The conversion to CD hasn't been without it's lighter moments and mass panics. In 1990, the rumor went around that if you put green felt-tip marker around the edge of the disc itself, it would sound much better. This one bounced around for months (years?), including arguments about the best color to use, the particular brand of marker which worked best, etc. In the end, it amounted to exactly nothing. Nobody ever proved that you got anything more than gooey green fingers from this procedure, and this folk chestnut has thankfully gone out of vogue (as with most modern myths, though, watch for a future encore appearing in your neighborhood...).

Then there was the one about all CDs rotting away to dust within ten years. This scare apparently got started after an off-hand remark in an interview by a British CD manufacturer about certain corrosive inks not being used on CDs lest they eat through the polycarbonate coat, allowing oxygen and corrosion to get in. Within a short time, this had made its way along the press/word-of-mouth pathway and metamorphosized into "CDs only have a ten-year lifetime." Of course, since it had (at that time) been less than ten years since the CD was introduced, who could tell? People who left CDs sitting around on coffee tables to get scuffed and spilled on were quick to write to magazines and fuel the fire with their "little white spots" stories. The facts are that most CDs will last much, much longer than ten years. Manufacturers' accelerated degradation tests yield estimates of lifetimes in the hundreds of years. According to Russ Kunz, Director of Engineering at DADC, as long as the disc is manufactured to the "Red Book Specifications," which are the industry standards, there should be no problem. Kunz notes in passing, however, that in the past, at least one manufacturer had a problem with a solvent-based laquer coating leading to premature degradation. Few manufacturers have ever used this type of lacquer. I do not know whether this manufacturer produced oldies CDs. As with any product, there's always a chance to buy shoddy, out of specification workmanship, expecially on "brand-x" labels. My own experience is that it isn't a big problem, if it is a problem at all, for oldies CDs. I recently did a check of the oldest CDs in my collection, many dating from 1983, and none, I repeat, none, shows any sign of deterioration either visually or by playing. Now, I don't walk on my CDs or bathe them in acid, but I don't put much care in them either, other than just putting them away in their jewel boxes. Let's put the 10-year lifetime rumor to rest along with the green magic marker. With even halfway reasonable care, properly manufactured CDs should last indefinitely.

Then there's the intermittent, but long-lived rumor that record club discs are vastly inferior to the same discs bought in the stores. Based on my reviews and A/B tests, as a rule, this one is just flat wrong. I think I know how a rumor like this could get started, though. Record companies are more or less constantly monkeying around with (hopefully, but not always, improving) their digital master libraries. A lot more remastering of the CDs we buy in the stores goes on that most people would guess (perusal of the early issues of ICE newsletter will illustrate the point); scores or even hundreds of CDs have been remastered to correct errors or improve sound, with no visible difference to the packaging. Cream's Wheels On Fire was remastered to correct a one-note dropout! It is certainly possible that a commercial disc and a record company disc would use different sources if manufactured at different times, since even commercial discs switch sources, but the record industry's not organized enough to systematiclly give record clubs inferior sources. I've read an article in a magazine that a reader sent me several years ago where the author was lamenting his record club issue (of a classical disc) didn't sound as good as his store copy. It can happen. But to lay this one on the record clubs as an across-the-board rule is ridiculous. Virtually all the record club discs I've reviewed are identical to the commercial issues. Uh, that is, to some commercial issues.

It's the differences in commercial issues among themselves that are much more intriguing. Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde has been redone so many times it's hard to tell what you're getting without playing it. Original issues had many of the songs on the disc faded early to allow the two-LP set to fit on one disc. At first, the time limit on a CD was thought to be something like 74 minutes, but that has slowly expanded over time. Russ Kunz noted that by 1994, specifications allowed 77 minutes easily, and perhaps more if certain compromises are made, up to a theoretical maximum of 79:20 to remain within the industry quality specification. When more time became available, Columbia in 1987 redid the disc, adding the missing 36 seconds to "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." By late 1988, they were on mastering job #4, with "seven songs at least 5 seconds longer," according to ICE. Original Japanese-made pressings of Santana's Abraxas and Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run were widely criticized for sound deficiencies, and both have been remstered, as has the Byrds' Greatest Hits. Original issues of Jethro Tull's Aqualung were missing the last 23 seconds of "Wind-Up," which was later restored in a 1988 remaster. Two-disc sets like Chicago II, the Who's Tommy, and Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road have become single discs as the time limit increased, and edited discs remastered, like Prince's 1991 reissue of 1999 which restored "D.M.S.R.," omitted from the early pressings of the original 2-LP on one disc set.

