Replicated CDs don't sound as good as the original

[Muxlow]

I just re-read my post. It sounds a lot angrier than I meant it to, so try to get all the way to the bottom before yelling back

...my wife is my manager and she is putting a tremendous amount of pressure on me to let this go. We are seriously behind schedule and desperately need to be out on the road giging because our funds are very low. My main concern is the magazine reviews, I want them to have the best sound quality possible when doing the write up.

Listen to your wife, for several reasons. One, because there's nothing more annoying than some audio snob complaining about imperceptible differences. Two, because if your songs are so weak that these imperceptible differences are going to get you bad reviews, then you deserve bad reviews. Three, because I review a lot of albums and whoever reviews your album isn't going to give a rat's ass about something you think you hear 5/7 times. Not one rat's ass will be given!

Honestly man, just LET IT GO. No one cares if it isn't exactly the same. Hell, most people out there listen to MP3s at 128 and think it's fine. And you know what? They're right! If you hear a difference, it's not right for you, but for them, they don't hear it and they don't care. Besides, do you think that every Beatles LP you bought and loved as a kid sounded exactly as it did when they cut it in the studio? Of course it didn't. Did that bother you? Did that lessen your enjoyment of their records? If it did, you have bigger problems than I can rant about...

I'm a designer, went to college for four years, learned how to create beautiful, smart, avant garde design like they do in Europe, and I got pretty good at it. Then I got a job and started doing work for real people, and you know what? They didn't give two [bleep] about my pretentious art crap. Why? Because it doesn't matter. Hate to break it to you, but it doesn't matter. If they can read the information and see the picture, they're happy. Same thing with audio. The people involved in audio put so much emphasis on it than the people that actually listen to it. That emphasis is great because it produces great stuff and technological breakthroughs, but in most cases - especially in the home studio realm - that emphasis and the time it consumes does more harm than good.

Spend your time writing songs. Spend your time promoting your stuff. Spend your time working the album to the press. Stop fussing with blind taste tests, phase reversal, bit-for-bit, glass mastering rip speeds, blah blah blah.

Let it go. Move on. Listen to your wife...

It simply doesn't matter...