Record Club CD's...

Are record club CD's mastered any differently from "regular" CD's? I know they say "Manufactured by" or something to that effect on the packaging, but are there any noticable sonic differences?

Thanks,

WW

 

With Cee Dee, I'd say exactly the same. Digital clones.

 

Generally speaking, they do not have any sonic differences although some audiophiles swear there are differences. They do use clones of the same digital mastering as the store CDs do and often times, CH does ship store bought copies of titles, especially if they are WB distributed titles and Sony titles, complete with the original packaging so a digipak title will be a digipak, etc. BMG has a history of selling jewel case versions of digipak titles.

 

nope, they sound fine to me.

just picked up a couple from BMG this week for only $7.19 each (they had free shipping and handling!).

No Doubt's cd "Rock Steady" sounds great.

Plus they shipped me a Rhino Chicago 3 in a jewel case.

It pays to sign up at their internet address if your a long time customer these days.
Once a month they offer a 1 Day Sale at at least 60% off and no shipping charges.
You can not beat that deal.


JohnG

 

Here is some more information on the subject from a previous thread.

 

Very interesting. Thanks.

Along those lines, what about CD's to CDR's? Is there any loss in quality when making a copy? How about copying a 3rd generation CDR? I was always curious. Personally, I can't really tell the difference. But what if you record in high speed, or analog? Sorry for the barrage of questions, but I figured this was the place to ask.

 

I remember an interesting Stereophile article from at least a decade ago. Pioneer (and or Marantz) had an audio CD recorder that cost maybe $2000. Someone at Stereophile claimed the same CD sounded better after it was digitally recorded by the Pioneer...in other words, better than the original. Reason? There was less jitter from the Pioneer recorded CD. (They may have measured it.) Part of me wants to believe it, but...well, I still have memories of green magic markers and all that stuff...

 

I have done a few A/B comparisons with some discs from both BMG and Columbia vs the standard stock versions and I have never been able to detect a difference among discs that are the same issue (I mean mastering). For example, A BMG 1999 Doors Box, to my ears, sounds exactly like the store's version.

 

A friend of mine had the mentioned Cee Dee Recorder...Yes the CDR's were better sounding...blew my mind.
I was floored.

 

One other article in Stereophile claimed that the record club CDs were terrible, and full of jitter, far worse than anything the record labels released. IMHO, the only assumption I could make about this was that the record clubs would have to make new glass masters from the digital source. And why would their equipment be so much worse than other labels' equipment? After all, one purpose of record clubs like this is to use the excess manufacturing capacity of a CD plant...so we're even talking about a lot of the same equipment being used to manufacture the CDs. Club CDs are likely made alongside the latest chart smashes and jazz reissues.

I place about as much faith in their assumption as I do that hoodoo-voodoo like green magic markers, stabilizer rings, demagnetizers, etc. Some of those tweaks are so theoretically unsound, it's laughable. In fact, I have an Endless Summer CD that I bought used--RUINED by some yahoo who stuck a stabilizer ring on it. Now I can't play it! Won't fit in the in-dash players, won't play in some Discman portables, won't fit in my Pioneer changer, won't fit in the CD magazine for the changer in our CR-V. Might as well just throw it in the trash. (Heck, it was the sucky Capitol version anyway.)

I'm curious about what engineers think about these tweaks. I still get a good laugh out of them.

It's stuff like this that kept me from renewing Stereophile all those years ago. I do miss the music reviews, but the rest? *shrug*

 

I don't know much about the physical manufacturing of a cd. Many cd's that come from the Columbia House club are identical to the retail versions anyway. Oddly it seems that the only BMG club discs that are identical are some of the Verve remasters. BMG seems to put their cd club info on even BMG family labels.

I haven't done a comparison lately but when I had a much cruder stereo it seemed to me that the BMG club discs were, in fact, inferior to retail versions as well as Columbia House versions. The general differences were a loss of focus which ended up making the discs sound a little more etched on top and the bass a little messier. This wasn't a "night and day" type of difference. One thing that bugs me when some audiophile claims that X is different than Y is the claim that the difference is so dramatic that anyone would hear it on a boombox. The differences I heard were subtle but consistent. I was even successful during a single blind test at identifying a retail disc versus a BMG club disc.

I even ran across a few occasions where there would be a difference in overall disc timing of a few seconds. I don't know how that could happen if those discs were from the same glass masters.

These observations were made when BMG's prices were amazingly low -- almost always buy 1 get 3 free (even box sets!) or 75% off. I was confident that they weren't "remastering" anything, but I wondered if something during the actual physical manufacturing of the disc changed when BMG club discs were being manufactured in order to lower manufacturing costs. I won't propose any theories because, as I said above, I don't know much about the process. It seems to me, however, that even if the same plants were making both retail and club discs that certain things could be changed when making the club discs.

Unfortunately I have already sold back the discs I felt were inferior, so I don't have any duplicates to compare.

 

The stuff I've been getting from BMG the past five years is identical to store stock, near as I can tell. Only difference is the BMG number on the disc and/or booklet.

 

I consistently purchase "non-essential" (for me at least) CDs from BMG music club, and it appears to me that maybe 80 or more % of the time, if you look at the matrix numbers on the actual disc they seem to be exactly what you would get if you purchased the discs via normal retail channels.
The only difference, as stated in this thread, is that the booklet and barcode might be BMG specific.

Some discs, though, the matrix number matches the BMG music club catalog number exactly, instead of the labels catalog number, so then you can be assured that this is a different pressing. As far as a different mastering job, that I couldn't tell.

As far as doing an A - B comparison between store bought versions and BMG versions of the same disc, I couldn't help there since, as I stated I usually buy "non-essential" discs or discs from artists I am not overly familiar with but want to get a taste of their music. So I would never have a duplicate BMG pressing and regular store bought pressing.

 

The clubs are good for picking up stuff that one missed the first time out.

I'm not a gigantic No Doubt fan for instance but at $7.19 a cd...what the hell...I'll take 2...they are a pretty good group btw. Love the opening of the new one...Rock Steady...excellent!

JohnG