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As good a guess as any I've heard. I had a chat 10 years ago with one of the guys who created the Roksan line of audio equipement, Touraj Moghaddam. He is a mechanical engineer and his babies are his turntables. His company also developed CD players, of course, and he had interesting things to say about the challenges. He said a lot of the trouble was in the drive servos, spindle/laser carrage/focus/pointing. They created complex dynamic draws on the power supplies, which were hard to isolate completely from the other supplies. What's more, the system wouldn't respond the same way twice to a particular disc. He asked me if I ever noticed that sometimes a disc doesn't sound quite the same way two times in a row. That took me aback, as I figured it would be me at fault, not perfect sound forever. -----Original Message----- From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tom Fine Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 3:01 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Audibility of 44/16 ? One story I'd love some science applied to that's related to this -- are there _really_ any differences between BMG Music Club CDs and the original issue CDs? I've read several things over the years stating that BMG Music Club versions of Mercury CDs sounded "inferior." But the few BMG versions I have are bit-perfect replicas of the originals, so the bits is the bits. What else could be "wrong"? Did anyone ever do any tests to compare baked-in jitter for both discs, assuming BMG even used a different glass master? I'm also mystified by recent reviewer statements that the new box set CDs sound "better" than the originals (they sound the same to my ears), but in those cases, with all the pre-1998 catalog numbers, they are indeed using parts made from different glass masters from the US originals. The reason was, US production was done at Philips-DuPont in North Carolina and everything else was done at Polygram in Hanover Germany. Today, everything is done in Hanover, using the Hanover manufacturing parts. The other difference I've suggested to reviewers is mechanical playback. The original US CDs had shiny/slippery cores around the spindle hole. Modern CDs are somewhat rough and also are lighter net weight (by an ounce or more, according to my scale). So they might present fewer mechanical problems for a player, at least that's my theory (ie they get gripped harder because of the rough surface and spin easier because they weigh less). -- Tom Fine