Lots of CDs have been remastered to correct track indexing errors (e.g., the track starts one second into the song instead of at the beginning), for instance on the Band's Rock of Ages, where "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and "Across The Great Divide" were on the same track, among other glitches. There have been more blatant slip-ups which have been corrected as well, like The Very Best of the Kingston Trio originally appearing in mono, or Sly and the Family Stone's Fresh having all alternate mixes. Wrong songs have been included, then corrected, like B.T. Express' "Do It" actually being "Express" on Rhino's Soul Hits of the 70s, Vol. 13. There have been aesthetic changes, like Rod Stewart's Sing It Again Rod being issued initially with a pause between tracks, then reissued with crossfades like the original vinyl. Scratchy vinyl sources have been replaced with clean tapes, such as on Collectables' The Greatest Hits of Johnny Maestro & The Brooklyn Bridge. Oppressive hiss has been lessened, such as in the 1990 remaster of James Taylor's Sweet Baby James. A good rule of thumb is that later reissues generally, but not always, will sound at least as good as earlier reissues.

The obvious question is, how can you tell the good ones from the bad? Most of the time, by just looking at the disc in a store, you can't. The differences are often noted with arcane markings such as "RE-1" around the hub ring of the disc itself. In the case of the CBS discs from Japan, the upgraded versions were often done after the disc pressing was transferred to the USA, so "Now Made in the USA" at least in some cases meant an upgrade in sound.

Then there's the Gold Disc boondoggle. In the book Oldies on CD, you will see many Gold Disc reviews from several labels right alongside reviews of their regular counterparts. For the vast majority of gold discs, there is little or no difference in sound between the gold disc and the corresponding regular disc. I know, I know. Every time I say this in the Newsletter, I get a certain amount of hate mail from people who have invested big buck$ in gold discs, but I've listened, and done tests with other listeners, and as often as not the people pick the regular disc as sounding better. Again, there are exceptions, but not many. Sony's gold discs are claimed to use the absolute first-generation masters as sources, and of course that can make a big difference (makes you wonder why they were using something else for other discs, doesn't it?). DCC's gold discs are usually EQed somewhat differently from the regular discs, and the Mobile Fidelity Ultradiscs usually sueeze out as much noise as possible, usually at the expense of brightness. But usually the difference is subtle to the point of being surreal. If you want to pay double for your CDs because the gold looks nice, or because it makes your collection look more expensive, or because you hope it will make the disc last 400 years instead of 300, that's up to you. Just don't kid yourself that every gold disc you pick up sounds twice as good as the regular one. You might listen and convince yourself of that, but A/B tests (using matched, synchronized CD players with a crossfade mixer) usually reveal otherwise. To me, the difference between gold discs and regular discs is not something most listeners would notice. And within a few years, the same first-generation masters will make their way down to the midline reissues, so the sound will be absolutely the same.

The newest fad seems to be "20-bit remastering;" you'll see stickers to that effect on many recent oldies reissues. To my ears, this means nothing. The remastering equipment used runs a very poor second to the quality of the source material when it comes to how a reissue CD sounds. True, some 20-bit CDs sound wonderful, but that's because somebody's done some real work in the studio getting the original tapes ready, not because they're "20-bit" mastered. As a final insult, I've A/B tested an old 1987 disc with a 1997 reissue using "20-bit" technology and found the difference was ...NOTHING!! The two CDs were absolutely the same! Enough said.