CD Remastering

Nowadays, cds available in the market have many types of remastering techniques. For eg HDCD, DSD, SRS, Bluray cd etc claiming to be in Hi-Definition recording. Most of them are compilation or collection albums in very attractive prices.

As a audiophile or hifi enthusiast, do you buy those cds just because they are under "special" recording techniques from Germany, China.....etc? Are these cds do justice to the quality sound produce from our expensive equipments? Or the original album from the studio sounds more better as it is natural? I owned a few Denon MasterSonic recording album. Although it sounds more transparent but find sometimes very bright or shall I say digitalised.

Depend the situation, new album can be benefit from those advance techniques like K2HD mastering. But the old album especially long time ago, can not get any benefit. Because the quality of old master tape is drop, So they try to remaster them, actually try to make the album become more distortion. So we always like the sound quality of first press old album more than any reissued old album CD in any format.

http://hifi-unlimited.blogspot.com/2010/10/aurora-peter-erskine.html

Try to read above interesting Article. The writer also prefer the original sound Aurora, Peter Erskine album from 1993 more than 2005 re-mastered/re-issued copy. A mint example of the original 1993 CD can now be found mainly at auctions, of which some are transacted for as high as US$200 or more!

audiophile cds, 24-bit remastered cds, k2hd mastered....whatever-mastered cd simply means the Red Book 16 bit 44.1kHz format is taken to its theoretical limit.

the limitation is still the resolution - 16/44.1.

download some hires 24/96, 88.2 or 192 songs recorded natively in these resolutions and not upsampled from 16/44.1.

these hires files will beat any xrcd, k2hd, 24-bit remastered cd.

the cd as a format to store musical data is already dying.

There are a lot of "poor" re-mastering out there. Especially those you can find at Popular Store.
Those Chinese Audiophile CDs are certainly over cooked. Whatever K2HD or 24 bits remastering... It is very hard to tell how good it is being re-mastered.

In fact I find it more agreeable to the early post year 2000 recordings than those that's done nowadays.

Not too long ago, I got this so called HDCD version of Pat Boone Greatest Hit... Man, the sound quality is totally off.. And it is being remastered in Singapore. I think they are remastering through another CD instead of the real master tape or hi-res format.

Got to be careful. There has been alot of fake "K2" audiophile discs from China lately. Amcorp mall is full of them.

Even one supposedly high-end hifi shop in KL (but i consider them to be pariah grade now) is also selling "China made K2 audiofakephile discs".


The original "K2 Mastering" by JVC is the real thing. Sold by the more reputable hifi shops in town.