i know i've done a lot of videos about cassette tapes and vinyl records but the music format that
i have more of than anything else even including mp3 and itunes downloads is the compact disc
when i really started to assemble a large music collection they were an obvious choice because
used cds are very affordable they're very easy to find
you have a vast selection to choose from and they have exceptionally good quality
at least when they're done right and unfortunately sometimes they're not
and in this case i'm not talking about things like bad mastering due to the loudness war or
greatest hits compilations that have remixes on them instead of the original versions
that were played on the radio and mtv when their hits in this video i'm talking about
mistakes whether they were due to carelessness or incompetence or lack of quality control somebody
somewhere along the line just not paying attention to the product they were producing
let's start off with this one it's one of those soundalike albums
recorded by a studio band instead of the original artist but that's not the problem here today's hot
movie hits it starts off with i will always love you from the bodyguard then beauty and the beast
unchained melody a whole new world let's put it in our player here and see what it sounds like
it has 12 tracks and it says 12 tracks
but that doesn't sound like the theme from the bodyguard
and that sure doesn't sound like beauty and the beast
and that's not unchained melody it's a completely different
album on the cd than what the label says and what the card says and what the back cover says
they put the wrong cd on the cd it's the first time i've ever seen something like
this happen in collecting over a thousand cds they put the completely wrong disc on the cd
i'm interested to see what's actually on this cd so i'm going to put it
in itunes here see what it comes up as here it is big band hits of the '30s and '40s
by enoch light and the light brigade so that's what's actually on this cd instead of
today's hot movie hits from the early '90s quite a difference
i have two cds here the first is classical music for people who hate classical music it starts
out with sabre dance then finale from light cavalry overture the toreadors from carmen
then next we have more classical music for people who hate classical music it's
a maxiplay trademarked disc with over 63 minutes of music which doesn't seem like
something to brag about because cds have always been able to hold at least 74 minutes of music
let's look at the track list on this one more classical music for people who hate classical
music it starts out with sabre dance excerpt from light cavalry overture the toreadors from carmen
didn't we just see that on the other disc yep it's the same exact track list on classical
for people who hate classical and more classical for people who hate classical
this must actually be more classical music for people who didn't even listen to the first disc
one of the biggest mistakes i've seen is on a cd called billboard number one hits of the '80s
compiled by joel whitburn who is literally the guy who wrote the book
of billboard top 40 hits so you think he would get it right track 4 on that cd is supposed to be
baby come to me by patti austin and james ingram which was the number one hit in 1983
but the track that's actually on the cd is baby
come to me by regina belle a completely unrelated 1989 R&B hit
not the same song i even wrote the correction in discogs this was me
adding this to discogs here where i explained the mistake
and this may not come across well on camera especially if you're watching on a smartphone but
the artwork on this cd is so low quality that looks like a bootleg even though it's an official
cbs disc this is a completely legitimate disc by cbs but the artwork on it is so blurry i
mean even look at the compact disc logo how blur-- it looks like they scanned it in and
then printed it out and you notice here all this is blurry blurry even the barcode is
blurry but here where this is manufactured by columbia house that's perfectly clear
so what i think happened is that when columbia house released the cd they
didn't get a copy of the original artwork so they had to scan in a cd of it that they had
and just copy it and put their disclaimer on it so that's why all this artwork is so blurry
except for the columbia house disclaimer at the bottom here i mean it sounds perfectly
fine i don't have the original non-columbia house copy to compare to but at least just
on its own it sounds okay but the artwork is just total blurriness if you look closely you can even
see the line where they pasted over the original artwork with the columbia house disclaimer
if you've collected cds from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s you may have seen this logo hdcd which
stands for high definition compatible digital it was a method of encoding which claimed to
increase the resolution of cd audio from 16 bits to 20 bits while still being backwards compatible
with regular cd players although in reality the actual audible difference was negligible
so eventually they pretty much gave up on the idea but for a while in the 90s
and early 2000s it was quite common to see hdcd especially on country music cds
