Record label tape-erasure practices corrupted early CD releases at the source

Evidence

A sad fact: some people responsible for master tape archives obviously felt that LPs were the final stage of audio evolution and sometimes, to save expensive tape, allowed original master tapes to be reused, preserving only the pre-processed LP cutting tapes. Obviously, any CDs made from these tapes were corrupted at the source, explaining some disappointing experiences with the new medium when LP and CD versions of the same recording were compared. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 157

Categorization

• SHARE: Perfect for a friend who insists early CDs sound bad — the master tapes themselves were degraded, not necessarily the format.
• XREF: Connects to the ‘parental/market choice format war’ thread — a format-battle data point where the presumption of source superiority is false. — connects to: Survey data-file encoding artifacts can corrupt key variables. — Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington, Why Did the Democrats Lose the South?…, 1022