There's great sounding CDs out there but it can be a crap shoot finding them. Most of the JVC xrcd stuff sounds great, especially the few newer xrcd24 titles. Many Japanese manufactured CDs sound good but again not always. Recently purchased a Japanese remastered Santana Caravanserai, sounded really terrible. I've also been listening to some Japanese 24K gold Pat Methenys and Enya CDs, marvelous! Many DCC and MFSL gold CDs sounded nice, but there were a lot of dogs too. A couple Jennifer Warnes CDs I picked up recently sound fabulous, The Hunter & The Well. These are regular old CDs. The gulf between good and bad sounding CDs seems broaden as the quality of playback equipment increases. One thing for sure, it's difficult to listen to a really bad CD. Makes you feel like your ears are bleeding. As Sony Phillips said when the CD first came out: "Perfect sound forever!". My motto: "Mass produced junk forever!". Bottom line is, those who pay attention to the details and quality of manufacturing frequently produce fine sounding CDs. Those who don't usually produce crap. Unfortunately, most don't know the difference and don't care. Can you believe there's format battle? The CD hasn't been perfected yet nor do we know it's true potential. Ever wonder why a Steve Hoffman mastered CD sounds good?
Enlighten me please
I keep hearing about "audiophile" redbook CD's and notice folks alluding to better quality CD's. I realize that the likes of BMG are mass market garbage. What other labels are considered crap? Also, what labels are higher quality? If you have a particular CD available on one label, Sony for instance, is it often available from a more esoteric label as well, or do the rights to produce a given album lay with the label? I notice BMG usually has its stamp along with the original label on the disk, denoting that BMG has probably paid some liscensing fee to produce that disk.
Any insight would be nice, I think I know some of the answers but would like more information. Also, can anyone provide links to resellers of good quality recordings?
Any insight would be nice, I think I know some of the answers but would like more information. Also, can anyone provide links to resellers of good quality recordings?