I don’t comment it, just have heard a very suspicious rumor... :-\
PS And, is it true, that CDs do wear out? On what conditions, with the course of time, or usage?

I'v heard that the mastering might be different. Same in Japan.
Sometimes mixes are different. For instance the album of Grace Jones - Slave to the rythm has a different mix/edit (I got both of them).

The mix of the voice might be different in England, France and Italy. The voice is louder in Italy than in France, louder in France than in England...
Few artist has made mixes according to this.

So it's not always a question of quality but also a question of taste.

From my experience the best sounding CDs are always from Japan (in fact, there is almost no exception...), the very close runner-ups are those from USA, expecially MFSL And I avoid like hell the discs Made in Germany

Are you talking about different albums, some recorded in US, some in Japan, etc, or do you speak about the same album, ordered from Japan, US, Germany, etc. ?

From my experience it totally depends on which MANUFACTURER.

Usually Japan factory sounds good (like Toshiba), the recent JVC XRCD system which have excellent synchronized clock signal and whole process quality control so sounds excellent. Denon sounds a bit coarse but usually dynamic.

Avoid Korea, China, Hong Kong CD. And a good old CD "Jennifer Warnes - Famous Blue Raincoat", I compare with my CANADA version with my friend's USA version, CANADA wins.

USA CD didn't mean bad physically, try Professor Keith O. Johnson's HDCD sampler, it sounds hi-end ... too bad HDCD "Full Digital Process" is contaminated by M$, now every disc can have HDCD logo, even not digitial recorded.

Also TELARC's CD (US) I've own them almost 10 years, under the ultra high humidity of Hong Kong (always over 80%), frequently moldy .... I've listening them several hours ago without any problem.

I think he's talking about physical media.
Not recording quality.

as long as mastering is not different i think this is not true...
rip your different pressings to your harddisk and play them thru a decent d/a converter, then compare or abx.

But please think it twice, CDDA have no CRC, any CD-ROM have different reading and interpretation. Rip it from CD-ROM usually have same CRC because most of the manufacturer agreed CDDA must reach a certain level of "sound quality".

But using some other hi-end system to listen my friends and I can hear the difference.

I'm sorry if my point of view is too strange, but if not then we can duplicate the music CD with CD-ROM without an error bit, the MPAA, RIAA won't remain silence to this.

The terms of service number 8 of this forum (link on top of this page) have been broken four times already in this thread.

When you make a claim about sound quality, it must be backed up with scientific evidence. Since all factories are capable of bit exact mastering, and audible differences between the same data on different media has never been proven.

So before claiming that CD from here or there sound like this or that, first get the same recording from different countries, rip them and compare the wavs with EAC "compare wav" tool, in order to ensure that they don't come from different masters. If they do, the sound differences have nothing to do with the quality of the CD.

The RIAA have made an international fuss about this since more than 10 years ! They even managed to tax computer hard drives because they can be used to record artistic works (correct me if I'm wrong).

Yes. Can someone recall the link to the pdf from that association of libraries that covered this subject ? I didn't bookmark it, and I can't find an Internet search that returns me less than 1,000,000 matches.

FWIW, mastering fashion is different from country to country.

for instance, Japanese music tends to be mastered for playback on portables, and is thus very loud.

American music is very loud, but for perhaps slightly different reasons (way more clipping in american discs).

UK music is also extremely loud, but it seems there's a preference for clipping the bass end and leaving some of the midrange dynamics intact. in my opinion this is worse than the american style of making things too loud.

Australian music is mastered in what appears to be an attempt to copy the americans, only with less skill involved. the result is the albums aren't quite as loud (-7 vs -10 if you beleive in ReplayGain), but are made so in a manner that actually damages the sound more. here is one reason ReplayGain should not be used as an objective quality measure.


btw, i'm referring to rock/alternative music when i make these claims. i have no idea about other genres. at any rate, mainstream music suffers much more from mastering fashions.


...so mastering may differ from country to country, but unfortunately it's all to the same end of making it as loud as the medium can handle (and in fact beyond in some cases of clipping where the output stage doesn't have enough power to handle the higher than fullscale peaks created from brickwall filtering square waves).

The original line of MFSL original master pressings were done in Japan. It wasn't until "Ultradisc II" that they were manufactured in the US. The earlier ones are regarded as better quality among collectors, but there really is no way to tell the difference.

i think there is one big misunderstading in this thread. if the mastering is the same one cd can't sound better campared to another cd. it can only sound worse because of bad media that a standalone player can't properly read so it has to interpolate.

but if you can rip the cd without an error, there will be no interpolation by a player like winamp or foobar if you set it up correctly (no resampling, dsp etc).

so
correctly ripped cd, played with no dsps thru a decent d/a converter = 100%

anything else can only be worse.

What about classical CDs?

