BMG CD's ARE worse

i don't hear a difference between the retail and BMG discs i've checked out.

aside from the BMG stamp where the UPC code goes, i've noticed that BMG sometimes shaves pages off pages in the booklet or may use a jewel cases instead of the digipak.

columbia house doesn't do this, but many of their discs have a line saying that they are for columbia house on the packaging. columbia house shares the facilities that press discs for retail sale.

cdc, i think that your bmg version is just the older version of the cd because of the different dates noted on the back; the rush catalogue was remastered a little while back. I am curious if you bought the cd recently and straight from BMG.

cdc, Your BMG version is a different version than the store-bought version. But it's not different or inferior because it's a BMG edition. It's different because the CD title "Chronicles" has earlier mastering of the material than the current CD of the album "2112".

In other words, if you bought "Chronicles" in a store today, it would also sound comparatively worse than the "2112". When Mercury Records remastered the individual album CDs I do not think that they did the same for the Chronicles set. This is probably because they were issuing two new compilation sets at the time, Retrospective. Or if they did, then you may have an older copy (that's why I asked when you got the BMG disc).

By mastering, people here mean the process of prepping a recording for CD format. Sometimes the record labels put a new date to indicate the remastering date (e.g., "(c) 1976, 2002"), but sometimes they do not (e.g., "(c) 1976" only). I think this depends on whether the label feels that a newly mastered recording warrants copyright registration as a "new" work. Obviously, that Rush album was not mastered (for CD) in 1976.

In most cases, record companies will change the artwork or place a sticker on the plastic to advertise a "new mastering". But this is not always the case: the Bruce Springsteen catalogue was redone with no change to the packaging. The Who's Who's Next CD used to be like that too; in the U.S. MCA originally issued a "Steve Hoffman" master of that album on CD, then changed to another master without changing the packaging. (The Who's Next CD is currently a totally different package, with bonus tracks and yet another remastering.)

So with something like Springsteen's catalogue someone could potentially have two similar looking versions of the disc and think, "BMG's CDs are better sounding than my Tower Records copy!"

An example: The Heart Greatest Hits CD is remastered but the single album CDs are not. The sound on Greatest Hits is better.

I mentioned in my post that there are two newer compilation CDs of Rush material than Chronicles, released around the time that they upgraded the single album CDs. I don't think MCA updated the sound quality on Chronicles because they were putting out the two newer compilations.

If you check out the newer compilations, I think that your conclusion might be that older version CDs, not BMG CDs or compilation CDs, are generally worse than remastered CDs.

Good grief. I give up on this board.