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Favorite international pressings

Lately I've been wondering about international pressings generally. I try to buy my favorite artists on Japanese CD whenever I can, because the clarity is just better across the board. And it's relatively easy to find Japanese products. But I feel like the best sounding CDs in my collection (3 or 4) were pressed in France. These seem to have the highest resolution.

Does anyone have an opinion on international pressings? If I could, I would pursue French pressings more often, at least to test my hypothesis. But now I think all European discs say "EU," so it's impossible to know which came from where.

Where do you get your favorite discs? Does anyone know how to seek out French recordings specifically? I've been to Amazon.fr, but it's not clear which are actually made in France.
rfprice
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lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,393 posts
 
Are u talking about Redbook CD's and what type of music? For classical, harmonia mundi is a top record label in France and only issues high quality recordings. Also, the cds pressed in Holland and Germany are of very high quality.
But a cd with a German copyright does not necessarily mean that it was pressed in the EU. I always check for the country of origin.
Discogs is a good website to use in researching where disks are pressed.
rfprice OP
147 posts
 
Yes, I mean Redbooks, and I listen to all types of music. I have several from Harmonia Mundi, that's a great example. I even have two CDs from the mid-90s--a Marley CD and a Stone Roses CD--that were pressed in France and they sound better, of higher resolution, than many other and newer CDs in my collection. And I have some German-made CDs that are of similar quality. I actually prefer these CDs to my Japanese CDs. Maybe I don't have the terminology right, but it seems that whereas the Japanese CDs have better clarity, the Euro CDs have better resolution.
lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,393 posts
 
To find country of origin on Discogs...on the right side of page there are options to choose. Genre, CD or vinyl, and lastly country. Choice of US, UK, EU, Holland, France, etc.
BTW I will always take an import over a US pressing. My exception is a pressing from Russia or Czech...terrible sound. And I have found that UK is not always superior to US.
rfprice OP
147 posts
 
I agree, I'm roundly disappointed by US pressings. And I've had the same experience with UK discs (some better, some not). Actually, I know about Discogs but it seems that most everything is subsumed under "EU." I don't find many broken out by individual country. I've taken to emailing some of the Euro sellers to ask where their discs were made. Sometimes they reply, other times not.

I finally broke down and ordered the Dylan Tempest CD from Amazon because I couldn't be sure about the EU pressings. This one was made in Mexico, which I guess isn't unusual these days. Still, I think I'm going to send it back and keep looking.
lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,393 posts
 
Dylan is on Columbia which is really Sony = mass produced.
I looked it up on Discogs and you can select Europe version and buy it there, but it's an odd lot of countries selling it. It's like u said, new CDs say EU now and not the country.
It sucks, I always seek Holland and Germany pressings as they have such high quality pressing plants. Japan also as you know, but Mexico? Never knew that.
rfprice OP
147 posts
 
Lots of US-distributed CDs are made in Mexico now. I have many US discs which seem fine or at least passable. But it's unpredictable. Last week I bought Donald Fagen's new CD, US version, and it's poor IMO, very muffled. Which is shocking actually, because Fagen/Steely Dan CDs are usually pretty high quality, even US versions. That's why I didn't splurge on the Japanese.

But just today I bought a 2012 recording of Bruckner on Hyperion, which is clearly stamped "Made in France." So who knows how these things work. It's got me stumped. All I want is a good sounding CD. I feel like we're heading back into the dark ages.
lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,393 posts
 
Hyperion is a sure bet to be high quality. I take my classical recordings very seriously.
As for rock CDs, any newer CD suffers from the Loudness Wars, so there's another issue to take into consideration.
When Led Zep "Mothership" was released I was surely not going to buy it on CD; the vinyl is OK, the mix is good but there's plenty of compression.
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