Does it matter where a CD is manufactured?

IMHO... If it comes from France, don't buy it.

There is a definite difference in CDs made in Japan and the UK compared to US. Check out any of those Japanese mini LP jacket CD's and compare to the U.S. version and they blow the US versions away. I bought the Beatles UK version of the White Album with the special mini LP packaging and it is superior to the US version. Then I bought the Sony Superbit mapping of Dire Straits Love Over Gold and the first Dire Straits album pressed in US and the British version pressed by Vertigo and the U.S. version is garbage. Unfortunately those who commented above probably don't have revealing enough systems to tell the difference. Too bad.

We are discussing ordinary, everyday, off the shelf CD's, not some special edition that in many cases are made for audiophiles.

So what you say we will notice with the import CD's compared to domestic CD's is "blow away". I am not familiar with the audiophile term "blow away". How will we recognize "blow away" when we hear it? Once we know what to listen for, how can we optimize "blow away" in our system?

What I have found over the years is this:
US manufactured CDs of US music typically sound superior to the same CD produced in the EU (European Union). (The EU CDs are not labelled more specificically than "produced in the EU".) I am talking about normal CDs, not special audiophile editions. And yes, Japanese CDs do beat them all.

I remember a label representative saying a few ago that "when you send a master to five differnt production plants you get back five different sounding CDs". If you study JVC's XRCD process you will see where standard CD production methods can and will go wrong. A lot has to do with proper clocking of all the involved components.

Also, do not forget that the "red book" (i.e. audio) CD standard requires that the data be treated as a real time data stream (translated: there is no re-reading of data until it can be read correctly, which means that error correction needs to chip in when there is an error). I suspect that differences in sound between different pressings of CDs really all boil down to how hard the error correction in the CD player has to work.

I will note that sugarbrie's response to the comments of Hifimaniac seem to be quite appropriate. One must compare apples to apples and not assume something sounds better because the package is more attractive. And of course, one should expect that a remastered cd would be much better than a cd released in the early 80's.