/brit/

[Carson Rivera]

Late night edition

[Ethan Sullivan]

finally, now I can make quality posts

[Colton Young]

korean pop

[Landon Johnson]

runt life

[Nathaniel Morgan]

...

[Christian Perry]

Pirate scumbags

[Henry Cox]

Asuka.

[Isaiah Green]

...

[Cameron Perry]

>Why yes I do speak multiple languages

[Dylan Johnson]

I've discovered during the last two years, since I can take CD-Rs home from the mastering plant, that there's an astonishing variation in quality between different CD plants. If you think digital is perfect, I have news for you. Many of us have been fooled by this myth that it's just 0s and 1s and therefore copies perfectly. It doesn't. The variations in quality are pretty wild, and random. Just the way you hook up a cable can make a difference. And there's no quality control in these CD plants, other than someone checking whether there's any level being transferred.

Most of us take it for granted that a CD is a CD, and we almost never discuss about varying standards of manufacture. I can't say too much about current US manufacturer's because I have few US made CDs. I have still detected a general shrillness to many US CDs ("let's tweek the high end to make them sound sharp to delude the general public that our CDs sound better than vinyl and tape"). Tweeking the high end also accentuated the hiss. After so many disappointments and revelations having heard import versions after getting US discs I have concentrated on acquiring import pressings.

As for maunfacturers themselves: on the import side I like the clarity of Nimbus UK but they can be hissier and lighter on low end than MPO France which produces well rounded sounding CDs. PDO have been fine except for the recent PDO UK disc rot problem. Sonopress in Germany are adequate. I used to shy away from DADC in Austria (Sony Europe uses them) but have realised that was a personal bias. Nimbus USA (Virginia) vary. Their reissues of the OMD catalogue were shoddy. DADC in Indiana (Sony/Columbia) are so so.