Grateful Dead

dead.net the official site

Not playing at all :-(

My next step after getting through 3 and 4 will be to move on to other players. I should stop reporting now unless others begin to report issues. I have everything digitized but I would love replacement discs! I would not need any packaging! How many think that could really happen?

Worse things in the world, but...

Moving on to 3.

I hear that Charlie.. not saying this was a purposeful act, in fact I suspect Rhino might not have even pulled the trigger. I haven't had the time to check my discs yet.. but if all this is true, it is a bit of a mess.

I look at it more like that bad batch of PVC piping that had to be replaced in everyone's homes or the decade or so the sheetrock from China was subpar.

Yeah, absolutely a mess and a bummer. Given that not all of these 2012 DaP discs seem to have failed, I'm just curious about the storage and handling conditions for the discs that have failed and if they were acquired directly through deadnet or had passed through a few hands on the secondary market. It could very well turn out that deadnet or Rhino made some questionable choices but I haven't seen anything to indicate that at this point, so I'm just reserving judgment on blame. Definitely the stuff of nightmares for an OCD CD collector.

I have a grand piano and guitars. My home is kept between 45-55% humidity all year and the temp. is kept constant between 64 and 72 degrees.

I purchased all of the discs through Dead.net and am the original owner of all the discs. My DaP discs are kept in their original cases and the amount of play over the life of each disc is less than 30-40 hours on each disc.

That’s what Rhino used to ‘write’ these CD’s.

It should come as no surprise that some of the CD’s are bad. Pretty much every release has defective discs that have to be replaced. Some were probably slightly defective but got worse with handling/storage conditions.

But don’t panic too much yet. Take a CD that now appears defective and make a copy to a HD, then listen to the files. They might be OK.
I have had it both ways with Rhino CD’s, for example, last year I bought RT Fall 77 when someone pointed out that it was being sold with the bonus disc. All the CD’s played fine on my Onkyo CD player, but were defective when I made copies on my HD. But, each copy on the HD was defective in different places. I used 2 computers and 2 different CD burners to make a total of 7 copies on a HD. I was then able to piece together a complete RT (actually broke up the tracks by date) using the 7 copies, which had defects in different places.

6-17-76 CD3, notorious for Rhino having to redo the CD twice. My CD3 that had skips and static when played on my Onkyo CD player ripped flawlessly to a HD on the first try.

Skull Fuck - Golden Road Box, plays fine on my Onkyo but I could never get a good copy on a HD, it always had skips and static.

I’ll check my DaP’s this weekend to see if they have degraded (I’m back at work this week which is good, but now I don’t get to listen to as much GOGD during the day as I did over the last 2 months).

All my cds were acquired by subscription through deadnet. They were all stored in the same box and it seems like it is only the first 4 Dave s Picks that are a problem. I played Dave s Picks 5 and it is fine, thank goodness, Dave s 5 was stored right next to the first 4.

if it turns out to be a mass defect and not just a few unfortunate individual cases, then it’s BS and they should at least investigate if not replace the discs like Jim said. What do they do now when you have a bad disc? ala PNW etc... I believe folks said they would just send discs?
Fortunately I’ve never had a big problem (perhaps 2 or 3 skips out of hundreds of discs) but I have had some discs that were hard to rip. I have excellent Exact Audio copy ripping SW and never have problems with other manufacturers discs. The 30 Trips music only addition took forever to rip some discs (not because of scratches or other physical anomaly’s). If not for the EAC I probably wouldn’t have been able to rip some at all! Interestingly, these problems have only been with more current rhino releases, NEVER any of my pre rhino Dead releases...
Back in 86, like Vguy, Sargent Peppers was the second CD I ever bought and though often the master tape used, the digital conversion and mastering on many early discs is lackluster, but at least every single disc from way back then still plays fine. So why then are these relative new discs bad, and why even today, does rhino have so many problems and defects?
Yes Charlie you have a valid point IF the problems were rare, and if the sample sizes were small, but that hasn’t seemed to be the case. It just doesn’t seem like such widespread, repeating issues anywhere else? Maybe the fault rates aren’t that unusual and it’s just because we’re all so vigilant and vocal here, thus we think it’s a bigger problem then normal?
All I know is these rhino releases are pretty much the only discs I’ve had problems with since 1986 when I bought my first CD player...truly hope this is just another small sample and not a systemic problem or things are going to get weird around here....

