Abstract: It is necessary in the manufacture of high packing density, optically-readable, disc-shaped information carriers to undertake a continuous fabrication inspection of the disc with respect to manufacturing errors. Upon consideration of the fact that the information to be stored on the information carrier occurs in the form of an error-correcting code which is interpreted by an error correction system in the playback device during playback, it is proposed to base such an error detection device on commercially-available playback devices whose error correction systems, with respect to its error identification or error signal output, is connected via an interface to an error interpretation unit which, in turn, is sub-divided into error channels pertaining to different errors, and that, preferably, a plurality of such playback devices connected to error interpretation units via interfaces cooperate via an interrogation device with an error registration device shared in common by all error interpretation units.