What I have found over the years is this:
US manufactured CDs of US music typically sound superior to the same CD produced in the EU (European Union). (The EU CDs are not labelled more specificically than "produced in the EU".) I am talking about normal CDs, not special audiophile editions. And yes, Japanese CDs do beat them all.
I remember a label representative saying a few ago that "when you send a master to five differnt production plants you get back five different sounding CDs". If you study JVC's XRCD process you will see where standard CD production methods can and will go wrong. A lot has to do with proper clocking of all the involved components.
Also, do not forget that the "red book" (i.e. audio) CD standard requires that the data be treated as a real time data stream (translated: there is no re-reading of data until it can be read correctly, which means that error correction needs to chip in when there is an error). I suspect that differences in sound between different pressings of CDs really all boil down to how hard the error correction in the CD player has to work.
US manufactured CDs of US music typically sound superior to the same CD produced in the EU (European Union). (The EU CDs are not labelled more specificically than "produced in the EU".) I am talking about normal CDs, not special audiophile editions. And yes, Japanese CDs do beat them all.
I remember a label representative saying a few ago that "when you send a master to five differnt production plants you get back five different sounding CDs". If you study JVC's XRCD process you will see where standard CD production methods can and will go wrong. A lot has to do with proper clocking of all the involved components.
Also, do not forget that the "red book" (i.e. audio) CD standard requires that the data be treated as a real time data stream (translated: there is no re-reading of data until it can be read correctly, which means that error correction needs to chip in when there is an error). I suspect that differences in sound between different pressings of CDs really all boil down to how hard the error correction in the CD player has to work.