Okay, so a couple of nights ago I was prowling for soundtracks to purchase on Amazon.com. One that caught my eye was Kow Otani's Shadow of the Colossus: Roar of the Earth.

There was no catalog information on offer, but I've had a good streak of luck with purchasing CDs on Amazon.com. I don't think I've ever gotten a bootleg before. So I decided to go ahead and treat myself to a new copy of this album, as I'm a big fan of the game's score.

When it arrived, I had to replace the jewel case because it was damaged (that's the second CD I've gotten through Amazon that's arrived in a damaged jewel case), and after inspecting the disc to make sure it wasn't damaged, I decided to back it up to my PC in lossless (FLAC) format. This is something I do with all new CDs, that way I can put them away and not take them off the shelf again.

Well before I stuck it in the PC to back it up, I took a good long look at the artwork on the disc. The look of it made me suspicious, so I started doing some digging online. When I found a photo of the official Japanese release, my fears were confirmed -- the CD art was completely different.

So I did some more digging. First I looked up the catalog number on the Japanese release (KICA-1379) and compared it to the catalog on my copy (KO-99221). I then found a scan of the back art for the jewel case and noticed that the layout of the text was quite different between the two.

Satisfied that I'd gotten a bootleg, I started looking for information on the distributor of my disc, K-O Records. What I found indicates that it's a company out of Taiwan that's well known for reproducing Anime and Videogame soundtracks for the Taiwanese market. Apparently, it's illegal over there.

Now my question is this -- are these reporductions of an identical audio quality to the original?

Eventually I'd like to hunt down the Japanese release, but until that time comes I figure I may as well go ahead and back this disc up using FLAC. But if the disc was mastered using (for example) a 320kbps MP3 rip of the original, having it on my PC in FLAC would be a big fat waste of space.

As far as I know, the audio quality of a bootleg compared to the official release, is quite worse. I think that you're right when saying that it's basically a low-quality rip.

I think it depends on who the bootlegger is. It's been a long time since I've inadvertantly purchased a bootleg, and I recall reading back then that some were better than others. I've never heard of K-O Records before, which is why I ask if anyone is familiar with them.

Listening to the disc itself through headphones as I type this, I'm not noticing any jump-out issues like artifacting or clipping, but I'm still not sure if it's worth backing up in anything above 320kbps MP3.