Playing Some Damaged CD

Recently I took out a CD of Emil Gilels playing Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 & Fantasien op. 116 from my collection. Before inserting it into my CD player, I did my usual examination on the reading side. I saw some molds accompanied with some black dots. These black dots, after I gently cleaned the CD, turned out to be three holes, each 0.5 mm in diameter!

(click to see a larger picture)

OK, not exactly three holes, since the plastic part was still there and only the aluminum part disappeared. My Marantz CD player couldn’t handle the loss data there, delivering un-Brahms-like sound through the speakers. I finally saved this CD by using Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to rip it (along with REACT2). I wasn’t sure that EAC can save it and expected to see EAC hanging around those very spots for a long time, but in fact not.

I don’t have any idea how these microscopic fungi ate up three circular dots.