for example martina mcbride's greatest hits from 2001 there you can see the hdcd logo on the back
of it and here's something a little unusual to see on a cd from 2001 also available on cassette
and again on the disc itself is very tiny but there is the hdcd logo i'll put it in this cheap
little sylvania dvd player which does support hdcd even though it's not advertised anywhere
there's the martina mcbride cd playing and here at the top of the screen you can see hdcd
and if i go to the next track still hdcd on all the tracks on this cd
but on this lonestar album from 2001 it also had the hdcd logo on it
you noticed i crossed it out because this doesn't actually have hdcd encoding on any of the tracks
maybe you can see through that magic marker better if i turn on nightshot
oh yeah you can see right through that so that's your lesson if you're trying to cover up something
with black magic marker so people can't read it bear make sure they don't have a nightshot camera
there you can see on the disc itself it also has the hdcd logo but i put black marker over it
because no hdcd is on this disc even though it has the logo on the disc itself and on the album cover
here's that lonestar cd playing which swore up and down back and front that it's hdcd encoded
but no logo on any of the tracks
i'll go through all 12 tracks just to be sure and you'll see no indication
of hdcd on any of them so that's false advertising or maybe just a dumb mistake
it advertises hdcd but it's not actually on the disc anywhere
this one i don't know if this is a mistake or just a interesting choice of aspect ratio this
is the 1997 album future signs by the group warm jets and this has hdcd encoding on it
but it gave no indication of it anywhere so i added my own sticker indicating that
and everyone knows that the spine labels on cds are supposed to be oriented like this
with the front of the disc on top and you read it like that and everything's perfectly consistent
until you get that one strange disc where they decided to put it upside down for some reason
and that's not because of the back cover inserted upside down
that is the right way around they just for some reason chose to put the title upside down
same thing with these general cinema theatres discs these have the music they played in the
lobby and during the intermission between movies so we have volume five volume six everything nice
and consistent until we get to volume eight i don't have volume seven but volume eight
upside down volume nine upside down volume ten upside down volume 11 upside down until we get
the volume 12 and then they put it the right side up again but for some reason they switched
from spelling out the numbers to just writing it as numerals so come on guys keep it consistent
and sometimes the use of cd text can let slip out information that they probably didn't intend
for the general public to see here's a set of two cds quiet moments take time you deserve it
soothing collection of instrumental music to relax your senses and nourish your soul and this
has cd text on it that i think was left there by the mastering engineer who made these discs
and they probably didn't intend for that information to be seen by the general public
here's the quiet moments cd and you can see it shows mastering after the name of all the tracks
and they also didn't put the title of the disc in it says untitled disc one so clearly this
was not meant to be the finished text to go on the cd but i guess this is just whatever the
files were named and they didn't bother to change it before it went to manufacturing
as heard on pbs and qvc is quite escape soothing music for relaxation
by the piano brothers and here they are the piano brothers the o'neill brothers
tim and ryan o'neill nationally known recording artists from new prague minnesota they've sold
over 2 million copies of their collections of more than 30 albums of relaxing piano music
here's the piano brothers cd i'll put it in my car radio cd player which supports cd text
and you can see it only lists tim o'neill it doesn't mention anything about his brother ryan
so tim's taking all the credit on this cd
by the piano brothers i wonder if ryan ever saw this and said hey wait a minute where's my name
and this disc takes the prize of the worst cd i've ever owned
because there is no audio in the left channel for the entire disc
i tried playing it on several different cd players and ripping it with several different programs
and it all came out with only audio in the right channel on all the tracks
so they really did master the entire cd with no audio in one channel so that clearly shows the
lack of quality control on some of these disks so here's what we're going to do with this cd
"such primitive technology i wonder if the people on
this planet will ever discover the superior sound of vinyl"
so those are some of the mistakes i've encountered on cds plus a few extras i featured
in previous videos and if you've encountered anything like this on cds you've collected
feel free to share it with us in the comments and again i don't mean things like oh i didn't like
the way the cd sounded or some stupid minor spelling mistake i mean obvious screw-ups
so let us know i'd be interested to hear about it