"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
...
In rec.audio.tech Jeff Findley wrote:

A guy I work with used to work at a CD plant and from what he
understands
from working there, the type of media used to deliver the master to the
CD
plant could make some difference. If the media was digital, then the
CD's
pressed would be exact digital copies, but if the media was analog, that
meant that what the plant got was going to be an "AAD" CD with the
additional possibility that the CD plant's analog to digital conversion
might not be as good as what could be done by a recording/mixing studio.

SPARS Code
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_Code


When was the last time anyone delivered analog media to a CD pressing
plant? Was this something done in the early 80s?

I always took 'AAD' to mean that the CD was mastered digitally --
redundant, really, since by definition all CDs involve digital
mastering.

I believe this was actually the early 90's, but he did say by then
delivery of analog audio to them was becoming less and less common.
Still, he still tends to avoid buying AAD CD's based on what he saw going
on at the plant since you can't tell from the AAD code who did the
mastering from the analog tapes.

Jeff

I always purchased CDs based on the quality of the music. The SPARS code was
irrelevant to me, but I always took comfort that if it said AAD, it meant
that the master tape ensured adequate dithering for the CD. :-)