Isopropyl alcohol and CD crazing?

Hi: I spoke to the Mapleshade Records owner recently and we spoke at length about this subject. He sells their CD treatment called "Optrix" for enhancing sound on the CD surface. He mentioned that they clean a CD with lukewarm tap water, mild dish soap, and a non-scratching cloth or wipe. That is is all that's needed--nothing more. Though the CD cleaners available have isopropol alcohol in them they are mostly water anyway and are really a waste of money. I have tried straight iso on CD's myself and they sounded harsh and many mistracked after that. I've read on many audio websites the laser light should not reflect off the CD too much or it will end up sounding too bright or just plain bad. From my own experience, the soap and water/water rinse and careful wiping with a 3M microfiber lens cloth works nicely and reduces the dust, dirt and fingerprints to nil. Anything on the CD gets in the way of the laser light I'd imagine. Alcohol seemed to or it created a bad light surface area. But washing it off with soap and water got that shiny, harshness of the alcohol to go away. I hope that my experiment will help you!

Hi Rodagent:

Interesting premise that too high a reflectivity will lead to excessive brightness; any weblinks where I can read more about this? I wonder if the same thing applies to various blank CDR media?

Both the Optrix and isopropyl alcohol sound very transparent to me, but the Optrix seemed to tilt my system into very distracting brightness (it contains optically active surfacants).

One thing that I've found is after a gentle dish soap and warm water rinse, I rinse the CD under a good amount of tap water, then run a gentle stream of water off the CD at an angle. The water runs off of the clean disc without beading, so you don't need to pat it dry with anything. The label side and edges still need to be wiped dry, but you can really get a pristine finish using this technique.