Essential Media Group CD-Rs vs Hot Productions CDs

[ehuerta]

Essential Media Group now owns the rights of many records that were launched by the now defunct Hot Productions. I’ve seen that these new records are CD-Rs manufactured by demand (as stated in Amazon), some of them (Boris Midney’s USA-European Connection) claim to be digitally remastered. As I remember Hot Productions CD’s had poor sound quality and claimed that they were from the Original Master Tapes, some of them sounded like they were recorded from a cassette tape or dusty vinyl records. There are a lot of posts of that issue in this forum.

So, my question is: IS THERE ANY IMPROVEMENT IN THIS ESSENTIAL MEDIA GROUP NEW RELEASES OR THEY SOUND THE SAME AS THE 90s HOT PRODUCTIONS CDs?

Guys, I’d really appreciate any help.

[BrunoRepublic]

I can't give a definite answer, but I strongly suspect that if these are only being pressed on a per-demand basis, it is VERY unlikely that they would've been remastered. I'd be willing to bet that they're merely copies of the Hot Productions discs.

Think it through: Album being pressed on a per-demand basis = label has *very* low sales expectations (i.e. couple hundred units or less; more than that and it's more cost-effective to get proper discs made) = no profit = no sense in spending money tracking down, restoring, and remastering tapes.

Essential Media Group may have the rights to these recordings, but that doesn't mean they have the tapes. Seems Hot Productions was in the same boat.

[FunkyChris]

Listening to samples on junodownload and comparing them to my original Hot Productions cds it seems that they use the old 'masters' :-/