Jacintha Autumn Leaves: The Songs of Johnny Mercer Numbered Limited Edition Japanese Import UHQCD

The Groove Note Records team of Joe Harley (producer), Mike Ross (engineer) and Ying Tan (executive producer) join forces once again to orchestrate the second release from the label's first artist, Jacintha. Autumn Leaves is a collection of songs by Johnny Mercer.

Autumn Leaves finds Jacintha in excellent form and, once again, delivering several strong performances on many of the songs. One of the highlights of the album is the title track which finds Jacintha singing in the original French intro and first verse as well as the later Johnny Mercer English lyrics.

Groove Note weren't the only ones impressed with Jacintha's vocal prowess; she also caught the attention of Bordertown Pictures (Touchstone Pictures) and a team arrived during the recording session to capture a brand new version of the Grammy-award winning song "Here's to Life." With Jacintha featured on vocals and the backing of Kei Akagi (piano), Teddy Edwards (tenor sax), Larance Marable (drums), Joe LaBarbera (drums) and Darek Oles (bass), the musicianship on the recording is fantastic. Artie Butler, the Grammy winning composer of "Here's to Life" was also in attendance and played the Hammond B-3 organ on the track! The song was featured in the opening title sequence for the Ron Shelton-directed 2000 film Play It to the Bone, starring Antonio Banderas, Woody Harrelson and Lolita Davidovich.

This limited edition MQA x UHQCD includes Jacintha's performance of "Here's to Life" as a bonus track.

All About Ultimate High Quality CD (UHQCD)
Many years have passed since the birth of the Audio Compact Disc (CD) back in 1982. By use of High-Quality materials and a totally different manufacturing method, the definitive version of audiophile audio CD was born. Playable on any CD player, the Ultimate High Quality CD greatly surpasses all previous CDs before it!

The Ultimate High Quality CD (UHQCD):
UHQCD is a radical change to the CD manufacturing process itself. The conventional wisdom about CD manufacturing, which had remained largely unchanged across the world for over 30 years, has been exhaustively questioned. Through this effort, the ultimate in quality was attained - a level of quality that is certainly impossible to achieve with existing CD discs.

The Ultimate High Quality CD was developed through an effort to improve audio quality by simply upgrading the materials used in ordinary CDs to higher quality materials. For the substrate a high-transparency and high-fluidity polycarbonate (a type of plastic) of the type used for LCD panels was used, while for the reflective layer, low-cost, common aluminum was replaced with a unique and expensive alloy of high-reflectivity

Differences in manufacturing methods:
Conventional CDs are produced using the technique of injection molding to form "pits" of data on polycarbonate material. Metal plate on which "pits" representing audio source data are formed is used as a die. This is called the "stamper." Polycarbonate is melted at high temperature and poured into the die to duplicate the pit patterns on the stamper.

This method is efficient because it enables high-speed production, but it does not enable totally accurate or complete duplication of the pits on the stamper. As a melted plastic, polycarbonate is inevitably viscous, so it cannot penetrate completely into every land and groove of the tiny pits of the stamper.

The Ultimate High Quality CD photopolymer is used instead of polycarbonate to replicate the pits of the stamper. In their normal state, photopolymers are liquids, but one of their characteristic properties is that they harden when exposed to light of certain wavelengths. The advantage of this property, perfect replication of very finely detailed pits was achieved. Photopolymers in the liquid state are able to penetrate into the tiniest corners of pits on the stamper so that the pattern of the pits is reproduced to an extremely high level of accuracy. The Ultimate High Quality CD reproduces audio with greater precision and at a level that is impossible to achieve using conventional CD production technology!

MQA x UHQCD
MQA x UHQCD is a high-quality CD that can be played on any CD player. If used with MQA decoding equipment, you can enjoy the listening experience of ultra-high-resolution master tapes.

MQA x UHQCD is made using the British MQA audio "folding" encoding and Japanese UHQCD pressing. First, the high-definition master tape was sent to the UK's MQA Labs for encoding using the MQA audio "folding" method, sealing the high-resolution audio into the CD format, and then pressed by Japan's Memory-Tech using glass CD technology.