Gold disk VS regular disk?

gold ("redbook") discs are supposed to sound better than their silver counterparts. in some cases this is true, in others it is not so. i don't believe there is any correlation between "reliability" and the color of a cd's playing surface.

The gold disks are often remastered. This can make them sound better than, or at least different from the standard silver issues.

I read somewhere that JVC tried different disc types for their XRCD premium line and concluded that siver discs sounded a bit better than gold when both contain the same source material.

Gold disks are (usually) derived from original master tapes or, at least, have had extra attention during the mastering process. Also, as gold does not react with oxygen (oxidize), they will not fail (like aluminum) if their plastic shell acquires a crack or hole. This is stretching things as anything likely to crack a CD will also destroy the data pits (small hole more likely to occur).