Some of your fave CD releases?

Well, seeing as most of my fave CD albums are part of my prog collection, it seemed only natural to list them all, and the total comes to a nice round number too. 

I'm not sure what the difference is. All of my prog albums are specific favourites, unless you want me to list just one favourite album by each artist. 

I'm not sure all the lightbulbs make you see more brightly. 

No list from you, Grumpy?  

I got a DM from the OP to participate in this thread, so here I am I guess, lol

I collect everything on CD (I don't stream and don't collect vinyl), so technically my favorite CD releases are just my favorite albums, but here's some of my favorite specific issues/editions that I have:

-The Beatles - 2009 Stereo Box set. The CDs all come in great looking digipacks (they were also released individually like this IIRC), the sound quality is brilliant, and it's one box that collects everything you'd need, since it includes the Past Masters compilations and the Yellow Submarine album. I really hate it when you have a box-set and it doesn't include non-album singles and B-sides (looking at you, Pink Floyd...seriously, they couldn't print one measly extra CD to include all the non-album tracks?), but thankfully The Beatles' catalog has had the two Past Masters volumes as being part of it standardized since the late 80's.

-Zappa 2012 remasters. Zappa's CD output before this contained a lot of alterations and just infamously bad versions, and this standardizes everything back to normal. On top of that, they look great together, and there's some important post-mortem releases (like Lost Episodes) and even unreleased stuff like Finer Moments included in the line. The only downsides are that the Zappa in New York reissue in this set is still the god-awful early 90's Zappa remaster (so you'll need the 40th anniversary version, since that remaster is as good as worthless), that Ruben & the Jets is the 80's version (so you'll need Greasy Love Songs instead - though real fans would want both), and that Uncle Meat still include the penalty tracks. Orchestral Favorites has also since seen a better-sounding version (the 40th anniversary one), and if we're nitpicking, it would've been nice to have the extended version of Gumbo Variations instead of having to get that through the recent Hot Rats box set. The recent 200 Motels rerelease also finally brings that album up to date, though it contains one extremely annoying (to me) detail: the text on the end-label is centered instead of right-aligned like all the other remasters.

-2010 Black Sabbath remasters. I think they only did the original 8 Ozzy albums for these. They have really nice packaging, and sound better than the 2004 version that I had.

-Alan Parsons Project - The Complete Albums Collection. This apparentely doesn't exactly have the best dynamic range values if you compare it to some earlier issues (not that dynamic range always says everything), but they sound great to my ears. I've got a lot of other box sets besides this one and the Beatles one, but a lot of the time I can tell they're a bit loud, despite the nice packaging (or in the case of my Todd Rundgren Bearsville box, it sounds great but has a butt-ugly box). This one looks nice and sounds good.

-Brand X - Nuclear Burn. This is an absolutely ugly as sin box with the albums spread over the 4 CDs in a less than ideal way. BUT, it's also a very, very cheap way to get their first 6 albums plus about 35 minutes of bonus tracks recorded at the BBC (including two non-album tracks). So as long as you primarily buy CDs to import on your computer, this is a fantastic value.

I'm also collecting some King Crimson 40th anniversary versions, which sound great and look fancy, but I also have some gripes with the way the look. But I'm sure once I finish that set that it'll be among my favorites as well, seeing as they literally stand out visually.

By the way, David_D, you didn't really explain why those specific releases are particularly interesting.

There can be pretty dramatic differences in (re-)mastering, packaging and included bonus tracks.

I can tell that all my CDs make up today about 30% of my entire music collection, and the main reason for my buying CDs 

is the possibillity by my programmable CD player to listen to "my own versions" of albums where I skip some tracks and/or 

listen to them in somehow another order than the original. I do it mostly with 55-65 minutes albums, as they're too long for 

me to listen as single albums, and too short to listen as double albums (with two listenings). I do it also with 70+ minutes 

albums if I don't find them interesting enough to listen to as double albums. 

Besides that, there're several other reasons for my buying CD releases instead of LPs.

I can understand that - it's quite a bit - and your informations here are interesting too.