Japanese vs Domestic CD s

japanese cd pressings are a lot like japanese lp's. most are better than their american cousins, tho some are on the unlistenably bright side. hard to know whether the price premium is deserved until you take a listen. FWIW, i have hundreds of obi-wrapped lp's but many fewer japanese cd's, tending to buy the latter mostly in "japanese only" versions.

I have a few Japanese CDs and quite a lot of German CDs. I find the imports to be generally better quality, but as Cornfedboy points out--that's not always the case--some actually go the other way--which is very disappointing when you pay such a premium. On other occasions I have had imports clearly best Mobile Fidelity and DCC gold discs. The one company that consistently puts out quality discs is JVC XRCD. I have never bought one of these discs and found a competitive manufacturer to sound better.

My only experience is with the Prestige and Riverside re-issues done with K2 processing. These are excellent and contain tons of warmth and atmosphere. The Tower(downtown) here in NYC stocks quite of few of these and whenever I'm feeling flush, I pick up a few. As a jazz freak, they are a godsend. Recently i picked up "Everybody Digs Bill Evans" and while my vinyl is now in a different locale, I don't think this gives up too much musically. (see my post under Solo piano recordings)

If its not clear from the above post, I'm refering to the Japanese Imports. Some of the K2 mastered stuff is appearing on US releases, but so far, different titles so I haven't been able to compare apples etc....

in my first post, i did not count xrcd's or xrcd2's as "japanese" cd's. while they are, in fact, pressed by victor of japan, they appear to be "american" products (most are produced by the likes of winston ma and chad kassem & they don't even have those cool japanese lyric sheets). i've yet to meet an xrcd i didn't like, at least in terms of sound quality.

cornfed, if your into jazz check out Fantasy's Prestige and Riverside 20-bit cds remasters of classics. they licence the xrcd technology but don't charge the big bucks.

I was refering to current popular type releases that are available domestically vs Japanese ones usually found at Tower or Virgin for $26+. I too have found that the Japanese stuff looks higher in quality if you look at the data side of the cd. The data side looks cleaner than US counterparts. And Cornfed, nothing beats finding OBI wrapped vinyl, so COOL!

Wirehead, so the K2's put out by fantasy on Prestige and Riverside are the XRCD process, I knew they were related somehow but wasn't sure if they were identical? Well, in either case they great finds, far better than the RVG's on Blue Note in my opinion. Has anyone seen or heard any Japanese Blue Note stuff?

Prfont, I was told by a specialty dealer that the special edition remasters are the same as XRCD and if you look at the back covers you will see that they have licenced "something" from JVC. Hope this helps

If we could just smush Japanese sound together with Brit sound, we'd have the ultimate

BTW, I've heard that all the Blue Note reissues (online incl.) are top notch