Rare Earth Ma UHQCD

The 17-minute, funky title track "Ma" opens the sixth studio album with the provocative smile cover - and Rare Earth show once again that long tracks and "Temptation" remakes are their specialty. After the previous album "Willi Remembers", which consisted exclusively of the band members' own compositions, the expertise of an experienced producer was once again relied upon: the songs all come from Motown icon Norman Whitfield and his long-time collaborator Barrett Strong. Through this move, the rock/funk band returned to their usual successes, the album sold millions of copies and is reminiscent of the good times on the dance floors of the 70s.
UHQCD stands for Ultimate High Quality Compact Disc and is a joint development of the Japanese CD replication company Memory-Tech and the Audio Quality CD Company from Hong Kong. Unlike conventional CDs, UHQCDs are not pressed from polycarbonate, but are cast from a photopolymer and cured with UV light. To protect the softer photopolymer from scratching, another layer of high-purity polycarbonate is applied. The combination results in a significantly reduced reflection of the laser light inside the CD and an unrivalled precise edge transition between pits and lands of the CD. UHQCDs are 100% compatible with normal CD players. Musically, the result is a sound that is strongly reminiscent of analogue master tapes.
The discs offered by Universal Japan are additionally encoded with MQA (Master Quality Authenticated). If you output the digital signal from the digital output of your CD player or the previously ripped data stream of your music server to a corresponding MQA-DA converter, you can generate a 24-bit signal with up to 352 Khz sampling frequency from the CD data.
While the first UHQCD series of Universal Music Japan used the DSD data of previous SHM-SACD releases, albums that had not previously been released as SHM-SACD are now also being released with increasing popularity. Typically, the master tapes of the Universal Archive are converted to DSD and then post-processed with the appropriate MQA encoder. Thus, the UHQCDs are ideal for music lovers who want to get as close as possible to the sound of the recording, but do not have an SACD player.

Selections:

1. Ma
2. Big John Is My Name
3. Smiling Faces Sometimes
4. Hum Along And Dance
5. Come With Me
6. Chained
7. Fresh From The Can
8. Fun House
9. Ma
10. Ma