Re: [ARSCLIST] "Record Club" CD's redux

[Scott Phillips <scottp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I thought this problem and its source have been well known for years....
I experienced it in the 1990's, and all it took at that time was sending
my masters to a CD manufacturer that used (at the time) the JVC
low-jitter process / manufacturing process. The difference was night and
day between the CDs made from the same digital master. One sounded more
like an MP3, but on a bit level they were the same. The effect was much
worse when played on lower end CD players than on very high end players.


-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
[mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tom Fine
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2008 6:24 AM
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ARSCLIST] "Record Club" CD's redux

We briefly discussed this topic a while back, whether Yourmusic.com (BMG
club) CD's are 100% the same as off-the-shelf original-label. Bob Katz,
in my estimation, is not an audiophool nor a moron, so his analysis
counts for something:
http://www.stereophile.com/features/55/index.html

The jitter issue raises a couple of questions:

1. would this trigger more error-correction in the playback system and
hence the perceived "different" sound qualities?

2. if one grabbed the same cut from the BMG and original-issue CD's with
Exact Audio Copy, assuming EAC reported about the same quality percent
from the grabs, would you have identical-sounding files on your hard
drive?

For what it's worth, my observation about some BMG-club CD's is that the
discs seem to be flimsy, especially compared to original-issue Polygram
from the early and mid 1990's. I wonder if they are chinsy enough to
trigger playback error-correction? That said, in my playback system, I
can't tell any sound difference between BMG-club and store-bought of a
few Blue Note jazz reissues I recently compared. I borrowed BMG-club of
a few Mercurys and will compare when they arrive.

-- Tom Fine