Is Sterling still pressing new releases using those horrible blue CD-R's by Wyastone? (please tell me no.....)
I must say that comparing some older Sterling CDs (Maurice and Schulz-Beuthen) just received from a direct order to Wyastone, they look differently than, for example, the two CDs I've recently recorded (Jaques-Dalcroze and Scherber). The latter have the CD's typical separate center code area "ring" (showing a lot of figures, visible sometimes only on the CD's backside) - and those older ones not, so the older ones could be CDRs. They are not blue, but have an opaque label, and the material looks more plastic-like than the "metallic"- like recent (or "first pressings") CDs, which are reflecting like a mirror.
I presume they do CDRs only of deleted or out-of-stock items, subject to smaller orders - a thing, which I quite understand. I did not notice any sound qualtity difference.
QuoteIs Sterling still pressing new releases using those horrible blue CD-R's by Wyastone?
Sterling is still using Wyastone to manufacture its CDs and, as far as I know, Wyastone only manufacture CD-Rs, so I guess the answer is "yes", but I have no idea what you mean by "blue CD-Rs". Bearing in mind that their recent issues have been of radio recordings, so the sound is never going to be state-of-the-art Hi Fi, the audio quality to my ears is fine and, if you're worried about longevity, make a flac backup as soon as you get the CD to be on the safe side.
Yes Mark; in other words they reprint as CDRs and do only first pressings of new issues as "authentic" CDs.
These CDs don't play on one of my players. Annoying.
It's far from ideal, I agree, but it comes down to the very fragile economics of being a small music label. With the comparatively low worldwide sales of many niche classical albums such as those we enthuse about (2000 is a good total even for the likes of Naxos!) Sterling, and others of course, cannot afford to take the risk of manufacturing the comparatively large number of discs needed to keep the manufacturing costs low enough, and then have them hanging around as stock before retailers buy them. The fact the number of distributors/wholesalers has greatly reduced doesn't help either. So the solution for them is to contract with an on-demand manufacture and distributor such as Wyastone which can not only produce small volumes of CDs to order as retailers order them, but also do so at a low enough cost for the label itself to make a profit. The way they do this is for the CDs themselves not to be mass-manufactured using glass masters, but be CD-Rs. The bottom line is, without that ability, some small labels just wouldn't exist now, and we wouldn't even have the option of moaning about their products.
Exactly so, Mark
And one day we may not even be able anymore to get CDRs - when everything will become downloads! :(
Oh, it's merely an inconvenience. No great problem.
When I talked about "blue cd-r" I was referring to the fact that the Wyastone products that I have possess a distinctly different physical appearance: they're slightly thinner and lighter that a normal cd, thay're not mirror-like shiny, but slightly mat, and they have an unmistakable blueish hue.
The sound quality is inferior because the mastering/pressing problem is different from the one used in the proper cd's.
Two examples: I was able to subsitute my Mehul/Nimbus set and my Bystrom/Sterling cd-r with perfect condition cd's found on the secondary market, and there's a marked difference, at least on a revealing stereo rig like mine.
This without even taking into account frequent and annoying issues of playability on some devices, that do exist.
I just remember having discussed with Bo Hyttner CDR re-issues over a year ago and he told me that he used "another factory" for smaller quantities.
But you may be right too as far as the blue colour is concerned. Holding the CDRs I have received lately against light, they have, in fact, a slight blueish hue! And they are definitely more transparent than the new frist pressings (Dalcroze and Scherber - as well as older original ones).
@hadrianus: if they do not have the blue-ish tinge something (hopefully) must have changed, it's quite evident, and you would not have missed it.
Sorry hyperdanny I have corrected my earlier posting :-)
Incidentally my own copy of the Raff CD 1085 (Suite for Piano and Orchestra) and the whole slipcase reissue of the Huber Symphonies are also such blue CDRs...
Meaning that, after perhaps a first printing of 500 "original" CDs, they automatically switch over to CDRs.
So, we're actually being sold an inferior product. Bad news.
@hadrianus: no problem.
This issue is very well known, for example, in the movie soundtrack fan circles: while here in Europe we still get the regular cd's , in the US many releases , even from major publishers, are actually cd-r's..they're livid about it, and many prefer to spend (much) more and order them from here.
