Is an oscilloscope necessary for thorough testing?
A. Using the oscilloscope is not absolutely necessary, but it depends on how thorough you want to be. The degree of confidence you can have in a CD is dependent on how many things you can measure. To have complete confidence, you need to measure at least 50 different things, requiring a million dollars worth of test equipment and a Ph.D. to run it. Depending on your needs, you may be able to get by with less. The easiest way to measure disc quality is to measure error rates. Most serious problems will affect the error rates. But this only tells you how well this disc plays in ONE player. To have confidence that the disc will work in ALL players, ALL the time, you need to look at the pit geometry. In order to follow the track of pits and stay in focus, the player depends on the way the laser beam is bounced back from the disc. This is totally dependent on the size and shape of the pits. In order to have confidence that all players will play the disc reliably, you need to confirm that th
