So, someone maybe took regular CDs (or those fancier ones with the added acronyms) and copied them onto CD-Rs and sold them at even higher prices?

Does that article really have an ¥825,000 "Internet radio" or network music player?

Jeez, they just keep making more of this swill and I'm sure there are some "audiophiles" that keep lapping it up!

I found a few others too.

Like Master Quality Gold Compact Disc - MQGCD--as if having the reflective layer on a CD be gold will make it sound better. It's reflecting! Not conducting!

Didn't MFSL make Gold CDs in the 80s too claiming to be master quality as well?

Then there's K2HDCDs, where the claim is "K2 HD Mastering enhances the sound spectrum to a bandwidth of 100kHz and 24-bit resolution, while retaining all the charm of the original recording. K2 HD mastered CDs offer extended nuances, dynamics and musicality and are playable on any CD player." But it's still 16-bit/44.1KHz. Aren't most CDs made today from 24-bit or higher masters? So it's just a remaster.

Lastly here's one I haven't been able to find any information on ARMCD. It's another one on "24 Karat Gold CD." Hard to see the text on the cover of that Carpenters album, but I think that says "Apex Resolution Mastering." A google searched turned up very little on that.

Yes, you already mentioned them earlier in this thread.

The intent was probably in good faith. Gold was not about conductivity, it was about corrosion.

Industry is using cheap aluminum that -- we all know it very well in the LD world -- oxides and creates laser rot.
The idea was to use an inert metal that does not corrode with oxygen like aluminum over a long period of time.

But CDs being single-layered, it doesn't seem to have really mattered in the end. My mid-80's CDs still play just fine 40 years later.

Julien

Ahhh, that makes sense.

If only they made actual gold LDs (rather than just the yellow colored acrylic we have seen before), we'd never have laser rot! Of course, that would probably up the price considerably on LDs since two 12" diameter discs of gold is a quite a bit of the shiny stuff.

While single layer CDs with rot are rare, there is a lot of talk of "disc rot" from the retro gaming community on some Sega Saturn and Sega CD games since some report "pinholes" in the reflective layer of the discs. When I traded in my Dreamcast and games, the game store checks for these things and found one of my games with a pinhole (game was Gunbird 2), but thankfully it still played without issue.

I'm guessing this also happens on Playstation 1 games, but we can't really see them due to the polycarbonate for those games being pitch black!