Neither believe any blurb on the packaging and inserts about bit-depth,
96k/192k Hz and other digital mastering tags/systems/etc. Just last week
Dennis Rodney pointed out here that Sony misled buyers in these regards
with the release the 1990s of the 39 CD series titled "Bruno Walter:The
Edition" (available as a single boxed set now BTW). The label mistakes are
probably not always deliberate but due to sloppiness and mismanagement, but
untrustworthy with most major labels it is.
On Feb 17, 2013 8:31 AM, "Don Cox" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On 17/02/2013, Tom Fine wrote:
>
> > People are welcome to believe whatever they want, but the FACTS about
> > the CD mastering of the Mercury Living Presence catalog are
> > well-documented, with many photos published, as well as many
> > first-person interviews. I can assure you that no digital "processing"
> > took place, and all 3-2 mixing was done in the analog domain, before
> > conversion. The only digital "editing" that took place was the
> > occasional insert-edit over a damaged splice, when the same audio
> > could be located on the un-edited B Reels. Even in the cases where
> > only B Reels were in the vaults, so re-editing was required, that was
> > done in the analog domain (you'd _never_ do that today -- it would be
> > done in a workstation, at high resolution, but it was still common in
> > the 1990s). There was a basic dislike (from years of careful
> > listening) of any processing in the digital domain, circa 1990s. So it
> > wasn't done. In my own experience, extensive digital editing and
> > processing got much more transparent, efficient and sophisticated in
> > the past 10 years and modern equipment and techniques would probably
> > pass muster with the original Mercury team. That was definitely not
> > the case in the time the CDs were being reissued. It took a year of
> > testing and listening to find a suitable A-D converter (the dcs), and
> > it was brand new and developed using Philips technology so it was a
> > step forward at the right time and right place.
> >
> > Why Philips decided to go with ADD on the MLP CDs is unknown, but they
> > did from the first to the last. I agree that by strict definitions
> > they should be AAD. But it's not really relevant since the whole
> > process was well-known, well-explained and widely-documented. Philips
> > thinking may have been -- you really didn't start with an analog
> > master, you started with edited 3-track tapes, then did a 3-2 mix in
> > the analog domain, so the MASTER was actually digital. What was
> > intended by AAD would be something like a rock album from the 70s --
> > recorded on 24-track analog, mixed to 2-track analog, transferred to a
> > digital master for CD. You could say the same about the 1990s RCA
> > Living Stereo reissues from 3-tracks because they started as analog
> > 3-track session tapes, were mixed to a 2-track "cutting master" and
> > the CDs were transferred from those cutting masters. So that's more a
> > AAD product than the MLP because the MLP actually had a digital
> > master, but it was made at the same time as the A-D transfer. I can
> > see the logic both ways.
> >
> >
> I have never taken the ADD vs AAD labels on CDs very seriously. They
> seem to be more about marketing than engineering.
>
> Obviously there is a real difference between ADD and DDD, so that
> distinction is used with more care.
>
> You can't rely on stereo versus mono labelling, either.
>
> Regards
> --
> Don Cox
> [log in to unmask]
>