Sandpaper to make disc quieter?

[witheygull]

Originally Posted by Zepfanman

Every once and a while, I get a Blu-ray or Ultra HD disc that seems to be unbalanced. I've tried one of the new ones I received yesterday in both of my Ultra HD players, and it makes that terribly distracting whirring noise as it's spinning.

I'm not at home at the moment, but I did hear some advice that you could try leveling the player a little better, so I'll try that. But for the disc itself, is there some kind of trick to make it spin better? Sandpaper the top label perhaps?

Sanding a disc does risk ruining it, and the pearl-clutching/monocle-popping reactions some folks have at the idea of doing it are not without merit. That being said, I have encountered the same issue of annoyingly loud spinning UHDs and have indeed tried sanding the discs.

I have not tried sanding the top side, but I have sanded the edges of discs where there is excessive glue that has been squeezed out in the pressing process during manufacturing. I use fairly fine grit sandpaper (usually more than 200 grit), and am very careful not to damage the playing surface. I have not ruined any discs, and the results have been mixed--ranging from unmitigated success to no difference whatsoever.

Tl;dr: Should you sand discs? No. Can you? Yes, with care.