I keep them only when there is no alternative, I am lucky enough and on my main rig the (usually) play, but I am not happy about it
Alan, has that defective Raff "Weltende Preludes" double album been remastered in the meantime? I still don't dare buying it... That's presumably another CDR; can you check your copy?
Another case: some time ago I had bought, through a British professional seller on ebay, two volumes of the Danacord series "the Danish piano concerto" (absolutely magnificent music, BTW).
I got two of those blue cd's..and I raised hell with the seller, because it was clearly advertised as "this is a cd release"
I was expecting some litigation, something along the lines of "you maniac, what are you talking about?"
Instead the must be aware of the proble,. because they promptly acknowledged it was not a cd release, and they refunded with no further ado (which goes to their credit).
Then the funny part: on the Danacord website, I discovered that their Italian distributor is a store that's actually in the next street from the bulding where I work.
Yes, in Milan we still have an all-classical "record store", probably one of the last of its kind worldwide.
It's very expensive but hey, at this point i was fixated.
Lo and behold, they had them both!
Got them, paid 19,50 each...and there's no comparison: where the CD-R's were thin and with a slightly tinny quality especially to the piano, the sound on the real CD's is rich and deep.
AND they play on any device.
You surely mean la Bottega Discantica.
Next time you visit them let Mr. Prefumo (if he is still there) pl. pass him on my best regards - and tell him that I am friend of Potito Pedarra :-)
oh yes it's always the same people there, thank God there's something that has not changed beyond recognition, or altogether gone forever.
Adriano: The Raff double CD set doesn't play on one of my players, so I'm assuming they're CD-Rs.
To the best of my knowledge any Sterling CD manufactured since around 2013 will have been made by Wyastone, and they'll be that company's version of CD-R. That's not just newly released CDs, but also newly-manufactured examples of albums released before Sterling made the swap from their previous manufacturer. I'm not here to defend Sterling, or any other label which releases on CD-R, but streaming and digital downloads are killing off the music CD, although the classical market is collapsing at a slower rate, which means that the number of CD manufacturers is rapidly reducing as the cost of making CDs is going up. With such small production runs the economics is remorseless - see my earlier post in this thread.
Thanks, Mark.
Yes, this is the present situation. In an earlier posting I've said that sometimes in the future we may not even be able to get CDRs anymore - so we will have to manufacture our own CDRs and our own covers/booklets from downloads - if we still stick on physical sound carriers.
No wonder the older major labels are boxing up multi-CD editions of every conceivable well-known composer and performer. They must know their time is short...
We call it, translated from the German, a "last effervence (or flaring up?) before the fall" :-(
I am (slowly) conducting an assessment of my Sterling cd's to ascertain how many CDR's i have and I found out something interesting: I assumed that the Noskowski 3 was going to be one of them, being a recent release, but I am pretty sure it is a real CD...put side to side with the Beliczay (which came out as a CDR from the outset) , they do not look alike at all. No opaqueness, no blue tinge.
Instead the Noskowski 1 I have is a CDR, damn.
It probably depends when you bought them. There must have been a point from which all CDs produced were actually CD-Rs.
@hyperdanny
As already mentioned in an earlier posting: Sterling does a rather small quantity of "original CD" pressings and switch over later to CDRs for reprints.
I just thought that the case of the Noskowski 3 was interesting because framed differently what Mark had written:
"To the best of my knowledge any Sterling CD manufactured since around 2013".
I'm sure Mark has good info, but evidently Sterling is not consistent in this: the Nosk 3 is from 2015 and I am pretty sure the one I have is a real CD.
Converserly, Nosk 1 is from 2009, but I have a CD-R because I bought it late, and thit relaese had already passed into the CD-R production.
I can't explain it, but just count yourself lucky, I guess.
oh yes I am!
..and yes i guess some things are unexplainable....
I even have a DGG CD with works by Arthur Lourié (with Gidon Kremer as a soloist), which is a "blue CDR" reprint - and not an "Arkiv Music"-licensed item.
a DG release on CDR that is not an Arkiv cd? wow, i never heard of such a thing....could it be a counterfeit?
It's definitely not an Arkiv release, otherwise it would be indicated somewhere. That's why I am very much astonished.
The 20-page booklet is complete, but it is printed in unusually shining and darker characters, different than DGG's usual much softer printing brand. Also both the b/w rasterized photos inside and the front colour picture appear as having been reproduced on a more primitive machine.
