Amazing XRCD I just purchased....

I would guess that the manufacturing differences would be very slight. CDs aren't like LPs, where the kind of vinyl you use and the care you take can make a major difference in the sound. (Which is why foreign pressings of LPs often sound much better than domestics, even using the same master tape.) For CDs, the real difference is in the mastering, and I cannot imagine that JVC wastes its time making two different masters, one for its own XRCDs and one to license back to Fantasy.

Jon: This is just an educated guess after reading the info included in both the K2's and XRCD's (which is in much greater detail) included with the CD's about the remastering process. It appears that both use 1) JVC 20 bit 128x oversampling 2)JVC K2 super coding and 3) the K2 interface to eliminate jitter.

The only difference that I can really ascertain (and I have no idea what difference it would make) is that the K2's are remastered using a JVC DAS-900 and the XRCD's (at least the 20 bit one that I own of Waltz for Debby) are done using a Sony PCM-9000 which uses a magneto optical disc (no idea if the JVC DAS-900 uses the same optical disc system or tape-perhaps some techies might chime in).

The K2's are a bargain; after hearing them I wouldn't bother to pay the extra money for XRCD's. In fact, I'm ordering 2 more tomorrow.

Jond: Thanks!

Jond--

I'm sure there Goners here who can intelligently discuss the XRCD manufacturing process, but I'm not one of them. My comments were based on my recollection of the notes in the XRCDs I have (which I do not have in front of me at the moment) and another thread I read on this topic somewhere, may be here--check the archives.

Hdm,
That's exactly what I was looking for, thank you very much! Just as I suspected the mastering chain is almost identical. That definitely makes K2's the way to go, as if I didn't know that already from the sound quality. In fact I'm listening to Bill Evans Sunday at the Village Vangaurd as I type this and I wish those people talking and clinking glasses in the background would settle down!