Quote Originally Posted by f1eng View Post
I have heard the theory that increasing mass may be in some way beneficial, but the CD system is a constant linear velocity system, as opposed to a constant angular velocity system like LP, so any increase in mass will make the servos work harder to keep the bit stream constant in an eccentric disc.
If you take all the mass produced leser mechs like philips', Sony's ones etc their physical design will not be to provide the perfect servo operation - it's a massive compromise with production cost playing a VERY large proportion of that compromise.

If you look at the orginal Philips CDM0 / 1, the motors have large brass weights underneath adding angular moment at the centre. Those mechs were expensive to build. Those motors have MUCH higher angular momentum in stock form than any modern mech even with a CD matt in place. The servos were probably slower then so needed that mass to prevent unstable, quick changes in speed.

As things became more plasticy and mass produced, motors became cheaper and less well made and spindles lighter and thinner and some on long shafts. Servos will have no-doubt become faster to compensate for all those challenges caused by cost-cutting like the speed of the ligher motor, shaft and plasic platter being more easily influenced by external factors, more twitchy/jittery. So I'd think it certainly not impossible that extra angular moment could help. It just depends as to whether the servo programming and torque of the motor is able to cope or not or if there's a lot of room for differences.

Faster servos will be generating higher frequency EMF and might interact more with signals from the laser? A servo working less hard will work slower and so EMF energy in total will be down (well, depends how they work - some may be completely constant no-matter the work load)

But that's not to say for sure that it has sonic effects..