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

[Jerry Hartke <jhartke@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I would be surprised if bit jitter resulted in audible differences. High bit
jitter usually produces small, short duration read errors that are easily
corrected by the first level of CD-DA error correction.

Electrical, optical, and mechanical quality is important, and it seems that
comprehensive tests have not been conducted. If you wish, I would conduct
such tests at no charge on two "identical" discs, one original label and a
second that sounds worse. Our test results are traceable to the Philips lab.
Our address is at www.mscience.com/contact.html

Jerry
Media Sciences, Inc.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
> [mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tom Fine
> Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2008 8:24 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