not chase it repeatedly back and forth.

I've seen temperatures go well over 200F inside cars parked in direct sun in very hot areas with all the windows rolled up tight. This would kill CD's.

-->--

Bruce

Just for your information, a CD plays the tracks from inside to outside. The automatic tracking will go either way within limits.

Slim

meant to follow the track as it slowly spirals inward at a steady rate, not chase it repeatedly back and forth.

---MIKE---

You've got it backwards. The CD is read staring from the center and spirals outward.

---MIKE---

All of that is true enough, but if one is prone to leaving CDs in the car in the first place, leaving them in the player is probably safer than leaving them on the dashboard or the seat. I give the CDs a much longer life span in a hot car than I give a kid or a dog, but eventually they succumb to a sad demise.

As ever, the choice is yours. If I had been away from a hot car for any amount of time, one of the first things I'd do, before I played a CD that had been anywhere warm in it, would be to study its condition -- which means taking it out of the player. Doing this before leaving the car or after returning comes to much the same thing. In my experience, some radio/player units can reach nasty temperatures in parked cars. But, whatever works for you.

FWIW, a quite easy way to keep small stuff at a safe temperature is to put it in a pocket next to your skin, with good insulation between the "stuff" and the outside world. Unless you are sick, your body's thermal regulation is good. Wrapping in a humidity- proof bag, to reduce steaminess from sweat, is an extra option.

If you drive on smooth roads, then ok, but if your roads are rugged, then always keep the disk out. When you stop playing, the head stays at place and makes scratches on the disk while the player is shaking. (Hence I don't use original CDs in car.)

"Ned Merrill" píse v diskusním príspevku news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

It's a good idea to use copies of CDs, anyway. A friend of mine had her truck stolen with all of her factory CDs inside, so she had to replace them; her insurance didn't cover the CDs. Also, if you *do* happen to damage the copy, you can (Usually) make another copy. Some CDs are copy-protected against making more than one copy.

Natalie

Something tells me that keeping a CD keeper with 24 CD inside my jacket would be exceedingly uncomfortable. Living in a desert climate in southern California, I've not had any problem with my CD remaining in my motorhome for months on end.