Do Japanese do it better?
David Matz -- Mon, 09/07/2009 - 11:33
Hello All,
I was visiting a music store and someone claimed that Japanese mastered versions of cds sound better than Western ones. These Japanese imports also cost more, btw! Is this true for the most part, or was the guy trying to sell me a bag of goods? Do the Japanese do a better job of mastering? Thx
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I've heard only a few Japanese-mastered discs, and all were inferior to the discs I already owned. I have heard, however, that some of the Japanese-mastered titles are superb.
In the early days of CD (mid-1980s), the Japanese pressing plants would routinely equalize the masters before disc cutting to add brightness to give the disc more "clarity." I worked in CD mastering starting in early 1986 and heard horror stories from those who made the digital master from the analog master. They reportedly stopped the practice by 1988.
This is not directly related to this topic, but I have added a lot of Blu-Spec CDs (mostly pressed in Japan I believe) to my collection and I must say Blu-Spec versions of the same titles were clearly superior to their regular CD couterparts.
They are expensive at about $30 bux a pop but IMO well worth the price. They can sound better the even some SACDs.
With which titles did you find the greatest improvement, and were you able to compare them to a high-rez version (DVD-A or SACD) or "remastered" redbook version of the same title?? Thanks.