The CD player in the bedroom has developed an aversion to one of my favourite spoken word CDs - the Naxos AudioBooks The Essential Dylan Thomas. For around three years now I've often played the third and fourth of the CDs in this wonderful set as late night listening, with the timer set to automatically switch off after half an hour. A couple of nights ago I decided I was in the mood for Richard Bebbs's excellent reading of A Winter's Tale, my favourite of Thomas's longer poems, along with a few other goodies from CD4. But each time I loaded the disk, the player immediately spat it out. Then last night I thought I'd try CD3, specifically the evocative Memories of Christmas read by Philip Madoc, the best reader I know of Thomas's work, Burton and Thomas himself notwithstanding. The same thing happened - instant regurgitation.
But here's the odd thing: everything else I have crammed in the player's maw lately gets dutifully played.
What has the machine got against the Welsh wizard? And why all of a sudden?
And what can take the place of Thomas in soothing the fevered brow at the end of the fevered day? (To be honest, I already have the answer, having finally managed to pick up the Naxos set of The Faerie Queene back in Manchester. Hope the machine doesn't have a grudge against allegorical Elizabethan epics.)
2 comments:
Try running it in your computer's CD drive. If it still can't be read, examine it for scratches or corrosion...
One clever way to take advantage of the computer's ability to digitally read CDs and correct for errors is to 'rip' it by copying the CD (if readable) to another CD using the computer's CD-burning software.
Then you have a copy that is about the best you can have under the circumstances.
Greatly appreciate the advice. But I'm sure there's nothing wrong with the CDs and confident they'll play on my other system. (They look absolutely clean and are treated, as most of my stuff is, as if possessing almost sacred qualities.) No, I think the system in the bedroom is one of those that develops grudges. Bitter ones. Machines do that with me.
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