[LAU] Mastering the meaning of mastering and "original master recording" in the digital age

Folks,

I've got music ripped to my hard drive (hybrid wavpack for the curious),
and i'm a little obsessive about my tagging. I've got a 'mastering' tag
wherein i put the name of the mastering engineer and whether or not the
track is an "original master recording". These original master recordings
are usually DCC, Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs or Audio Fidelity labels.

So now i'm staring at the rest of my collection wondering what to put in
there. These original master recording discs are older (20+ years) when
mastering was analog.

My questions are:

Most recent CDs were mastered digitally, therefore is the original
master equivalent (at least in quality) to the CD i own?

At about what year did most CDs become digitally mastered, rendering
original master recordings moot, if they are?

I *swear* i remember buying CDs when they came out and they used to tell
you how things were mastered. Didn't they used to indicate AAD, ADD, DDD
for (recording, editing, mastering)? Why did they stop doing this?

Is there any way to tell/reasonably guess if a CD has been digitally
mastered without those codes?

Thanks,

-- 
Bearcat M. Şándor
Feline Soul Systems
Voice: 872.CAT.SOUL (872.228.7685)
Fax: 406.235.7070
Jabber/xmpp/gtalk/email: bearcat@email-addr-hidden-soul.net
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Yahoo: bearcatsandor
AIM: bearcatmsandor
My public pgp key is included for verification of my identity

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Received on Sun Apr 7 20:15:02 2013