Hi,
I had this dream of owning the complete Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Halford, Ozzy Osbourne and Bruce Dickinson collections. These CDs weren't available in India. I recently paid a visit to the US and bought all the CDs there through www.columbiahouse.com and www.bmgmusic.com. All these CDs are made in the US as opposed to the once available in my country (They are all imported from the EU). Well, I have some questions regarding the quality of the CDs made in the US. They are as follows:

1) Are the once made in the US bad compared to the once made elsewhere, say the EU?
2) Two CDs that I bought through the sites mentioned above had problems-although they were properly sealed and all. One was BROKEN!! The other had hideous scratches and big, bad finger-prints on it!!! I asked both the sellers if they sell used-CDs and they replied that they don't. Can anybody tell me if they indeed sell bad CDs?

The reason I ask is that suddenly, all these CDs (imported from the EU) are available in India. I can replace the entire collection (but it will cost me a LOT of money to replace 40+ CDs). I would like to consult all the wise people before I spend all my hard-earned money (I am a poor student). Thanks.

There should be no difference in sound quality between European, American or Latin American versions.
If a difference should exist, I think it would most likely be in the tracks. You know, some CDs are released with "bonus tracks" in some countries.

I have never bought CDs from the services you mention, altough I do find quite strange that you found TWO defective CDs in one "buying session". I have found dirty-from-factory CDs and a broken one, but that is in 13 YEARS of buying CDs. So I think you are either:
1.- One unlucky man
2.- Buying from quality-control-challenged sellers
3.- Somebody messed up with your CDs while you did not notice (have any children around?)

Anyway, I would only replace those CDs that are defective.
All other should be just fine.

At first, I would check your CD's with some kind of error reporting tool (like Nero CD Speed, K-Probe for LiteOn CDRW drives or Plextools Pro if a Plex Premium is available - ask your friends, too) - then you can see whether some CD's should be replaced or not. In general, CD's should not show C2 errors at all when being scanned ... C1 isn't a problem since every drive can handle them well.

That way, you will know which discs should be replaced and which discs are still in good shape.

In my opinion, any valuable CD in decent condition should be backed up ... rip an image, burn a CD on good media (that will be for everyday use but stay away from Moser Baer - little joke, Moser Baer is an indian manufacturer ) and put the image as a lossless copy in a safe location (do so with the original CD as well).

Be aware that manufacturing quality of stamped CD's always can fluctuate ... there might be EU-made CD's showing the same problems (or even worse problems that you don't see on the first sight - like mastering errors and so on) than the ones you bought in the U.S. so there won't be any guarantee that you will get better overall quality (although, as an EU citizen, I never ever encountered broken CD's and fingerprints on sealed CD's).

Hope this can be some kind of a guideline for you ...

regards

Sven

I don't think they are worse in any kind.

As JeanLuc said ---
--- that's an universal truth in my opinion.

From my tests around many of the european manufacturers (had some imports, too), the BLER was a little bit worse than you could get with good quality CD-R, but in general it was quite low, never even touching the magical 220 (for undamaged discs, of course).

edit:

If you would like to read something more, there are some threads on this forum, comparing graphs from KProbe (different non-- and copy--protected discs). Pio2001 would be the first person to ask.

Hi,
The only way I have tested these CDs are by ripping them all in EAC (Secure mode, disabled cache, test and copy tracks). The CRCs match. I ripped the CDs on an Asus 52x CD-ROM drive (Plextor is not available here). There were no suspicious positions reported. So I presume that the CDs are fine. Do I need to perform any more tests?
Regarding the scratched and broken CDs, I must really be unlucky. But as fate would have it, I found a new copy of one of them here and was able to replace it. The other one, unfortunately was never available and will never be.
I am concerned about one more thing. What about the material used in the CDs-say the plastic (I know I sound like a real jackass, please forgive me. But my money is at stake here). Do you think I should be concerned about such things at all? Thanks.

The CD plastic basically consists of 2 polycarbonate (PC) layers (one with the stamped information, the other as protective layer IIRC) which is a proven and reliable polymer material ... as a comparison, you could imagine the F-16's canopy which consists of the same material and withstands much higher overall load without any problems.