Selling are probably not important enough to allow different mastering/pressing for each country. Mastering difference might occur on reedition, some years later.

Last Japanese single I ripped had a album replaygain of -11.47 and was heavily clipped. Korean music is also mastered loudly as well. Both countries seem to be keeping up with America in the loudness race.

Judging from the labels, UDII discs were manufactured by "Zomax optical" in Plymouth, while UDI discs were made by "ULTech" (ultimate technology?) somewhere in Japan. Any differences in sound quality are almost certainly due to changes in mastering technology, which Mobile Fidelity was justly famous for tweaking. While some people may prefer the older style of mastering, I cannot help but think that impressions of differential quality based on who was pressing the discs make absolutely no sense given the uniformly high quality I have observed.

Rather I'd be willing to bet that such "collectors" are merely contrasting the later UDII mastering which implemented "the GAIN system" (increasing the loudness of the recording while apparently attempting to minimize loss of dynamics) with earlier UDI and UDII masterings which were less aggressively mastered. Since to my knowledge there exists no single recording which was mastered both ways, any such claim is purely a subjective judgement call, if not entirely contrived from the imagination.



There have been threads on this subject before, try searching for "CD Rot". I wouldn't call oxidation of the aluminum layer being "worn out" however, since that implies the process is accelerated if not caused by playing the disc, which I do not believe is true.

One can only quote Tom Petty and the Traveling Wilburies (Vol3): "Store it in a cool, dry place"

Maybe this thread should be split or moved to General Music Discussion

Sorry for breaking the T.O.S.

The problem is you hardly prove the same CD from different countries have the same master(source). Some of the version may process by SONIC SOLUTION or such device, then press the CD.

I have no way to find the evidence since we're only customer, have no rights to access their archive. I'm sorry everyone, but I really want to test and have some sciencific evidence.

This is almost impossible for Asia, especially Hong Kong.

To make it cool and dry, we have to keep the air condition dehumidity always on, or wrapped it and put in with dehumidity pack (lime).

I have a CD rotting badly, namely "Carpenters" from A&M records. Will they pay me back or replace the CD for me (including mailing cost)?

I agree. One would think that the mastering technology would have improved during the manufacture move to the US. Collectors are collectors and they do whatever thay can to justify value in the product.

I have analysed many CDs that were mixed & mastered in different countries and at different years so far. I'm not talking about the physical quality of CDs. My experience is that the loudness war started first in the US in about 1990 and then came to Europe, like so many others, not necessarily good things. Therefore, on average, CDs mastered in the US tend to have the worst clipression.
"mastered by George Marino at Sterling Sound, NYC" is a trademark of sh*t. I hope I won't be warned-it's true.
CDs mastered in UK, Germany or Skandinavia tend to be also very loud, but the clipression is less audible.
I can't claim anything about other countries since I hardly get any CD mastered there.

Has anyone heard about "Abbey Road Studios, London" ? Do they normally master classical/Jazz ? Because I've found a few surprisingly quiet (well-mastered) CDs.

MusicLover, a question that I find really interesting:
Expecting you have much experience with classical music, what percentage of classical music whould you consider to be clipped and/or compressed ? Or even only to be sounding bad/having bad mixing/mastering ? Maybe there are a lot of acoustic recordings, that have never been edited in any way.

precisionist

It depends. E.g., in Russia and Ukraine, where there are a lot of poorly made copies of German classical CDs (manufactured in Germany), there are different kinds of poor quality on these copies (Russian license): the tracks may be changed in places, there can be various not pleasant things with the cover (no names of the tracks, e.g.), silence in different places and so on... And, of course, "standard" clipped and/or compressed CDs. In Germany I have dealed with German CDs only. Haven't noticed any traces of bad quality.
I have found only CDs manufactured in Germany, in Russia and in Ukraine (Russian license). I can honestly say: Russian license = no license CDs in terms of quality. They especially like to press out more CDs, than allowed, according to the standards...
I haven't got a good opportunity to investigate the quality of German classical CDs. I'll have it in the near future, when I'll study in German university...

When I started buying CD's around 1985, many experts warned that the discs might only last for something like 5 years. Well, it's two decades since and all my discs are still fine.

This thread made me curious, so I got out my first CD from 1984 (which I bought before I could afford a player -- I just knew I'd get one eventually). Looks great, sounds great. It's quiet though, I bet it would ReplayGain at +10. Pressed in Japan.

Glad you've finally answered my question...
In the past I analyzed some of my father's classical CDs; I was originally expecting clipression like on pop CDs. I was surprised that all of them seemed to be really quiet and well-mastered. Many of them had a "DDD" label (the newer ones, too). Sad to say this doesn't apply to all music CDs.

I've already copied 20 years old CDs without any problem. Handle your CDs with care, and they will provide a human lifetime of listening enyoment (if the CD is well-mastered, of course).