But who would ever counterfeit such a totally out-of the repertoire CD? Since I have ordered it from the USA, it may be possible that they have allowed their distributor there to make CDR reprints. In an You can believe me, it's a blu, rarther transparent CDR with missing center digi info ring, almost identical to those Sterling CDRs. The label is also 1:1 DGG-like. And everywhere one can read: "Printed in Germany"... Perhaps DGG also started making CDR re-issues of particularly rare titles.
As the thread has moved on from Sterling new releases, I've moved the purely CD-R related posts to this new thread. The original thread is here (http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,7229.0.html).
Thanks very much, Mark :-)
thank you Mark, great idea.
@hadrianus I share your astonishment: I thought that the Arkiv-manufactured CDR's were the only case of DGG reprint licence, in the US, and anywhere else, for that matter.
I had some of them, but with time I was able to discard them all, because the releases I had in my collection were reprinted in Japan as SHM-CD's, an expensive, but very high quality support.
I think the changeover from CD to CD-r for Nimbus/Wyastone Estate labels happened in 2011. That said, their stable of labels has grown since then and now includes Altus, Cameo, CRD, DMV, Halle, Integra, Lyrita, Red Priest, Retrospective, Saydisc and Sterling.
Like Arkiv, Presto now has their own licensed, on demand, CD-R thing. Naxos has been doing CD-Rs of out-of-print Naxos & Marco Polo titles. Albany Records also do their back catalog on CD-R, but I don't know about their new releases. Albany also now warehouses and ships for the Berkshire Record Outlet, and I've been getting more CD-Rs in my orders lately, but that could simply be coincidence, I guess.
Polygram, now Universal, was doing some of their own on CD-R for a while, DG mostly, but I imagine they've quit that and left it up to Arkiv & Presto. Other labels I've gotten CD-Rs on include Bridge, Harlequin, Altissimo!, Rounder, Smithsonian/Folkways... well, the list just keeps growing.
I've ordered titles from Amazon and gotten CD-Rs and then ordered the same title from CD Baby or Amazon UK and then gotten regular CDs. It is all very annoying and hard to navigate. The one thing I can say for sure about CD-Rs is that, in my decades of experience, they are far more susceptible to heat and humidity than regular CDs.
A perfectly understandable attitude, John, and I agree with you about their mealy-mouthed response, but they do state an underlying commercial imperative: "when demand does not justify replicating a CD with a minimum run of 500". Of course labels should be honest about using CD-Rs, but increasingly we're going to have to face the choice between CD-R/digital download or nothing.
Quote from: John Boyer on Wednesday 30 June 2021, 01:54
CD-Rs are a perfectly legitimate way for a record company to keep catalogue items available when demand does not justify replicating a CD with a minimum run of 500. The sound quality is identical and its duration as a media source is up to 100 years. There is no legal obligation to declare the type of media used, however, if you are unhappy with the product you have received, then Guild will offer you a full refund for the item in question but it cannot offer a replicated CD. Please let us know.
I got a very similar quote back when I got an ArkivCD buying through Amazon (waaaaaay back when they were pretty much limited to Marco Polo and a few other labels).
I really don't like being some doom-laden Cassandra about this, but this is how things are going to be, at least in the short term. In the long term it'll be digital downloads, if we're lucky, or streaming only. The thing to remember about King Canute is that he wasn't trying to stop the tide coming in, but rather to demonstrate to his subjects that he couldn't prevent it so, rather than railing against what looks to be inevitable, I suggest that a more positive way forward is to figure out your best strategy for dealing with it. For myself, like so many of us my hearing is no longer good enough to distinguish between CD and digital download sound, so I've gone over to digital downloads (and digitising my CDs) coupled with investing in a house-wide sound system to get a bonus from the change. I'm future-proofed for at least the next few years and I'm happy with that. For now at least.
...and yet many companies are still doing it properly (issuing CDs, that is).
The issue at present seems to be with low-volume labels (like Sterling and Nimbus) and what to do when stocks of "proper" CDs get low, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before "print on demand" CD-Rs become much more common.
Is the situation in Germany different from here? Are there more CD-collectors over there?
Possibly, I don't know but, with global classical CD sales of the sort of repertoire we discuss here in the very low thousands, it'll be worldwide sales of CDs generally which is dictating the trend.