Amazing XRCD I just purchased....

I'm pretty certain that Bomarc is correct that K2s use the same masters as XRCDs. The difference is in the manufacturing process (and of course the packaging).

As an aside, I have the XRCD version of Everybody Digs Bill Evans and it has the distortions that Hdm mentions on his K2 version. Presumably the problem is on the master tape which I suppose is why you never see Everybody Digs featured in Stereophile advertisements that way Moonbeams and Waltz for Debbie are. It may not be an audiophile classic (which begs the question of why JVC bothered to produce an XRCD version), but the music is damn fine.

Curbach,
Could you please elaborate on the manufacturing process being different? Are you referring to the mastering chain or something else? Either way what specific differences are there? Sorry to pepper you with questions but you are getting to the heart of the matter I'm curious about, are K2's and XRCD's in fact different or is it just marketing? Many thanks.

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!