I've recently just purchased Ys I&II Chronicles OST brand new from VGM World.  I hear popping sounds on the second CD, track 9.  I'm just wondering how common is it to have sound artifacts or imperfections on brand new cds like this?  I'm kinda disappointed that there are imperfections on a brand new cd.  Is there a good wav editor for this?  Thanks.

It could be a mastering issue that occurs on all prints of that CD.  I don't own it so I can't say for sure.  Could also be your CD player.  You could try finding a rip of it online to see if it has the pops as well.  Better yet, I recommend ripping your CD with EAC if you haven't already tried.  Use it in Secure Mode and see if the pops are still there.  EAC uses quite a bit of error correction, so when it gets to track 9, watch it carefully to see if it's having trouble.

spiffy, thanks for your help.

I just checked out that track via my rip from the original album, no popping sounds.  It's either your CD player or album, likely the former, but I would do what Miker recommended.

And EAC also lets you use Accuraterip, though that doesn't always work. But if you rip the whole CD and all but that track matches up, then you can be pretty sure it's your CD.

(Incidently I recently got a 3CD set of classical music that has skipping on each disc, and EAC has no trouble ripping at all -- and the skips remain in the rip. No accuraterip for it yet, though)

Thanks for the help.  It looks like it's the album itself, I believe.  I've listened to the actual cd on my notebook, desktop, and ps3 and I still hear the pops.  I've ripped the CD thru EAC to a wave file (with no read or copy errors and an accurate rip - confidence of 1) and tried to remove the pop through "glitch removal" option, but it's still there.  How is it possible that my album has the pop on that track while another person's album doesn't?  I thought they were all made from one master album or something, excuse my incompetence as I'm not familiar with the process of making music cds.