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XRCD Technology

I have received promotional material for these discs, but I don't really know what they are. What I gather is that they have been mastered using 24 bit digital resolution, and higher sampling rate. But I thought that this has long been true of all mastering equipment. Whatever the precision of the mastering process, the final result has to be truncated (or rounded) to 16 bits for the CD product.

The discs I have seen are performances that have always been recognized as superb examples of the original recording process. I suspect that if these discs really are above average it is probably due to the good work done 40 years ago..not the recent mixdown which, at best, can only avoid screwing things up.

Tell me why I should buy one of these things, instead of another SACD.
eldartford
pbb
1,140 posts
 
Listening to one now, "Kelly Blue" by Winton Kelly. All CDs should sound this way, but they don't. JVC does a swell job. As far as getting rid of noise at the price of getting rid of life in the recording, noise is noise; plenty of life in this recording. Can't wait for more of these to be on sale somewhere. I think that there are vey difficult people in audioland if they don't think that CDs can sound marvelous. You owe yourself a listen to XRCDs.
eldartford OP
4,262 posts
 
The message I am getting is that XRCD technology is no different from other CDs, but the folks who are making these particular discs are simply doing a consistently good job of mastering. I have long been aware that audio quality varies a great deal on CD's, and there is no way to predict (by label) which ones are good. Perhaps this XRCD label will do that, and hopefully cause others to clean up their act.
mrowlands
54 posts
 
One thing overlooked here is the actual manufacturing process. There are numerous examples of bit-for-bit identical CDs coming from the plant that sound much worse. Many of us have even experienced this with our CD burners. This is evidently due to added jitter, which all but the mega-buck players can't adequately reduce to acceptable levels. Sooo, I'm sure the JVC guys recognized this (some folks still don't) and keep tight quality control all the way to the retail product.
buscis2's avatar
buscis2
468 posts
 
Warren hit this nail right on the head. XRCDs do sound more "analog". More than likely, it is the cumulative results of the more tightly controlled manufacturing process, use of higher quality blank discs, and excellent mastering of most of the original recordings used for XRCDs.

You should hear them after being "modified". WOW!

I personally, don't find the levels of high and low frequency extension in XRCDs that I have noticed in some of the MFSLs but, I have also found some of the MFSLs to be somewhat "artificial" sounding, displaying extraneous amounts of sibilance and "digititis".

I do although, find it interesting that the majority of original recordings used for these "audiophile quality" discs, are mostly recordings of yesteryear.

What is that indicative of?
bomarc
501 posts
 
What it's indicative of, Bus, is the median age of purchasers of high-priced audiophile disks.
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