Wilfred, Billy, that is disturbing to hear, neither of you sound like you are prone to mistreating your discs. I don't have the original issues for DaP 1-4, just copies so this doesn't affect me unless it spreads to other volumes, but consider me bummed on your behalf.

On a tangent, years ago I was at a friend's place, hanging out one afternoon the summer after my first year of college when I noticed that he had record albums scattered on the floor. I picked one up, The Doors Absolutely Live in fact, and said "Dave, man, you gotta take better care of your records, these are getting trashed, look at this." Dave looked at me, looked at the album and said "Oh, don't worry, that's yours, your brother loaned it to me."

On a couple of occasions I’ve only been able to get the disc to play on my oppo BR in real time to my Alessis masterlink 9600, like tape to tape back in the day....once on the 9600 I could make a disc that would then rip just fine.
Only a couple times, but a huge drag and waste of time..
EDIT: when I’ve done this I’ve akways gone digital out of the oppo into the 9600 to elimate 2 steps of conversion. I’ve actually made some killer transfers from DVDs to CD using this methodology. I often think these sound better then the CD versions because I think they keep more live ambient signal on the DVD mixes.

That’s been the Rhino business model for several years. That’s why they were making the CD’s in Mexico for a while. Recall that those releases constantly had defective discs.

And don’t fool yourself thinking that Rhino actually cares about you, they just want your money. Our purchasing of these releases is financing the digitization/Plangentization/Normanization of analog tape masters. Rhino/GD will still be bringing in revenue in the future from hi-res downloads/streaming long after our CD’s have deteriorated.

I just can't see the physics in it. How could this be. I'm not saying I doubt anyone but how could something degrade sandwiched between 2 plastic coverings on the disk while in a dark protective case? Even 10 years is short for cds. I also think it's weird because no one said anything for a long time and there had to have been some deadheads listening to Daps 1,2 and 3 on a daily or weekly basis. I dont want anyone to think I'm calling them liars at all. It's just strange.

Because my DaP 3 Disc 1 has static and skipping on tracks 1 and 12 (first and last tracks on the disc). Bertha and Me and Bobby McGee respectively. Working on DaP 3 Disc 2 right now and I'm up to Deal with so far no problems.

It seems a bit odd to me, too, that so many people are identifying degraded cds all at the same time. I wondered if people made copies of the original - or ripped them or whatever - played those, and have not looked at the originals for a few years. And now the word is out, they are checking them and finding out they have turned to dust.

Occasionally I play a cd, and it jumps on a track where it didn't before - I have no idea which ones it has happened on, though. I've got thousands stashed away. Actually, I can remember one Dead one that started malfunctioning uexpectedly-Dicks Picks 5. It was over 10 years ago, and I bought another copy second hand. I'm not going to sit here making copies of them all, or ripping them all, that's for sure!

Also I can't see Rhino replacing cds that were sent out 10 years ago. Or Dave Lemieux expressing any interest in the situation whatsoever.

....what year is it again? There ya go.

DaP 3 Disc 2 Casey Jones and Johnny B. Goode. Last 2 tracks of the disc.

It's true that ever since Jim mentioned the Fiio X1 FLAC player 6 or some years ago (he probably doesn't remember that) that's what I've been using exclusively. Digital Files now, not the originals which are stored safely away. Very rare that I would experience a problem, except in the usual places. (Rocking the Cradle Glue comes to mind)

Today’s CD’s are about half as thick as the ones from the 80’s. Less plastic, and maybe a thinner metal film where the data is stored. Less and/or lower quality top layer to hold the metal film down and you might get peeling.

CD-R’s these days are also thinner. But, my write failure rate is now <1% compared to 1998 when it was about 10%. I attribute that to better burners and blanks.

I’ve had the top layers of CD-R’s start to peel off, but that was after being in the car for 10 years.
The CD-R’s that I successfully burned in the late 90’s still play fine now (they were never stored in the car).

Haven’t checked any of my DaP’s yet, will report later.

All 3 CD’s look fine and so far CD1 plays fine (currently on Peggy-O).

Playing on the same Onkyo I play all my CD’s on.

....to attend my sons online virtual high school graduation ceremony. Poor kid.

My DP33's disc 2 stopped playing last year, got pissed off and tossed the whole set(10/9/76 was my 1st show!)
I've had a few others that crapped out throughout the years, but not all were Rhino; however, I've only gotten new defective discs from Dead.net: two from 30 Trips, one from Giants Stadium. I did not buy the PNW box based on the number of complaints I read(no wonder it still hasn't sold out)
But hey, I'm glad my original vinyl from the 50s on still sound great.

