Malcolm Steward: audio journalist

   In the June issue of High Fidelity this column’s topic was a variety of  CD treatments which included the Lasaway Green Pen. I had experimented with  this device and was pleasantly surprised by its efficacy in taking the sting  out of some brittle and harsh-sounding silver discs, and the way in which it  added a degree of substance to those examples not so violently afflicted but  whose presentation of instrumental timbre and voices inclined towards  thinness. Its application still left CDs sounding like CDs – that is,  ultimately less convincing than vinyl – but it usefully rendered them more  acceptable in some respects. Those comments and my recommendation of the product still stand but there’s an important rider that needs to be  appended.

If you are lucky enough to own, or are contemplating the purchase of the  new Naim CDS compact disc player, don’t think about painting your discs. If  you feel you  must, then just apply one coat of the green pen and leave it at  that. Why?, well I’ve just spent far too long up to my elbows in the sink  trying to remove thick wodges of green ink from some CDs I’d previously  treated, with varying degrees of success…. Others are soaking as I write,   awaiting a hopeful return to their natural state.

The story began some months ago when Naim’s Julian Vereker happened by my  house one evening, his company’s latest toy nestling in the boot of his  Jaguar. He asked if I would like to hear it: The question was purely rhetorical, he knew I wasn’t about to decline a sneak preview of the biggest  surprise in the Salisbury amplifier outfit’s history since the launch of the iconoclastic ARO tonearm.

Without pre-empting the outcome of any subsequent full reviews of the  player I have to admit that it provided a significantly more musical and  convincing performance from compact discs than any other machine I have  encountered, even without the extended warm-up period that is necessary to extract the best from Naim electronics. But one thing worried me: the discs  whose sonic attributes I normally find most acceptable on other players all  seemed less satisfying in musical terms on the CDS.  Many of my frequently  used ‘test’ discs appeared to suffer a lack of dynamic contrast, and their  timing seemed subjectively less precise and keen. Discs I use less  frequently, however, seemed better than I remembered, with everything in  order in the temporal and dynamic departments. I was puzzled.

The lack of consistency in what was being heard prompted Vereker to ask  if he might inspect the suspect discs: the Naim player, he told me, had  proved to be highly discriminating with regard to disc quality. It also  disliked dirty discs, he remarked, adding that anyone using this player  needed to handle CDs with the same sort of care, if not more, than they  would afford vinyl records.

The pile of ‘favourite’ discs with which I’d been most displeased had all  been treated with the green pen. “There’s the problem”, he observed. I  replied that treating the discs had proved an all-round success with the  other CD players I’d used regularly. But the Naim CDS clearly didn’t  approve, that much was obvious.

He suggested that I tried comparing the sound of any duplicate discs I  had, one with the green ink applied and one left virgo intacta. I had  several and duly tried the experiment. The result? Every treated disc  sounded better on the Arcam CD 170 transport and other machines I had to  hand, but worse on the Naim player. Every untreated disc sounded better on  the Naim but not on the other machines. Quad erat demonstrandum, I think is  the appropriate expression.

I decided to clean up those discs I had treated, at least the ones I  particularly like, in readiness for my next meeting with the Naim player. As  the green ink is described as water-based I anticipated no more than an hour  or so the kitchen sink to spruce up the lot. I was wrong. Seriously so. In  fact I gave up after the first two or three attempts: patience is something  I don’t have in abundance, and Steward’s first law of persistence states  quite clearly that if at first you don’t succeed the best thing is to give  up and save yourself any further grief.

The first disc I tried to clean has now been consigned to the care of the  local sanitation operatives. Having realised that merely running the disc  under the cold tap wasn’t going to un-green it, I tried a stream of warm  water. No success. Still in a reasonable frame of mind I decided to adopt a  more scientific approach – I soaked the disc in a solution of warm  washing-up liquid, then ran it under the tap. Still no joy.  I left it to  soak longer. I returned an hour later, this time attacking the coating with  the sponge side of a pan cleaner that conveniently came to hand. The green  coating appeared to be slackening its grip on the disc. However, one  decimated pan cleaner later, the outer rim of the disc was still coated. I  then confronted the disc with my fingernails and this eventually removed the  remaining green, but caused untold distress to my manicure. The inner  portion of the disc was even more fun to clean, as you might imagine. After  a further bout of vigorous scrubbing – and I confess that as time passed I  was taking less and less care – the playing surface of the disc looked like  an ice rink that had just witnessed Torvill and Dean giving it some Bolero.  It sounded less than wonderful when played later and at one point on its  surface was sufficiently affected to defeat the player’s error correction  circuitry. Hello dustbin, goodbye disc.

Now although the green ink has worked with all the players I have tried,  I obviously have to point out that I haven’t tried them all. If the Naim CDS  doesn’t respond to discs which have been so treated the chances are that  other future, or existing players might react likewise. That being the case,  I have to modify my position with relation to this and other magic markers.     Had the Naim CDS not paid me a visit I would still be as enthusiastic  about the green pen as I was before but. For the time being I would suggest  that those who wish to carry on inking do so with discretion. It might be  best to ignore the instructions on the pen which tell you to apply two coats  of ink to the internal and external edges of the disc and simply paint the  outside edge with one application. The ink might be water-based, but my  experience suggests that this isn’t a synonym for water-soluble. 

Steward’s first law of CD software treatment has now been chiselled in granite: it reads “Think before you ink!” or, for that matter, spray, paint  or otherwise coat your discs with anything.