What Is This New "SHM-CD"?

No worries. You've been really helpful, LOL.

 

The problem lies in the search engine that we use here at the Steve Hoffman Forum. I have looked up so many things and come up empty.

 

At least not fresh ones.

How to polish a turd

Polished fossilized dino dung:

 

I was going to say that earlier Rocky. I don't understand why the search engine works so inefficiently, at least for me anyway.
I must admit I didn't try the search function for this specific thread since I hadn't seen any mention of the subject at hand during the past several months (actually I've seen NO mention of it, ever).

 

Thanks Simon, I read it. Taterbones posted the link yesterday.

 

Maybe i'm not understanding this, but it sounds like a bunch of marketing gobblygook to me.

 

Nah, it sounds like one of those translation program results. If it were so easy to translate something from another language in a way that always made sense Google would be using it.

 

I heard the Hendrix SHM best of(experience henderix `97)To my ears,I thought it just sounded a little brighter,subtle at best.I liked the non SHM cd better.Don`t make judgements based on my opinion,hear a different shm for yourself maybe you`ll hear something I didn`t,just don`t expect night and day hi rez sound on these.personaly I`m not shelling out any cash for the Zeppelins

 

I was in a record shop today, and they had a few of these SHM-CDs set up in one of their players, so I grabbed the headphones and had a listen. The disc I tried was the Kinks' The Singles Collection, an SHM reissue of the 1997 set known for shaved-off song intros and overbearing noise reduction. And the new issue definitely uses the same mastering. And yet ... that remarkable SHM polycarbonate plastic really makes a difference. Believe me, you'll notice all those carbonates, and cry hallelujah for every last one of them. A veil was lifted. The midrange was subtly fauvist, and the soundscape shimmered with a delicate minty aftertaste.

Nah, just kidding. It was vomitous.

 

I just bought the shm cds below.

B.B. King Greatest Hits, it has a nice collection of songs ranging from the Live At The Regal all the way to Blues Summit cds. Also a copy of the 7" version of When Love comes to town with U2.

The Best of Little Walter. This is the one to get, it was made from various master recordings, each song gives the master number it was made from. I have not heard Little Walter sound any better than this.... highly recommended.

Sonny Boy Williamson His Best. All but three of these songs are his Checker Label singles from the 1950's and a few from early 60's.Great cd.

Buddy Guy The Complete Chess Studio Recordings. (2 cd Set)This is my favorite Buddy Guy recordings, most of these songs are old Chess singles and some are rare unreleased songs. Some of these songs are from the original 4-track masters by Bill Inglot. While his cds now are good, for me they sound a little over produced, this set is the real deal for me....

Howlin' Wolf The Definitive Collection. Good collection of "The Wolfs" Chess singles. This is another clean sound of all his old records, the only criticism I have is that some songs are a little loud, but still this is a good catch.

Martin Scorsese Presents: Muddy Waters. What can I say, this is the man and this cd sounds great. A must for any blues fan.

This SHM sounds great to me, but it won't change a poorly mastered cd, in fact, I think it makes it more obvious.

 

SHM-CD Zeppelin titles

Hi all,
I have been intrigued by the whole SHM-CD scam and I wanted to find out how good it was. I have purchased the Led Zeppelin box set of 12 albums. This was partly because I was not overly impressed with the Zep complete box set that came out many moons ago. The remixes sounded a bit flat to me. However I am blown away by the clarity of the SHM-CD’s. There is no denying that the production of the 70’s albums had always been amazing but I am very impressed with these re-issues and the quality improvement of the sound. The mini sleeves are exact replica’s including the magi-paint inner sleeve of In Through The Out Door. I am certainly going to buy some more. Hopefully the 70’s albums from Yes will get the same treatment.

 

You realize that a) the Zeppelin catalog has never been "remixed," only remastered; and b) they used the same remasters for the SHM discs?

 

Yup, I do and I also suggest you get hold of a sep SHM-CD to make your own mind up!!

 

The Zep complete CDs from many moons ago were not remixes.

If the digital masters are the same as the 90s discs, and they have not been tweaked during remastering, and all that's been done is changing the formulation of the media, it's extremely unlikely there's any real audible difference.
It's also extremely likely people will think they hear one, ranging from 'subtle' to 'blown away', when they use a 'sighted' method to determine the difference...especially if they've been told there should be a difference.