....helluva first show Cousins. I absolutely adore that one. Very cool.

to junior VGUY!

First, thanks for posting that vid at Rockpalast of Pete Townshend jamming with Jerry and the boys. That was great! Even on crappy videotape of the era, those things are real treasures. And as always the viewer comments below are hilariously well-informed.

My original round of cd's from the eighties all still play. Yes they sound like shit as they did at the time because the record companies rushed them out without proper mixing and remastering, but physically they are a superior product to today's chintzy pieces of crap. Even tube socks these days are thinner and smaller... garbage bags you can practically see through now. At the top of every corporation are bean counters figuring out ways to shaft the consumer at every turn to make an extra nickel.

That being said, I too rip everything into my computer immediately. I will continue to buy these releases. If nothing else, if the discs die, you still have the packaging, the book, etc. Which I suppose equals a digital download of the music with extra packaging and swag. I burn discs to play in my car and they are basically disposable copies. You can always burn another one.

I'm not going to waste any energy stewing about things that will not be changed. Oh, Rhino may catch wind of it and outsource to a higher quality manufacturer, but as for past release problems being rectified, don't hold your breath. None of this actually comes as any kind of a surprise when you look at what's going on in the world. A disappointment, yes, but that's as far as I'll take it. An outrage? Not in these times.

So I am curious why my DaP 2 Disc 2 would not initiate on my 6 disc cd changer. I take it out and place it in a my DVD/VCR combo (yes, I still have one of those) It does not initiate, or boot up to play. Pop it in the Technics Component Single Tray CD player. Still not firing up. Ok, weird. Now, place it in my Windows 10 Tower type PC. Will not boot up or play. Nothing. Zero.

I take it out of the player and notice tiny little shreddings literally peeling off the edges of the disc.

Ok, explain that. Defective maybe?

Dude, that's crazy. That's EXACTLY what I got spinning right now....!!!!! DaP 2 cd2

Bertha is one of my favorite songs. :-)

-edit- At least I have the FLAC. (And the cardboard container)

Check those discs!

P.S. Caveat Emptor: These discs will self destruct in 10 years or in case of global pandemic. Whichever occurs first.

Plastics don't degrade well with the exception of UV light and time. Aluminum does oxidize, when different metals touch sometimes they corrode. What would cause such stable materials to degrade?

I mean.. how long does it take plastic to disappear from a landfill? Forever and a day..

I don't expect much.. but this puts a big dent in their business model. What good is a collection if it instantaneously combusts in ten years? Like what if the first pressing of The White Album wouldn't play after 1979?

Wiki just reminded me that Dave's Pick Numero Uno was released 2/1/2012.
There could have been a pre announcement at the end of 2011, someone might know.
The real estate and financial crisis recession that started in 2007 took its toll on society
and most likely resulted in lack luster sales of the road trips series, or maybe it was the
cardboard cowboy cases.
By 2011, I realized I missed every Road Trips CD, except the 1st from Philly '79.
I bought the Road Trips series CD by CD on EBay during football season in the Fall of 2011.
Then all of a sudden, Dave drops the bomb for the All New New Dave's Picks series.
I remember when The Mosque became available. It took a few days to sell out.
I only bought one copy (better than none) and played the hell out of that show.
My Mosque CD is a little scuffed up now, but still plays (rarely). When Dave's 2 from Hartford 74 arrived,
I just burned it into iTunes and stored the CD's. Too bad there's no CD replacement vault for any Brokedown Discs.
FYI, Sirius XM had a great PigPen episode on Tales From the Golden Road this past Sunday.
Here's the playlist, let me know if I missed anything

1) Katie Mae (Bear's Choice)
2)Tastebud (Birth of the Dead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_of_the_Dead)
3) Alligator > Caution (Anthem of the Sun side 2)
4) Turn on your Lovelight (9/19/70 Fillmore East)
5) Easy Wind (Working Mans Dead)
6) I'm a Hog for You (4/6/71)
7) Operator (American Beauty)
8) Hard to Handle (3/24/71 San Fran) --- I like the Phil Zone Hollywood Bowl version
9) Good Lovin (4/17/71 Princeton) -- There's another "date" with a big Pig rap, when?
10) Two Souls in Communion (4/26/72 Frankfurt Germany)

"Gonna leave this brokedown plastic."

