[Elephas]

I've bought some CDs marked "For sale only in China" in Hong Kong. They are generally worse quality than regular CDs, in terms of the disc's appearance, the printing on the disc and the packaging. Sound quality is usually OK, but not up to the standards of First Impression Music, for example. I'm not trying to imply your CD is bad, just sharing personal experience.

Hmm, I still don't hear any cracking in "It's Like That."

The background singers start singing, "Cause it's..." at 1:41. At 1:43 they're singing, "my night..." When they pause, at 1:42, the drums in the background do the big thump at the middle right followed quickly by a clap and then the smaller high-pitched drum strikes to the left.

At 2:19 an electronic hi hat type sound pans right to left in the background. This sound effect occurs at other times, for example going left to right at 2:39.

After the hi hat effect ends at 2:22, the background singers come in with "Cause it's, my night..." and Mariah sings in the foreground "It's my, it's my night" at 2:25.

I agree the air and separation of the instruments, sound effects, background singers and Mariah is not the best, but it doesn't sound that bad to me. After listening to "It's Like That" over and over, I'm actually beginning to like this song.

 

[Elephas]

I finally got to "Mine Again" and there is crackling! Yay! (Should I be happy about this??)

There's a lot at the beginning of the song that sounds like bad radio reception or an old record player.

The vocals and instruments sound good, though. The crackling is more annoying in some places and kind of fades in the background at other times.

 

[dj_mocok]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elephas I've bought some CDs marked "For sale only in China" in Hong Kong. They are generally worse quality than regular CDs, in terms of the disc's appearance, the printing on the disc and the packaging. Sound quality is usually OK, but not up to the standards of First Impression Music, for example. I'm not trying to imply your CD is bad, just sharing personal experience. Hmm, I still don't hear any cracking in "It's Like That." The background singers start singing, "Cause it's..." at 1:41. At 1:43 they're singing, "my night..." When they pause, at 1:42, the drums in the background do the big thump at the middle right followed quickly by a clap and then the smaller high-pitched drum strikes to the left. At 2:19 an electronic hi hat type sound pans right to left in the background. This sound effect occurs at other times, for example going left to right at 2:39. After the hi hat effect ends at 2:22, the background singers come in with "Cause it's, my night..." and Mariah sings in the foreground "It's my, it's my night" at 2:25. I agree the air and separation of the instruments, sound effects, background singers and Mariah is not the best, but it doesn't sound that bad to me. After listening to "It's Like That" over and over, I'm actually beginning to like this song.

Elephas,
The CD that I bought actually is printed very nicely in a thick, gloss paper. The CD print is also very good, with sort of slightly embossed print. So I'm pretty sure it's not a fake rip-off.
I think if you got a sub par printing on both disc and cover, you might have purchased the pirated one, thus the sub-par sound quality (compared to original one).

I am not saying that the sound quality of this album is rubbish, it is pretty normal considering that's what we usually get from pop CDs nowadays unfortunately.
It's just that if you wanna analyse the CD, you will find many flaws in it.

But I bought it just to listen to that "We Belong Together" track anyway, not to reference my audio. So I'm happy, at least the quality is better than the MP3 file that acquired previously.

I didn't get to listen to the whole album though. This is my bad habit, only listen to the song(s) that I like and never bother with the rest of the album. I have many albums that I actually had never finished listening to them.