So at Pacific Mall, there’s this place where you can get 10 CDs for $20. Great deal no? so feeling adventurous, I intended to continue to my 2006 CD buying. First thing though, while the deal was 10 CDs for $20, each album was a 2 CD set, so what you were really getting was 5 albums for $20. Ok, not too bad, still a good deal. Oh yeah, you also had to buy 10 err 5, you couldn’t say pay more for fewer than five.

I had no doubts that these albums were of questionable legality, but they were cheap so worth the gamble. One that caught my eye was Now 20, promising “Best of 2006 Hits” (wow it’s from the future). It looked alright even though they listed Balck Eyed Peas, FAT MAN SCOOP [sic] and many songs featring artists, so I got it.

Once home, I queried Gracenote to see if these were actual CDs or not. To my surprise, it was actually Now 20. Popping the second disc in, it was actually pretty funny to see that it was a replica of Now 16! It was also about this time that I noticed the CDs weren’t even pressed, they were burned!

So onto the music itself, I was afraid that the people who made the discs simply burnt some MP3s onto CDs, as I wanted CD quality versions to rip. It is still inconclusive to me whether or not this is what they did since some of the tracks that I encoded had a suspiciously low average variable bit rate and sounded slightly worse than their 192kbps illegally ripped brothers from North America. But there were also some tracks that seemed to have a legitimately high average VBR. So I can’t tell.

Anyways, if you care about having good quality rips, it would be best to stay away from shady Chinese deals on CDs.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: CDs, chinese