CUETools DB
Reply #8 –
As I said elsewhere, consolidation is a good thing. If the audio data stream is identical, it shouldn't matter that the pressing is, even if the pressings have different TOCs.
There is a problem however. Some pressings may differ by more than an offset, TOC or even different amounts of non-null samples at the edges of the disc; some pressings actually have transfer errors that exist on the glass master. We certainly don't have CUETools "correcting" a track that was ripped correctly that has no audible glitch with data that came from a later generation pressing that has an audible glitch. If I had a pressing ripped accurately with an audible glitch, I would personally prefer that it got corrected using data from a different pressing removing that glitch. I don't suspect that there's an easy solution to this, but I think people should be aware that this is a real phenomenon.