Nine Ways to Love (and profit from) The CD! Part I
Inspiration for these posts comes from a number of sources. I think about what to discuss during my morning walks (sometimes runs) with Charlie, the new Waldrep Border Collie puppy. And not infrequently, a reader will send me something that triggers an article. That’s what happened this morning. I received a comment that contained promotional information from First Impressions Music regarding their “Ultra HD CDs” of the Decca” Supreme Stereophonic Legacy Box Set. It’s coming in mid August for the sale price of $224.99, which includes 4 CDs and a booklet.
The economic issue of just how valuable a particular recording is continues to haunt me after our recent discussions of pricey samplers. It seems I’ve got this whole pricing thing backwards after snooping around the web in search of “audiophile reference recordings”. It turns out that Cookie’s $50 sampler is a bargain. I turned up an Australian site that sells 9 different versions of Redbook CDs. And the cheapest one that I found was $29. However, most of them go from around $60…for a standard 44.1 kHz/16-bit PCM album. I was amazed. Especially since my most expensive product is $50 for a 4 sided “Collector’s Edition” DVD-Audio/Video set (I’ve been packaging these titles over the past couple of days…the Lowen & Navarro and Carl Verheyen titles are really great).
I’m not sure if any of the CD albums available at Audiophile Reference Recordings in Australia are available at HDtracks, but I would imagine that they are downloadable somewhere. Would you pay $60 for a CD of the Ray Brown Trio or $99 for a Door recording?
The ARR site has a “CD” filter that breaks out to 9 different compact disc types. They are: CD, Gold CD, HDCD, K2 HD CD, UltraHD CD, XRCD CD, XRCD 2 CD, XRCD 24 CD, and DXD CD. At this point I feel obligated to remind readers that there is only ONE compact disc type according to the people that designed, implemented and control the standard. So what are all of these other types and why are companies charging so much for them.
CDs are produced according to the Redbook specification. The spec describes the physical and electronic attributes of the format…44.1 kHz/16-bit PCM on a 12 cm diameter 1.2 mm thick piece of plastic. They’re a lot more to it than that, but you get the idea. They all have the same fidelity potential.
A Gold CD simple uses gold instead of aluminum as the reflective layer on a replicated disc. That might reduce the number of CRC “errors” and extend the life of the disc to 100 years over the 25 years that an aluminum disc should last but otherwise…they offer no improvement in the sound. You want John Lennon’s “Imagine” CD in Gold? It’s only $149.
HDCD CDs actually do offer the potential for greater than 16-bits of dynamic range (however, there aren’t any commercial recordings that take advantage of the extended range…as far as I know) through a clever process of encoding the low order bits to give maybe 20 bits of resolution. The Doors “Morrison Hotel” is only $99 as an HDCD CD.
Part of the premium price of these titles comes from the fact that they are numbered, Limited Editions, perhaps mastered by Steve Hoffman, and transferred from the master tapes. But I think the high prices for normal CD resolution are exaggerated.
We’ll talk about the rest of the flavors tomorrow. My favorite is the “DXD CD”…
HDCD will sound ‘worse’ on system that does not support HDCD dithering process, since extra process will be present as just added noise on unsupported system.
That said, those pricing is for nutjobs and this is what gives really bad impressions to ordinary people about HD-audio market.
Here’s the flip side of things from my HO, this is a golden age for CD buyers and music collectors.
The Doors Morrison Hotel,, there’s 101 copies listed for sale on ebay, one of the first ones that comes up is $5.00 with FREE shipping!.
I’ve been rounding out a lot of my collection lately and the prices are fantastic. I just got a copy of Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life for the princely sum of $3.69 Free Shipping!
Yesterday I ordered David Gilmore’l On An Island for $5.00 FREE Shipping.
Everything I’ve got has come in pristine condition and has good Red Book sound.
But last week I bought The Animals Retrospective from HDTracks for 19.95 and it sound like crap.
I also bought Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin On from HDTracks for 17.95, it doesn’t sound too bad but I’ll bet $100 that’s its no improvement over a Red Book CD.
I don’t mean to rant but you are right Mark, the provenance is everything. Since my taste in music is more on the oldies side I don’t see myself buying to many more HD high priced recordings. Sorry to see the CD dieing,it really is a shame. But it can be a windfall for music collectors.
I honestly think what the guy in Australia is doing is buying the products he sells for retail (or wholesale) and then upping the prices to make people feel like they are valuable.
Regarding cost When prerecorded movies on VHS first came out, they sold for prices in the neighborhood of $120-$160. One never knows what will sell.
I have new CD from Japan of an old Nils Lofgren akbum. IT is an HM-CD – which menas that it is made from anew materia, but i can’t determine what the new material is or even if its the music layer of the substrate.
About a decade back American Gramophone re mastered all the Fresh Air albums for HDCD, but I can’t say that they made ised of the expanded dynamic range.
One of the types that I left off the list was the single cut glass CD…which is another hocus pocus rip off. A CD is a CD is a CD…and no new materials or substrate will alter the sound at all!