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The Two CDs

The 1994 West German Target CD

The first CD is the West German Target pressing.

The most immediately noticeable feature is the black spine, along with the distinctive Target-style disc design associated with these early CD releases.

The disc contains the original 11-track album:

1. 1. Monday Morning
   2. Warm Ways
   3. Blue Letter
   4. Rhiannon
   5. Over My Head

1. Crystal
2. Say You Love Me
3. Landslide
4. World Turning
5. Sugar Daddy
6. I’m So Afraid

The disc was manufactured in West Germany and is one of the early Target-style compact discs associated with the original CD era.

There is something rather special about these early Target CDs. They belong to the first generation of commercially produced CDs and have become collectible in their own right.

But I wasn’t interested in the Target CD simply because it looks good.

I wanted to know how it sounds.

The 2004 Edition

The second disc is the 2004 remastered and expanded edition.

And immediately there is another obvious physical difference.

The spine is clear rather than black.

But the differences go much further than that.

The 2004 edition contains 16 tracks, rather than the original 11.

The five additional recordings are:

12. Jam, No. 2
13. Say You Love Me
14. Rhiannon (Will You Ever Win)
15. Over My Head
16. Blue Letter

So before we even listen to the two CDs, we already know that the 2004 edition is more than a simple reissue.

It is an expanded and remastered edition.

But what happened to the original 11 tracks?

Let’s Rip the CDs

Rather than relying on my ears alone, I wanted to make this as objective as possible.

Both CDs were ripped using Exact Audio Copy (EAC), using secure extraction, and saved as lossless FLAC files.

The EAC results were then checked against AccurateRip and the CUETools Database.

The results were excellent.

1994 West German Target

All 11 tracks were reported as accurately ripped.

No errors occurred.

2004 Edition

All 16 tracks were also reported as accurately ripped.

No errors occurred.

The 2004 tracks had an AccurateRip confidence of 200, providing extremely strong confirmation of the extraction.

This means we weren’t comparing two recordings made from a CD player.

We were comparing the actual digital audio data extracted from the CDs.

The First Track: Monday Morning

I started with the opening track, Monday Morning.

And this is where things immediately became interesting.

The 1994 CD has a peak level of approximately:

-2.47 dBFS

The 2004 version reaches:

-0.10 dBFS

So the 2004 version is getting extremely close to digital full scale.

But peak level alone doesn’t tell the whole story.

The average level is even more revealing.

The 1994 version measures approximately –20.6 dBFS RMS.

The 2004 version measures approximately –13.2 dBFS RMS.

That’s roughly a 7.3 dB increase in average level.

In simple terms, the 2004 version is substantially louder.

But I wanted to know whether that was the whole story.

Is the 2004 Version Simply Louder?

This was the obvious question.

If the 2004 CD was simply the 1994 mastering with the volume turned up, reducing the 2004 version by the appropriate amount should make the two recordings essentially identical.

It doesn’t.

I level-matched the two versions, removing the large difference in overall volume, and then compared them again.

There were still measurable differences.

That means the 2004 version isn’t simply the 1994 master with the volume increased.

The mastering has changed.

The Dynamic Range Difference

One of the measurements we can use to examine this is crest factor — the difference between the average level of a recording and its peaks.

A higher crest factor generally means greater separation between the average level and the peaks.

For Monday Morning:

1994: approximately 17.6 dB

2004: approximately 13.1 dB

That’s a difference of approximately 4.5 dB.

And this wasn’t unique to Monday Morning.

When all 11 tracks appearing on both CDs were analysed, 10 of the 11 tracks showed a reduction in crest factor on the 2004 version.

That is a significant pattern.

It tells us that the 2004 mastering has generally been made louder and denser.

It does not, by itself, mean that the CD is clipped. High peak levels and clipping are two different things.

The Whole Album Tells the Story

This is where the comparison becomes much more convincing.

Rather than looking at one song, I analysed all 11 tracks that appear on both CDs.

The average RMS difference across the album is approximately:

5.3 dB louder on the 2004 edition

Every single one of the 11 common tracks is louder on the 2004 CD.

The graph makes the pattern very easy to see.

The 2004 version is consistently louder across the original album.

But What About the EQ?

This was the next question.

Perhaps the 2004 mastering was simply compressed and made louder.

To test that, I removed the volume difference by level-matching the two versions.

Then I compared their frequency spectra.

And again, the results showed that the two CDs aren’t identical.

The broad album-wide differences were approximately:

The important point isn’t each individual number.

It’s the overall shape.

After the overall volume difference was removed, the 2004 mastering still showed less energy in the very lowest frequencies and more energy through much of the midrange and upper frequencies.

So the tonal balance has changed too.

A Picture Tells a Thousand Words

Put the two discs next to each other and the physical differences are immediately obvious.

The black spine and clear spine are only the beginning.

The artwork, disc design, catalogue information, packaging and track content all provide clues that these aren’t simply two identical CDs from different production runs.

But the really interesting difference is something you can’t see by looking at the discs.

It’s in the audio data.

Eleven Tracks, Same Conclusion

The strongest evidence comes from looking at all 11 tracks common to both editions.

Every track is louder on the 2004 CD.

Ten out of eleven have a lower crest factor.

The frequency analysis also shows a different tonal balance after level matching.

This means we can confidently say that the 2004 edition is not simply the 1994 mastering with the volume turned up.

There has been a change in the mastering.

And Then There Are the Five Bonus Tracks

The 2004 edition adds five additional recordings.

These aren’t relevant when comparing the mastering of the original 11 tracks, because there is no corresponding recording on the 1994 disc.

But they are still an important part of the comparison.

The 2004 CD therefore offers something the 1994 Target doesn’t:

additional material.

So Which One Is Better?

Now we get to the difficult question.

Which CD sounds better?

The measurements can tell us what changed.

They can’t tell us what you will personally prefer.

The 1994 West German Target

• Lower overall mastering levels
• Greater peak-to-average separation
• More headroom
• A different tonal balance
• The original 11-track album

The 2004 Edition

• A substantially higher average level
• Peaks much closer to digital full scale
• Reduced peak-to-average dynamics on most tracks
• A different tonal balance
• Five additional recordings

If you prefer a mastering with greater dynamic headroom and less aggressive level management, the 1994 Target is likely to be the more interesting choice.

If you prefer a louder, more forward presentation and want the bonus material, the 2004 edition has obvious advantages.

The Conclusion

So, what’s the difference between these two compact discs?

Quite a lot.

It started with something as simple as noticing that one had a black spine and the other had a clear spine.

But once the discs were ripped and analysed, the differences became much more substantial.

The 2004 edition isn’t simply the 1994 CD with the volume turned up.

Across all 11 tracks common to both editions, the 2004 version is approximately 5.3 dB louder on average.

Ten of the 11 tracks show reduced crest factor.

And after level-matching the recordings, there are still measurable differences in frequency balance.

In other words, these are different masterings.

The 1994 West German Target represents a much more conservatively mastered presentation, with greater peak-to-average separation.

The 2004 edition offers a louder, more forward mastering, a different tonal balance and five additional recordings.

So the answer to the question I started with is:

The difference isn’t just the spine.

The two CDs may contain the same Fleetwood Mac album, but they don’t contain exactly the same sound.

And now that we’ve got the measurements, the question becomes a much more interesting one:

Which one do you prefer?