What Is This New "SHM-CD"?

I just received an E-mail from CD Japan about a new reissue series of "SHM-CDs". According to the blurb in the disc's listing, "Reissue featuring the new SHM-CD CD creation process utilizing material from LCD panel displays to creat a higher audio quality format. Playable on standard CD players."

What the.... "utilizing material from LCD panel displays"? Is this just a fancy way to say it is an enhanced disc? If that's true, why add, "creat a higher audio quality format"?

Anyone know anything about this supposedly new format?

 

I've never heard of SHM.
I'm aware of Super Bit Mapping (SBM) ... maybe "SHM" is a typo?

 

Steve Hoffman Mastered?

 

SHMuck-CD

 

That didn't take long.

 

That can't be right. It should be SCH (schmuck), unless the Japanese lost their Yiddish dictionary.

Doug

 

SHaM-CD: honesty in advertising!

 

I found this on the HMV Japan website:

"Super High Material CD
SHM-CD series

Pursuing the new possibility of CD!
The liquid crystal panel material (high transparency) the high sound quality CD by the new material which is utilized appears!
The first press limitation"

The release date for all these CDs seems to be 11/21/2007. What does it all mean?

 

And this:

"Concerning SHM-CD (the universal music)
25 years, the commodity which aims toward the improvement of the sound quality in various ways was developed from CD sale, but the high sound quality CD by the new material this time, with the universal music and the cooperation development of Nippon Victor, is sold.
　Furthermore it improved transparency from the usual CD material by using the polycarbonate resin type of another kind, it is the birth of new CD.

The quality characteristic of SHM-CD
Usual CD transparency improvement, furthermore the optical quality which is superior is held with polycarbonate resin type of another kind from the material.
Especially circumferential we are superior in double refraction quality of direction, we have become the material which is suited for DISC formation with high flowability and high copying characteristic.

The acoustic quality of SHM-CD
Skewness it is little former in comparison with CD, the sound quality where the transparent impression is high.
From actualizing the sound quality where balance comes off due to the fact that resolution improves substantially.
It was tend to be until recently, it cancels the volume insufficiency of the limits low."

 

Sounds like they are going after the same market as "gold" cds.

 

Wow. Japanese to English translations are brutal.

 

Yeah.

Any Japanese translators on the board? Here is the original web page - scroll down about halfway and read the SHM sections.

http://www.hmv.co.jp/product/detail/2622714

 

So what I'm reading is that an SHM-CD is just a differently manufactured CD, not a differently mastered CD. That makes more sense. I'll pass. I have many of these titles in pretty good sound. I don't need to spend another $26 to find out they've compressed the heck out of the audio.

 

I hate baloney marketing speak.

 

Or the "use a green marker around the edge of your CDs" crowd...

 

I think it's supposed to be SHMG-Cd...

"So Help Me God, if they come out with another format, I'm gonna snap!"

 

In all seriousness, from what I can decipher from the above, it sounds like they're saying they're using some sort of super-transparent material on the "play" side of the disc, which would presumably allow the laser to read the data easier and with fewer errors. I don't think it has anything to do with mastering or anything like that, just a different material to manufactor the disc out of.

Will it actually make things sound "better"? I suppose it could. Sounds like another debate for the people who've been arguing whether different pressings of the same mastering will sound different...

 

I know someone who greens all his CDs and swears he can hear a difference. I think he's full of it. Snake oil if I've ever seen it.

 

I just found this page and made one of 'those' translations of part of it: http://blog.goo.ne.jp/kawamotofuyuhiko/e/281ee7fe582a229326faabe38e8fb044


"Audition society of new method "SHM-CD=SuperHighMaterialCD" of the CD which universal music and JVC developed jointly in Victor Shimbashi showroom at the evening of yesterday. Polycarbonate resin system that disk subject matter is usually different, this seem to be liquid crystal panel material of high transparency, but it is a frank impression whether I exchanged it with this, and I resemble it, and resolution is very the smooth thing which and become warm. Approach, and a song of Joan of "Getz Bros. / Gilberto" comes out of a speaker; it is from Coltrane & Johnny Hartman False with one can be false with two that felt..."

 

If any of this is right, it would prove that the sound differences noticed by people among several bit-perfect copies of CD-Rs might have something to do with the transparency (or relative lack thereof) in different brands.

 

Who are WAYYY smarter than you credit them for being.

Incidentally, a black sharpie works just as well

 

This is why I always read brother Dave's posts.

 

Or, just as likely, the reflective/writable coating. That was the premise behind gold CDs in the first place. I would imagine the coating - particularly on a CD-R - would influence the accuracy of the data being written/read moreso than the transparent layer on top of it. Though I'm willing to concede that the transparent layer would obviously influence how well that laser reads/writes the data, though.

Any number of factors could influence the error rate at either the encoding or decoding end of the equation. Whether any of those minute difference are big enough that the human ear could detect the difference, that's certainly open to debate (and gets debated around here quite frequently). That's why, even though I personally may not hear the differences, I'm not quite willing to jump on the bandwagon of those who think some people are crazy if they claim they can hear a difference between bit-identical discs.

Now, as for whether I believe using a Sharpie on the outer edge of a CD improves anything at all...? Well, I believe in that about as much as I believe in astrology. (No offense to those who believe in astrology!)

 

That can't be an authentic Japanese translation...it doesn't say, "all your base are belong to us" anywhere in the text...!