Skip (audio Playback) - Compact Discs

Compact Discs

A "skip" or "jump" is when laser of a Compact Disc player cannot read the faulty groove or block of data. Skips are usually caused by marks blocking the path of the beam to the disc, e.g. a finger mark, hair, dirt in general, or a scratch. As a result, a Compact Disc player without electronic skip protection, depending on the player's instruction codes, may do one of the following:

1. Repeat the previous block of audio
2. Skip the faulty block
3. Try and retry to read it causing a stopping and starting of the music
4. Make a series of chirping noises.

In a computer, the CD-ROM drive is governed by the program playing it. The drive itself has very little instruction, apart from direct instructions, such as spin up, read data etc. Normally, in a computer, if a media player is playing a Compact Disc and there is a fault on the disc, because the player reads ahead, the player will already be performing a checksum, to verify the data read is correct. If it is wrong, the audio is usually stopped depending on the player.