All 3 of mine played flawlessly last night.
And man, I had forgotten about that set 2. Wow.

Here's what I have loaded in my 6 disc changer. I have a day of painting today so I should be able to get to it all in.

1. DaP 3 Disc 3 10-21-71 Chicago
2. DaP 2 7-31-74 Disc 3 (second try it seems to be loading, will confirm sound in a bit)
3. DaP 2 Bonus Disc 7-29-74 Landover
4., 5, 6. DaP 4 9-24-76

Great to hear! I only had problems with the first and last track of disc 1. Everything else was good. DaP 2, discs 1 and 2 proved to be awful for me. So glad I have backups and backups of backups.

Oh, and you are right about that set II! Donna sounds positively orgasmic on that Scar>Fire transition.

...Huh, well,ok I see your point but I just want to clear some things up because I believe some readers maybe/are confused. THIS INCLUDES ME.
First point
You “WILL NOT”Damage your CDs And more importantly your “ Non-stationary“ CD Player.; Or vice versa IMHO.This category of playback equipment is designed to do just that.
Wow , I’m still dancing my private quarantine little jig to this Dave’s Picks most recent release! It’s been on ‘spin cycle’ since this past weekend. I really I’ve been playing this performance everyday at the same time! Lol ha ha the ‘Showtime’ is 9:30pm, about two hours after my daily routine dinner for this deadhead. Lol, anyway, I invision myself attending this concert with keeping an open mind to the music playing. In my mind I’m blown away by the whole band playing by this time in their own style song after song they nail some cosmic connection between music & man/women. The language of God & LOVE comes pouring out of the speakers and then into the listeners ears offering a Transportation back to 1974 Good Ol’ Grateful Dead!
Dave’s Picks #34 And BONUS CD included in subscription is one of my favorite selections in the whole series! So Far, It’s almost perfectly too good that it captures your attention every time. This latest Pick is gratefully accepted & loved! Nothing left to do but Smile Smile Smile! Rock on my brothers & sisters!
On a side note, I have been listening to march 18th, 1971. Fox Theatre,ST. Louis, MO. Primo show included in the “Big Box”, 30 TATS!
Have a grateful day everyone! 🙏❤️💀🌹

I haven’t re-played many of Dave’s for a while - so much new stuff to listen to. If they are damaged I’ll be mighty miffed, though. What with transport problems, I return to my earlier suggestion which is to have downloadable copies, either as standalone or as an extra to the CDs.

Still no word of DaP34 here on England but I guess CD delivery at this time is not a priority - like I said earlier, still got loads to listen to!

I listen to my Dave’s picks collection
In order every year , about three times and have no troubles except sometimes with the “infamous #28 Dave’s Picks ; Disc #3 Rodeo “other than that my collection sits safely on My shelves . Temperature control, no direct sunlight and clean environment.

Is that a known thing?

As an aside, do yourself a favor and listen to DaP 3 disc 3. I heard things for the first time again on it just a bit ago. Glad to say, I made it through that disc unscathed. Currently on DaP 2 bonus He's Gone. Sounding good so far. Fingers firmly crossed.

Have a grateful day everyone!

Disc Rot? Real enough my man! You get it from unprotected playing!

As a relatively new rider on the GD bus, I have managed to acquire all of the first year DaP sets on EBay within the past year, all pre-owned and showing varying degrees of wear. I have not noticed any sign of audio degradation or CD player malfunction with any of these. DaP2 has been in heavy rotation recently while anticipating Jai Alai Fronton (worth the long wait!), and unless someone can convince me that the vocal dropout during BIODTL was not part of the original recording then we are definitely good. I am going to go through the others just because it's time to hear them again.

I also have the infamous Disk 3 glitch on DaP28, which was not remedied by a full set replacement or a replacement disk, but I discovered by accident that it consistently plays without incident in the single-tray recording deck of my CD-R player so I have an effective workaround. I own boatloads of jazz & blues CDs going back to the mid '80s and I just haven't experienced a single disk suddenly going bad. There may be audio differences due to the recording standards and formats of the times, but the media seems to hold up remarkably well. I have had CD players go bad and begin to hiccup on different disks, but my current Sony player has been going strong for 20 years.

Sounds like a great band or album name!

uh oh.. Perhaps we are all in trouble..

Yeah, when this came up I looked around a bit and you can find a variety of articles describing the various ways that CDs can fail or "rot" over time.

