They’re calling Japan’s premium CD formats the new “green marker” snake oil.
A Deep Purple Machine Head UHQCD costs ¥2,800 ($26) in Japan. A Beach Boys SHM-CD runs ¥5,000 ($46). Standard pressings of the same albums sell for about ¥1,500 (~$14). Both formats cap out at the same Red Book specification that has governed every CD since 1980.
The ceiling is 44.1kHz sampling and 16-bit depth, no matter what the disc is made of. Same ones and zeroes, same output at the DAC.
So why do some of these premium pressings genuinely sound better? The answer has nothing to do with plastic.
When a Zero Is Just a Zero
Digital audio stores information as discrete binary values. A 0 is a 0 and a 1 is a 1, regardless of whether the laser reads them off bargain-bin polycarbonate or JVC Kenwood’s proprietary SHM blend. There is no “better reading” of binary data. The disc either delivers the correct bits or it doesn’t.
Troll Audio put this to the test with an oscilloscope, comparing a budget Naxos disc, a premium Deutsche Grammophon pressing, and a UHQCD on a Philips CD150 player chosen specifically for its sensitivity to disc quality.
Some audiophiles argue entry-level players benefit more from premium discs than high-end systems. Even if marginal jitter differences exist at the transport stage, those differences vanish at the DAC. And anyone buying $30 UHQCDs is unlikely to be spinning them on a $50 player.
Head-Fi users comparing EAC checksums found SHM-CD and standard CD rips produced identical files when the mastering source matched. Mastering engineer Barry Diament, one of the first to cut CDs at Atlantic Records in 1983 with credits including AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, put it bluntly.
“Absolutely no difference between it and a standard CD,” Diament confirmed.
The measurements are settled. But some premium CDs do sound different from their standard counterparts, and the disc itself deserves none of the credit.
What Labels Don’t Advertise
The trick works because labels pair new remasters with premium disc formats. Buyers hear an improvement over their old pressing and credit the polycarbonate. They’re not wrong about the sound. They’re wrong about the source.
Blue Note’s 85th anniversary UHQCDs make the point cleanly. Those discs feature Kevin Gray masters, the same tapes used for the Tone Poet and Classic vinyl reissues. The sound improvement comes from Gray’s remastering, not the disc substrate.
Audiophile forums keep reaching this conclusion on their own. “My SHM and Blu Spec CDs don’t sound noticeably better than the standard releases, except where different masters make their differences obvious,” noted Redditor xdamm777.
Labels don’t advertise this conflation. And the willingness to believe in material-level improvements isn’t new. Three decades ago, the same community fell for something even more absurd.
This Happened Before With Green Markers
In 1990, audiophiles became convinced that coloring the edges of their CDs with green felt-tip markers improved sound quality. The theory held that green ink absorbed stray red laser light bouncing inside the disc, allowing cleaner data retrieval.
Companies jumped in. AudioPrism sold purpose-built green pens for $30. Krell, a respected high-end manufacturer, released CD players that bathed the disc tray in green light. Sony studied the phenomenon. The audiophile press gave it serious coverage.
Then Stereophile tested it and found no measurable differences in data retrieval. The green markers quietly disappeared from catalogs.
The parallel to premium CD formats is exact. Green markers and SHM-CDs both claim optical reading improvements that cannot survive measurement.
Both generated commercial products priced for believers. Both tap the same psychological impulse that drives this cycle. But audiophiles want simple, tangible interventions that make expensive systems sound better.
Buying the Sleeve, Not the Sound
Sometimes a premium Japanese CD includes a genuinely superior remaster. Labels could ship that remaster on a standard disc for half the price. They don’t, because the premium polycarbonate is the story that justifies the markup. The obi strip and the fancy packaging sell the rest.
Diament has been mastering CDs since 1983, when he was one of the first engineers to cut for the format at Atlantic Records. His verdict on premium formats hasn’t changed.
The mastering is what you hear. The plastic is what you pay for.
You can’t wish more resolution out of 16/44.1 format. You can, however, invest in DVD-Audio, SACD, and BD-Audio. Hell you can even download those formats if you have the means to decode them. Physical formats have been defunct for a while now.
