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[antenna]

Good question.

From the article...

My dad saw a Facebook post by Ian McNabb of the Icicle Works that he thought I might find interesting, where he shared his opinion on digital mastering over the years, and he made the probably accurate claim that 1980s CDs were often not mastered from the best quality source material, often using second or third generation tapes, and sometimes sounded a bit muddy or lacked detail as a result.

He also made the claim that digital mastering has improved in recent years compared with the Loudness War era (which I'd say is true of some independent releases from recent years but not major label releases which remain as brickwalled as ever).

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/which-cds-from-the-1980s-were-mastered-using-first-generation-tapes.1198897/

 

[antenna]

All I can add to this topic is that, back in the day I had read that many CDs were mastered from 4th or 5th generation copies of the master tapes.  There was a rush to get the CDs out and in the stores.

There was a shortage of CD manufacturing capability, so the record companies took all possible shortcuts to get the CDs into the stores.  Yeah, welcome to the mid-1980's. 

I do notice that the vinyl I have of some albums have a better sound than the CDs I bought in the 1980's of those albums.

And it is not just the "generation" of the copy.

It is also the differing production techniques.

The Brown Sugar song by the Rolling Stones stands out for me,  As I have mentioned here in the past.

[newsposter]

One can always look up the SPARS code for the disc.

(which brings up a question, does MC and YADB support SPARS?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code