More problematic is the reflective layer (aluminium steam that is applied to the polycarbonate structure and condenses there) ... avoid scratches to the reflective layer at any cost ... if the laser beam cant be reflected, there is no chance (with simple means) of ever retrieving the data back.

having recently ripped about 50 CDs - classical, from different labels, pressed in different countires, the most problems EAC had was with ERATO label, which is a french label, I assume the pressing is done in France as well. Have no idea why, but had few REALLY BAD CASES, and each of them was ERATO. (for those interested in details, one was Boulez Pli Selon Pli, and another Berio Sinfonia/with Berio conducting)

That sound very definitive. CDs go out of print from time to time. They might stay out of print for years, but are often rereleased.

I remember buying 4 Iron Maiden CDs in 1996 for some $6 a piece [Denmark]. Shortly after most Iron Maiden CD went out of print and stayed out for years. When they came back they were enhanced CDs (with CD-ROM track) and remastered audio.

You can always replace the broken CD over the Internet.

What I meant to ask was whether the plastic used in the CDs made in the US were in any way superior/inferior than the ones made elsewhere in the world-say the EU. Thanks anyway.

My prior experience with Columbia House, and BMG Music Service was good in respect to quality however the discs they sell are either made for them by the record companies, or they themselves reproduce them under license. The 100's of CD's I bought from both services have been fine for years, some of the discs are over ten years old already.

The most annoying thing I noticed from both services was that their CD's at times had problems which I speculate were stupid human errors, such as for example:
* There are 13 tracks on a CD and the 13th track is actually track #66, or so forth.
* The ending of a track has huge amounts of silence before the next track plays.

The sad thing is these problems are also present on CD's that are bought from music stores.

An interesting thing is the guy who runs a record store in my city stated that the CD's from Columbia House and BMG Music Service are not the same quality as what he sells directly from the record companies. I don't know if he was just spreading BS, or if he was telling the truth.

rohangc,

While your purchase might indeed have been unhappy, maybe there's no need to buy all these CDs again.

You could for example rip the damaged CDs with EAC and burn them to audio CDs.

If they are too damaged for EAC to get a decent copy, then there is always the possibility to remove scratches (from the metal-like, reflective, plastic protection layer). Rubbing with brasso (metal polish) gives me amazing results There are no downsides, just be careful at first untill you feel you have learnt how to do it.Here is a guide (a lot of blabla. the info you need is the very end).

Hope this helps

is moser baer ad bad producer ?

my last bounc of Emtec/BASF CD's are produced by them, i bought BASF because last time, they where produced by kodak.

Moser Baer is known as a cheap manufacturer with fluctuating media quality ranging from excellent to catastropic (on par with CMC, I guess) ... I don't really trust them when it comes to serious data ... they are good enough for my car stereo compilations, though

Polycarbonate is rather simple to produce ... any non-third-world country (maybe even these) should be able to provide PC with a decent purity at any time IMO ... there is not necessarily a quality difference between north american, asian or european PC ...

If you want to take things to the top, you could use some chemical analyzer (IR spectrometer, UV spectrometer) ... there are several ways to determine PC's purity

I see you're talking here about quality of the used material and so. But I'd like to say something about sound quality. From my experience, it is not so important where the CD is manufactured but where it is mastered. It seems to me that sound quality of CDs that were mastered in London, Berlin or so (EU) is in average better than those (other CDs from other interprets) mastered in NY or LA (USA) (refering to clipping & limiting).

About ten years ago, the rumor/opinion was that cd:s as well as vinyl were better mastered in the states than Europe, some vinyl at least had more bass due to relaxed highpass filtering.

There's no diff in the digital data. however, in my experience cds made here in Colombia are often lower quality (higher BLER) than their EU or US counterparts.
Cds from Argentina are often as good as the European versions.

There are also some cases where the digital data is actually different, I'd got once different pressings for the same disc and they where 100% different (perhaps different re-mastering ore something).

I bought a set of 10 Moser Baer discs and 10 Mitsubishi CDs a year and a half ago. After 4 months of use, the Mitsubishi discs failed completely. The Moser Baer ones however are still in great shape even today. I don't know whether this company is trustworthy or not. However, they are marketing their products in India in a big way and have a decent manufacturing plant. I think they are indeed improving.