I am a bit confused. Are SACDs not considered to be any better than standard CD’s? To be honest, I have never even heard of the formats mentioned in the article, but I would like to clarify things as it relates to SACD. Thanks.
Well, up to a point you are right. But, as you say yourself, SACD, DVD Audio, Blu Ray audio and Atmos music on disc make physical media worthwhile. Streaming Atmos music sounds terrible, while listening to a multichannel Atmos disc ( one of Steven Wilsons, for example) can be sublime.
Also, if you buy a cd you own it, which appeals to a lot of people still. In addition there is stuff you just cant get in streaming or file form.
And, just like with vinyl, some folks like the ritual of playing a physical disc. Its all good. I stream, but still have over 1000 cds, all digitised years ago, but still played. I buy special editions and box sets in both cd, vinyl and Blu Ray, and have recently invested quite heavily in multichannel music.
But then I also listen to reel to reel and even cassette if Im feeling nostalgic.
The more formats the merrier.
I have one CD, Springsteens “Born to Run” in a long box, that has a gold reflective layer. At the time a Rep for Deltec Audio ( I believe now gone) told me the gold was going to be the next thing for audio nirvana, but the discs would be at least twice the price. ☺️
Dude, do you know what defunct means?
I still buy physical media, and infact, the physical media space has started to expand/grow again.
Streaming sux, specifically streaming video, I have a 2Gb/s connection, ridiculously fast wifi, and pay for the top teir subscription in everything… and yet a 1080p physical BR plays at like 20+Mb/s while the 4k stream is never more than 7Mb/s and looks horrible.
Streamed audio, even the tidal labled lossless audio is lower bitrate than CDs and I can hear it through my headphones.
But the notion than physical media is defunct is utterly ridiculous to anyone that knows the definition
You can get 24bit lossless albums from bandcamp for $8.99. Any format is the same price.
Gold CDs are even better; it has to do with jitter, error correction, and durability.
OPEN the listening room doors.
The biggest freebie I ever invented.
It’ll cure 50 percent of your listening ills.
Simple .
Over treated rooms are simply horrible to music.
OPEN THE DOORS.
As many as you can at least . Not as cosy but by God it’s a game changer that the journos have thanked me for but they’ll never pass it on.
Thank me later.
Missed opportunity to not reference HD-CD, which does provide for an improved sound on the same disc.
My ears beg the differ.
I deal with digital audio a LOT, and from my experience I can tell you it is definitely the final studio master that determines the playback quality, not the type of disc. Digital audio is digital audio, it always plays back perfect so long as the disc is intact. I think the real advantage of these higher quality discs is their physical durability. A lower quality disc may play the same when brand new, but may be more susceptible to wear and damage which could lead to issues with playback quality after prolonged use.
Everything in this article makes total sense. Audioquality-wise CD is CD. I’d wonder though, if higher quality CDs degrade slower? I know that CDs will generally not degrade fast but they do over the decades. If you’re collecting, maybe then it is not a complete waste of money to buy something that will withstand the grind of time a bit better. But I guess that’s hard to test.
An external DAC connected to a CD drive will provide a better quality sound than a CD player with integrated DA converters And there are variations of that too. depending on the DAC. Those expensive CDs have remastered recordings which will sound better when playing on quality HiFi components.
The green marker phase. Remember when that happened. What a joke. People love their snake oil.
After building a home studio, run an indie label and BMI publisher out of my home, I learned in the 90’s that marketing is critical. But in mixing and mastering, it is clearly garbage in, garbage out. When I pressed vinyl and CDs, the mastering I did was critical, but the replication involved generations removed from my masters. Factory production of cassettes were always limited by the production process, not just by the analog tapes. Remastering of classic recordings, I’m all in on that, always have been. But most average people need something shiny and new in their hands to tell the world they got something special. For me, I’ll take remasters, carefully mixed and mastered, not to come to 0 db of crushed loudness. I did that for radio play back then, but without musicality from silent to loud, it never seemed worth the bother to me.
True in that “its the master, not the medium” that makes a difference in sound. Example: I just bought the Japanese “Green Marker” Supertramp “Breakfast in America” SACD. Not advertised as a “remaster.” I also have the A&M “Remastered Series” 44khz redbook of the same title. Despite the green marker being “SACD” (higher sampling rate), the A&M “Remastered Series”sounds MUCH better.