 

This box-ser is remastered by Page/Marino and is tipical product of loudness war!!!
Look at the Led Zeppelin I statistics:



Mastering is very loud with lot of clippings. SHM-CD utilize the superior material than materials used in regular CD production. SHM-CD manufacturing process allows a little bit higher levels of mastering than regular CDs considering that the pits and lands are much better and more precise defined as well as almost zero jitter and perfect flatness of the CD! This mean that CD player can read the disc flawlessly and without or very rarely need to perform reading error correction. As you all know Red-Book standard is 16bit and all bits are used for data so you don't have ECC data on disc. All error correction rely on CD player. This is thanks to Sony cause Philips have been proposed 14bit for data and 2 ECC bits. So as better the CD media the better is information laser read from this media. Gold plating does not have anything with quality of reading but only with longevity!
But this is of no help when you have remaster that targeting on Lo-Fi equipment users so you have amplified sound that is easier to listen on notebook speakers, iPods etc...

 

Tracks from the 10-disc Page/Marino box set edition of LZI aren't showing numbers like that, to me, using Audition. None of the tracks have any 'possibly clipped samples' when I check them. Crest factor (peak-avg) is ~13-14dB for 'Good Time Bad Times', the opening track, which is not bad at all, for an inherently loud track like this.

But Cool Edit/Audition is not a reliable clip detector anyway (which is why they phrase it as 'possible'). First, it counts any sample truly at 0 dbFS (i.e., sample values of -32768 and +32767, not, e.g., -0.15dbFS rounded to 0 dbFS in the statistics display) as 'possibly clipped'. A track could have no clipping whatsoever, but still peak at 0dbFS. Try it yourself -- take a Marino LZ track that shows 0 'possibly clipped peaks', normalize it to 0dB , and see what happens in the 'possibly clipped' box. Second, even if there are waveform 'flats' at 0dB, they aren't necessarily audible as clipping. THe extent of clipping matters... the 'duration' of a clipped peak (the 'size' of the visible plateau) as well as the overall density of clipped peaks.

A more accurate clip detector (as in WaveRepair) looks at consecutive samples at the same peak value (typically at or near 0 dbFS), to quantify clipping in terms of how 'wide' the clipped peaks are, and how many occur.

CD player error correction is robust; when it 'fails' the failure is catastrophic, not subtle.

SHM-CD is a pointless marketing ploy to lure; 'audiophiles' into buying the same digital master repeatedly.

 

I purchased Spooky Tooth for the bonus tracks and packaging.

the lure of the mini album CD is strong.

 

Are these SHM-CDs some kind of special edition discs? It seems like there're a lot of titles being released. I just saw a new "Best of Village People" on SHM-CD.....

 

@ SiriusB
You can use any program you like and every program will show the clippings on this 12Cd box-set! Every Cd Player have different error correction system and most of them are far from well. You will find better error correction in computer CD-roms than in stand-alone cd players./ This is why most of the high end players don't want to play bad pressed or burned CDs! Robust???? In what sense? Hi-End players are made to play "High-end" CDs!!! So I have problem with my Marantz to play burned CDs. So when I switched on Crystal-AZO Verbatim and MoFi CD-R I didn't have a problem!! First at all Stand alone players have constant angular rotation speed Computer Cd Roms have variable speed so they can read single data much more time than stand alone player so the error correction can be performed much easier! The only way to perform ECC is to read data many times and to compare readings of the same data. There is another way usualy performed in Lo-Fi equipment... just skip unreadable data and continue playing!!!
This is why a lot of my neighbours used to say : You pay so much money for your player and it doesn't play average CD and I pay 30Euros for mine but I can listen every CD!!!

 

I speak about Led Zeppelin - The Definitive Box Set (12 SHM-CD Japanese Limited Edition, 2008)

 

I'm referring to the 10CD "Led Zeppelin Complete Studio Recordings', mastered by George Marino with Jimmy Page, released in the early 90s.
Your Japanese set has apparently been re-remastered, possibly with added clipping. Because those numbers certainly don't come from the original Marino/Page complete boxed set.
That's too bad. Regardless, Audition/Cool Edit still isn't the best way to detect real clipping.

Yes, true, as CDroms are made for data discs beyond just CDs, but the error correction in CD players are quite adequate.

Then 'high end players' must be badly designed, or those 'bad pressed or burned' CDs must be very bad indeed. I can count the number of CDs and CDRs my 'low end' players refused to play, on one hand.

Nonsense. My $160 Oppo plays every disc I throw at it, from 20-year old CDs , to XRCDS, to SACDs, to DVD-As, to DualDiscs, to CDRWs and DVDRs I burned last week. If your
'high end ' player can't play CDs, then you should maybe reconsider why you are investing in 'high end' gear, when a $160 player can best it.

 

...its my thinking too...

 

"i gotta bridge to sell ya", comes to mind....