WokeUpDead, your experience with DaP 28 sounds pretty similar to mine - I was using a decade old Sony 5 CD player that played all of my other discs flawlessly but I could not get DaP 28 or any of the replacement discs to play without skips. Later on I got another CD player, an Onkyo 6CD player, and DaP 28 played without any problems on that. Still wondering what that's all about.

All 3 of mine look like new.
CD1 played flawlessly and so far CD2 has too, Eyes is currently playing.

6-17-76 CD3, DaP28
Rhino/GD acknowledged that some of the original discs and the first round of replacements had a defect on the master used for CD production that was detected by some, but not all CD players. My Onkyo DX-C390 6-disc carousel player detected it on both copies, but the 2nd replacement played fine. One of my burners did not detect it on the original when I made my HD backup copy.

It would be awfully nice, not that I expect it..

If they somehow accommodated those of us that might have problems with these out of print items. Even if we paid shipping and handling and somehow confirmed an original purchase (or not).

But the amount of goodwill would more than make up for the costs. Anyway.. Charlie got me to do some research too. It's not as uncommon as I thought. I have no idea how much money these guys save by going cheap on CDs// but it ain't worth it. Spend the extra $22k and charge us an extra dollar. ..and I am quite sure the actual savings are less than $22k per Dave's Pick. That's about 25 cents per blank. Reasonable??

What about the winterland box or other boxes? Is this only a Dap thing? This was probably already talked about but was wondering. I checked bears choice because I've had it for a long time and the disk is much better quality and thicker. The edge is smooth unlike the new disks which need a bit of sanding down. Mabey rhino should invest in a belt sander. Just saying. Peace.

Aluminum will oxidize over time if exposed to air, this is especially true on a thin layer. I never checked this out for myself.. but if the edge is not sealed by the plastic the CD is made from, oxygen and humidity will mix and interact with the metal layer and oxidize it, which given enough time would cause to it to lose it's shape integrity and fail.

If they are not sealing the edges in some way, that can't be good. I'm no chemist, but a rough edge might mean the metal could become exposed to air and given enough time the foil layer could degrade. But I doubt of that's the problem, that couldn't be the case. (In my best Sgt. Shultz Voice) Hogan.. I See Nothing..

My Dave s discs all look fine and brand new, they were only played one or two times at most. Dave s 1 & 3 are full of static and and unlistenable, 2 & 4 don't play at all. So far my other Dave s picks seem fine, of the few I've played and they were all stored in the same box. So hopefully, this is something that only affects the first 4 . No big deal.

I think not..

I think this has the potential to become a big deal simply because they built their house of cards on top of a limited edition, collectible business model. It seems CDs might be disintegrating all by themselves just sitting on a shelf while being properly stored. This issue seems to correlate to a specific year, which means a specific manufacturer and a specific stock of blanks.

If all this turns out to be true, which is not known, it will have an impact on the number of people buying CD's going forward vs. not which impacts pretty much everything. I think we have reached a good equilibrium now, a stable market, mostly up-front payments which allows for a reliable production run or most importantly the ability to do a good job remastering and producing. (Think proper Jeffrey Norman time.)

This could be nothing or it could be a big deal, it's too early to be sure. If true, I still think it's correctible and worth the investment to fix. No need to replace packaging, just the discs.

This might cast a shadow over their ability to meet the 22k number. Just my two cents.

Listening to Dave's numero uno as I type. Disc 1. So far, so good. I'll check in later for final results.

Paying up front...remember those times when ya paid up front for party favors and got burned? Did you ever give THAT GUY money again?
Please don't be that guy....just sayin' Dead.net/Rhino.
Hope all are well during these strange trips...

Holy crap, this is terrible for everybody that has this going on.

Carlo, both the 73 and 77 Winterland and the Warlocks box set CDs play well and are in fantastic condition.

As are Dick's picks, RT and other releases dating back to 1991 for the live collection. Man, I have not looked at my CDs from 1986, but I will take a look.

Dave's #1, 3, 4 and 5 have all played recently, this year and still look spectacular. I don't have #2, just a copy.
What should I be looking for?

Like SIMONROB who got an update on May 15th, I have just got updates that my package arrived and departed Los Angeles again, this time on May 20th. USPS tracking say it ‘out for delivery’. Of course, this is exactly what they said on May 1st as well. The two tracking numbers are the same on both dates. I wonder where it’s been for 20 days? Let’s hope they really mean it this time.