Hope this is the correct venue in here for this.

I just picked up a copy of "Rush - The Big Money (5" CD Video)" disc off ebay. Disc looks in great shape and bottom surface is smooth and clean, no scratches. The (3) audio tracks play fine, but when I play the CD Video track on my Pioneer CLD-990, it starts out with clear sound and audio, but the audio gradually starts to sound like a faint buzz and gets progressively worse as the track plays until the audio is entirely buzzy noise and you can't hear the music. Video plays fine mostly, but does stutter once or twice, so I'm thinking the data on the disc reading correctly.

Is this a problem with the data, the disc, or a problem with my player? Is bit rot an issue on 5" discs too (none plainly visible)? Has anyone seen this gradual (and repeatable) audio collapse on a CD Video track?
The Pioneer CLD-990 shows "Compatible with NTSC CDV or VSD" in the hardware profile on LDDB.

Thanks for any input/response.

Nearly every VCD not pressed in Japan is made by PDO UK and they pretty much all rot. It’s not an issue with the format the issue is with the pressing plant.

I concur w/ Zeta.

I have nothing but rotted CDV's that were pressed by PDO.

I would see about reporting that to the seller to see about getting a refund. Not really the seller's fault either but not yours as well .

Looks like these PDO UK disks are subject to CD Bronzing, so that might be the culprit as well. I've notified the seller.

The failure mode seemed a bit weird as the CD Video video content plays 99%+ correctly, but the audio completely fails, gradually degrading to fuzzy noise, then eventually silence while the video continues to the end.

Thank you both for the information!

That's a difficult choice really... The seller probably had no way of testing the video portion, but given that, they might have been wise to choose "not working" (or whatever the equivalent is for CDs) - but then most people who see an undamaged CD would just assume it would work, as they pretty much always do - apart from PDO ones.

But it might be that the buyer bought it as a collector's item, and since he now knows he'll never get a working one, might decide to keep it anyway.

On the audio side, here in UK land we have a lot of rotting full size PDO LDs, and it's usually the digital sound that starts fizzing first.

It's interesting that with both CDVs and LDs, PDO managed to produce such rotters - you'd think that the two formats would have completely separate machinery and production lines.

A lot of times with rotted CDVs the audio section will play in a CD player but the video section doesn’t work well. The seller usually doesn’t have an LD player so they wouldn’t even know.

As for “subject to bronzing” I’d say that’s an understatement. Many CDs pressed by PDO UK were bronze when new in the store. You can ID a PDO UK CD from across the room.

That does seem odd to me.

As my CDV's started to rot, I had the obvious video drop outs first which progressively got worse and then the digital audio started to deteriorate more toward the end. My worst disc looks like a snow storm now and digital audio is pretty much non-existent.

As you noted, the 3 audio-only tracks (1-3) seemed to play fine still. Track 4, the video track, started out fine (both audio and video) but the audio gradually degraded to buzzy noise and then to silence. The video content had a couple minor skips, but seemed to play fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrSFHwlFzA

The seller refunded the transaction.

The video looks excellent so I might assume now that this is a mastering issue.

If you can try the disc in a different player, that would help to confirm it.