Here Today... Gone To Hell!

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ABOUT SHM-CD

The high quality SHM-CD (Super High Material CD) format features enhanced audio quality through the use of a special polycarbonate plastic. Using a process developed by JVC and Universal Music Japan discovered through the joint companies' research into LCD display manufacturing, SHM-CDs feature improved transparency on the data side of the disc, allowing for more accurate reading of CD data by the CD player laser head. SHM-CD format CDs are fully compatible with standard CD players.

I emailed Mr. Ludwig about this and here was his response:

Hi Sal,

Thanks for the nice words.

I haven't heard this process, but I CAN tell you that by far not all CDs sound the same.
The biggest difference is usually whether they glass-master the CD at 1x or 4x (the 1x being much better) and how the pit depth is developed.
These other factors that JVC mention can play a part as well.
It might be fun to get a copy and compare. Without question, it was made from a clone of the same digital stream that was used for the US pressing.
Regards,
Bob

Got my copy today from Japan. The artwork actually looks clearer than my U.S. edition - especially the lyrics on the pages for "Riad" and "Sorry."

Love that it comes with a booklet that looks like stereo instructions (black and white with Japanese writing) which contains Axl's lyrics in Japanese.

I will listen to it tomorrow and see if I can detect any difference in sound.

I'm also interested to hear if the bubbles in "Prostitute" are more prominent on this disc.  :P

I look forward to hearing your impressions of it. I will import if there is noticeable improvements. But, goddamn it already sounds brilliant but I am a tech whore so....

I will have to wait until tomorrow to crank it.  Looking forward to it.  I'll post comments about it when I do.

I had the SHM version of Chi-Dem for about a week now, and yes in my opinion there is definitely a noticeable improvement, I would recommend anyone with a decent Hi-Fi system to get a copy of the SHM disc, it really does sound better!

See my mini review in this thread http://www.heretodaygonetohell.com/board/index.php?topic=53972.0 (http://www.heretodaygonetohell.com/board/index.php?topic=53972.0)

 :beer:

Where's the best place to order this edition?

For me in Australia the cheapest was http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/list_from_code_banner.html?key=57281 (http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/list_from_code_banner.html?key=57281)
If your buying from there and getting anything else at the same time (Total over 3000yen) get a discount voucher here http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/offers/coupon_and_gift_drawing.html (http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/offers/coupon_and_gift_drawing.html)

This is digital media. If the data is uncorrupted then there can be no difference or should I understand this so that regular CDs usually contain corrupted/unreadable data? I doubt it to be honest. If someone who understands what digital data means and can explain why this is better this then please do. I don't like links so ctrl-c, ctrl-v please. Thanks. Sorry for sounding like a moron. I'm tired.

I'm also having a hard time believing that regular CD players suck so much that they can't reliably read regular CDs.

The CD format while being digital does have it's flaws, this forum is not the place to go into a long winded discussion about the CD format as a whole, but one of it's biggest flaws is "jitter" where the timing between the 1's and 0's gets messed up.
That's why a quality CD player will trounce any cheapo CD player and most DVD player's for CD playback as the digital clock and other circuitry is optimised for the redbook CD format.
The quality of the disc also has a big impact on the resulting sound, I remember when CD was first becoming mainstream, most CD's produced in Australia back then were terrible, that's what led me to start importing a lot of CD's from overseas as the quality difference was easily audible. 

That is the idea behind the SHM format and a new "Blu-Spec" CD format from Sony, to reduce jitter and other errors, and from what I have found with the SHM version of Chi-Dem is that it does make a difference and give a much improved sound over a standard CD.

 :beer:

It's a LONG story.  

Under IDEAL conditions, so with perfect manufacturing processes, equipment etc. etc., you're correct.  They will still be the same.  The data is encoded onto the disc in the EXACT same way etc.    IT'S THE SAME DATA ON THE DISC.  

However - in reality it's different.  Remember back in the day when CDs came out, they were touted for a short time as being scratch resistent and all that stuff?  There's a good reason why they went down that path.   The reality is that to read data from the disc, the CD player shoots a laser to the CD.  The laser actually passes through the clear plastic to the underside of the label, it's not reading the bottom of the disc, it's reading the top.   So even with a pristinely clean CD, if there are any minute manufacturing irregularities or impurities in the plastic disc, there is the chance that the laser's reflection may not come back correctly.

CDs use a bunch of technologies to get around errors.  They can re-read, they distribute data across the disc (data is not written in a linear fashion), they do parity checking, they do interpolation and they can then skip/mute sections of music if data just cannot be accurately read using these methods.   So when you listen to a disc, even if it sounds absolutely perfect to you, you don't know how much error correction has been done in the process of getting the data off the disc.  

By using a better plastic layer, there is less chance of errors being introduced during the read process.  

The discs will still get dirty, scratched etc.  But these discs are at least less susceptible to errors caused in the manufacturing process - to some degree.