hprill0

I bought five of them (all except the Art Taylor) and they all sound marvelous -- full, warm, extremely well balanced analogue sound. Better than the CDs that I own. Great vinyl quality too, not the slightest hint of surface noise, very unlike those other BN vinyl reissues.

You should be able to tell them apart by the catalog number: The US edition is 0946 3 11494 2 9, whereas the EU edition is 0946 3 11495 2 8. If the printed artwork and the disc have different catalog numbers, then someone somewhere made a swap.

Thanks for the list, Big Al, but I noticed that one item is missing: Steve La Roca's Basra (4205) was issued as an RVG Edition in Europe (apparently not in the US?) on March 7, 2005.

Looks as if they are planning to release Here and There as an RVG at a later date.

There was a Blue Note press release earlier this year which said that the Connoisseur Series would be continued.

I first saw a couple of them in shops a week or so ago... I found one reference to a 23 March 2009 release date, so if this date is correct, they may not have arrived everywhere yet. Where I've seen them, they're priced exactly the same as the OJCCD/RVG Remasters/Keepnews releases. Actually, one shop sold them at €2 less. As I said, they're not remastered, just repackaged editions of previously available OJCCD titles, so they'd better not be any more expensive.

Anyway, here's the list of these 50 titles:

My guess is that these are the releases that are being reissued in Europe as the "Collectors Choice 50" series. This series consists of 50 semi-obscure titles, repackaged in super jewel cases, with brief liner notes by Richard Cook (taken from the Penguin Guide). They are not newly remastered, nor did they get new EAN/UPC barcodes, so except for the new packaging they are exact copies of the previously available OJC titles. Interestingly enough, even though I've held several of these in my hands, I haven't found any reference to the series anywhere on the Internet yet.

Finally got around to check this... It seems the Japanese are better at quality control and at figuring out how to index this CD. Both TOCJ-4137 and TOCJ-6609 are indexing the tracks correctly, but both have the same slight drop-out in sound quality around 4:08 in "Blue Rondo" as the new RVG. Methinks this is an issue with the original master tape.

There's also a version of Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch with part of the original liner notes missing... this was corrected with subsequent pressings, but it's still poor quality control.

I have to correct myself here... the faulty RVG edition is also on the EU market. I just received a copy of the EU edition as a birthday present - same problem as the one described here. Let's see if I ever get a replacement for it.

At least this explains why I have been unable to get the new RVG from any local or other European retailer. Even Amazon Germany and Amazon UK are not shipping it and do not list an availability date. Seems the faulty version never made it to the European market. However, all this talk has made me slightly paranoid, so I will now check my two TOCJs (4137 and 6609) for mastering problems...

Sorry, I've thrown them away. In case it happens again, I'll send you a photograph. Not that I'd really want it to happen again though. Those used different dyes in the reflective layer; the Ricoh ones were gold (from around 1993), the Sony ones a greenish silver (from around 1999), but yeah, they were obviously of poor quality. Neither would I; neither did I. Well, duh. If you find blanks that won't ever fail, they won't ever fail. Can't contradict you on that one. I don't know about any studies. I talked to the person in charge of the music department personally during a conference on long-term data preservation. He did not seem amused. The quality of some CDs from the mid-80s seems to have been less than perfect. I have no link, just a colleague who works there. It's not a widespread problem, mind you, but some audio CDs have given up on them. I don't know about that. It's the magazine that said that there are huge differences between CD-R manufacturers, and that some are significantly less durable and produce significantly more read errors than others. They also once did a 15-year longevity test that was passed only by one manufacturer. I do agree with Claude though, that much of what they write seems to be in some correlation with what ads are placed in the magazine.

Silly me. Say "Miles Davis", and for some reason I automatically think Tony Williams. It's Jimmy Cobb of course.

There have also been studies done that show the opposite. The German magazine Stereo has just published an article to that effect in its 12/2008 issue. This is a moot point.

3) Ok, I'll succumb to your nitpicking. The CD-Rs don't disintegrate, but I've seen reflective layers in them disintegrate (holes, literally), and they certainly do fade over time, even though that time varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and depends on the materials used in the manufacturing process. 4) I have CD-Rs from as far back as 1989 that still work perfectly well. I also have had CD-Rs (notably from Ricoh and Sony) that failed after as little as six months, even though they were never exposed to heat or light. A friend of mine has lots of CD-Rs from Platinum that are failing now after about five years. Besides, if you had read my orginal post carefully, it said "can become unuseable", not "will become unuseable". In fact, I was giving them considerable leeway by saying "five years" rather than "six months". 5) The German national library in Berlin first noted in 1998 that the reflective layers in many mid-1980s audio CDs are showing an increasing number of pin-prick holes. The Austrian phonographic library has several CDs from the 1980s that have become unreadable. And no, these were not from the batch that was affected by "CD bronzing". CDs have only been on the market for 24 years. How do you know they last "much, much longer" than that? My professional experience with phonographic libraries certainly says otherwise.

Plus Grachan Monchur, "Some Other Stuff" I believe. Yes, indeed. Tony Williams - Spring (5099926513829) Grant Green - Street of Dreams (5099926514222) Baby Face Willette - Stop and Listen (5099926514321) Jackie McLean - Bluesnik (5099926514529) Horace Silver - Tokyo Blues (5099926514628) Grachan Moncur - Some Other Stuff (5099926515229)

More RVGs being announced for February 24: Tony Williams - Spring (5099926513829) Grant Green - Street of Dreams (5099926514222) Baby Face Willette - Stop and Listen (5099926514321) Jackie McLean - Bluesnik (5099926514529) Horace Silver - Tokyo Blues (5099926514628)

The sound (both on CD and on the vinyl) is not quite up to par with the 1997 remaster (CK 64935). Additional noise reduction to get rid of the somewhat annoying tape hiss has lead to an overall decrease of the higher frequencies, which is especially noticeable in the sound of Tony Williams' Jimmy Cobb's cymbals, which don't sound quite as crystal clear, in the sound of Bill Evans' piano, which now sounds less brilliant and slightly more muffled, and in Paul Chambers' bass, where you can no longer visualize his fingers plucking the strings; instead the bass now tends to boom somewhat indistinctly. Overall, the stereo spectrum seems to be slightly narrower and less clearly defined. This may not be as pronounced on speakers that are strong on treble, but it shows very clearly on mine, which have an extremely linear frequency response. The book is beautiful, but the sound is a major disappointment.

What Chuck said. 1's and 0's are 1's and 0's. Yes, but CD-Rs are more prone to read errors than CDs, so your CD player's error correction may have to guess more of these 1's and 0's because it can't read them properly, resulting in an overall poorer sound.

The difference in sound quality is audible only on extremely good stereos, but the real problem is that CD-Rs can disintegrate very quickly and can become unuseable after as little as 5 years, whereas CDs will hold up for at least 20 years.

As long as you identify them correctly as CD-Rs, there should be no problem selling them on eBay, as they are legal copies. As for "will they be identified correctly", I can say "not necessarily". These CDs are shrinkwrapped, and if a seller is not aware of the little details that distinguish them from the regular CD issue, it is extremely likely that they will think these are regular CDs and will accidentally sell them as such. This has already happened to me. After explaining everything to the seller, he did give me a refund, but this can turn into a major headache for eBay customers and sellers alike. Can't scan it at the moment, but the features to look out for are: slightly washed-out colours, or text that appears unsharp an uncommon, square "Compact Disc" logo rather than the standard one, with "CD-R Media" printed in small letters below it "Manufactured by Amazon.com" printed in tiny letters above the UPC bar code on the back I'll upload a scan of these details later.