I was listening to my rip of this CD today when I detected some fairly noticeable clicking noise in the left channel. At first it seemed like it was probably a bad rip so I went back to the original CD and re-ripped. EAC reported no errors but the same clicking noise was still there, so I guess it must have been present on the original CD pressing. Just to be sure though I partially downloaded a copy from a file sharing network to compare and sure enough the same noise is present, so it's not just an artefact on my copy.
Just wondering if anyone had any theories about what would have caused this on an original pressed CD (first released circa 1998)? Have a listen to the first 30 seconds of the track, the clicking noise is pretty obvious. What do you think is it's origin?