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Some people have collections of fancy import cars, others have Elvis plates. I have Who's Next.

In my never-ending quest to figure out exactly what the hell the story is with all of the various MCA pressings, I picked up yet another copy today. All of this concerns 4 copies in particular:

Made in Japan, inner ring "MCAD-37217 1A1 6X"
Made in Japan, inner ring "MCAD-37217 1A4 6X"
Made in USA, BMG copy, inner ring "D170350 4/95 2DC8"
Made in USA by Digital Audio Disc Corp, inner ring "DIDX-152 21A2" *

* CD-R, details per SH

First the easy stuff - the two Made in Japan copies are identical bit-wise as far as I can see. I haven't loaded them in EAC yet, but in an inversion test they cancel out totally.

This is where it gets strange. Neither the BMG or DADC copies match the speed of the Japanese copies exactly. Nor do they match each other. Yet it's clear they are all from the same original digital transfer. Line up a spot in the middle of the song, do an inversion test, and while things only cancel out in the one single spot, they do cancel out - completely. It's as if the BMG and DADC copies were both somehow pitch adjusted digitally, very very slightly.

The question then is, what kind of process - especially one from the mid-80s - could take digital audio and adjust its speed ever so slightly? Considering I've seen CDs made a decade apart (on MCA no less) that don't have this problem (even when one has only half the songs of the other), it's really, really strange.

A 17 second sync of the Japanese and DADC versions. It's pretty easy to tell at which point I lined them up:

LAFK-invert.mp3

Funny you should mention this because I brought up this topic at SH.tv about 2 years ago:

Steve's Who's Next Pitch Problem?
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=17455

Yeah, I remember that thread. As I see it, though, it sheds no light whatsoever with respect to Luke's question.

The pitch problem you referred to is plainly audible, and almost certainly done in the analog domain, right? I don't think any of those versions you were comparing are even close to being digitally identical with the SH verison.

Dob, I was comparing the SH US DADC with the non-SH Japan. The SH CD runs slow in comparison. And yes, my guess is that it was done in the analog domain.

All of the discs above have the same basic mastering.

As far as I know, the non-SH MCA runs too fast, while the various SH versions run at the correct speed.