The only advantage the “Green Marker” might offer is the quality of the physical pressing. I have a few 30 yo “standard” CDs that are suffering from “CD Rot” where the reflective aluminum layer, which hosts the digital “pits” information, begins to deteriorate. Usually starts from the outer edge, inward. I have one CD so bad you can see hold it up to the light and see the holes. Unplayable.
“Green Marker” might be better, but it might take 30 years to determine!
Digitally remastered CDs from Columbia Records of Billy Joel’s 70s era releases sound amazing in the digitally remastered sound
i don’t think we needed any more proof “audiophiles” by and large are fools and they and their money are gleefully parted by every grifter on the market. vinyl has always sucked as a medium and unless your parents were bats your hearing sucks, deal with it.
You got that right
So why can some cd sound freaks when the other realy sound great? That all we pay for. Just imho
It may be about the mastering but I am of the strong view Japanese CDs just sound clearly better. Have a listen to any Japanese Blu spec Dylan CD and you will know what I mean!
Maybe the substrate *lasts longer*? I have CDs from the 80s that have this weird mould or something that makes them unreadable.
A bit is a bit. Either on or off. It’s a digital format. The makeup of the bits on ‘special’ CDa cannot possible have any effect on the sound. Any change would be a read error.
You absolutely cannot change the tone, warmth, spatial feeling with different CDs assuming the track recorded was the same source .on both mediums.
Impossible. Don’t care what you say. There is no difference. It’s digital. Any difference over what was recorded is a read error.
Audiophile are suckers
Is this like the Blu-spec CDs?
This article misses some really important distinctions doesn’t it?
Comparing a $50 player’s ability to recover errors vs another end player, comparing a standard polycarbonate CD with a specialized, highly transparent polycarbonate resin SHM-CD… the issue is not if the different discs rip in a computer player with the same EAC checksums — the issue is do those four different scenarios all play the same on a set top system.
The real misunderstanding I had for years was that bits on the disc = bits in the DAC and that all playback without skips would be bringing the same bits to the DAC.
My understanding now is that CD PLAYBACK INCLUDES ERROR CORRECTING CODE (ECC) meaning that if the disc is scratched or the player gets a dirty or imperfect read then it makes up the missing data – ie you can get less than ideal playback, and while most ears don’t notice, it is slightly polluted or distorted sound.
So if it’s true that ECC is used then isn’t it also true that a better CD plastic could improve playback due to lack of errors? I do doubt there are many errors on a clean standard CD but saying identical EAC rips prove the two discs are equal in quality misses the actual use case, right?
To actually test you’d need a player that allows optical out and a way to capture the digital stream and then to compare the standard polycarbonate vs the SHM’s highly transparent polycarbonate.
I agree that the result probably is that they are the same. I don’t agree with the reasoning used here by comparing EAC player outputs alone.
Real world: a cheap player may or may not be able to play the two discs the same. Or an old player with a failing laser may not also. These are all cases at the fringes though. Cheap probably works well. Aren’t these doubting reasons people keep overspending? Call me doubtful but practical.
As a good friend of mine often says: “it’s an impressive thing to get musical enjoyment by watching an oscilloscope. Well done!”
The only measure one needs to appreciate how good/better/worse the music is, is their ears and their heart. Let them be the guide. Engineers tend to listen to electrons, it’s not the same.
I agree, so long as that friend isn’t pushing cable risers and power conditioners to assist the ears and heart.
SHM-CD (Super High Material Compact Disc) is a high-fidelity audio format developed by JVC Kenwood and Universal Music Japan, first released in 2007. They use a superior, transparent polycarbonate plastic—originally designed for LCD screens—that allows for more precise data reading by lasers, resulting in lower jitter and reduced distortion.
They may measure the same under ideal circumstances (a good player) since they have the same data, but anything that improves tracking (I think better plastic certainly would) then a lesser CD player might benefit.
SHM are not anymore “High Fidelity” than regular CDs!
Japanese CDs used to come with special mastering, IMHO …