Sockpuppet: Blog tag:sockpuppet.band,2026-05-14:blog 2025-10-16T17:02:38-07:00 Review: Kunaki CDs 2025-10-16T17:02:38-07:00 2025-10-16T17:02:38-07:00 urn:uuid:bd900f8d-d25f-5652-ad3f-e40f65eb21d0 fluffy My first batch of CDs from Kunaki arrived today, and here’s a brief review of how they turned out.

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My first batch of CDs from Kunaki arrived today, and here’s a brief review of how they turned out.

(Short version: They’re great!)

I ordered a set of one of each of my first 12 CDs that I had set up with them, namely:

I placed the order on October 13, and the order was shipped out the very next day, and arrived just two days later, even though they were shipped USPS Media Mail. They came direct from Kunaki’s manufacturing facility in Sparks, Nevada.

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Every single CD came shrinkwrapped and felt very professionally-assembled. The print quality is also quite good, much better than from the other short-run manufacturers I’ve used. The downside is that they only support two-panel inserts, so for some of my legacy releases I had to scale back the artwork; this was particularly sad for Refactor and Love and Monsters, both of which I had a full spread set up, and on this rerelease I had to pare it back considerably.

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But the color quality is great and it turned out exactly as I’d expected. (It looks much better in person than what this picture from my unsteady phone camera would indicate.)

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Also, because of the minimal insert capabilities, on some of the releases where I didn’t have better ideas of what to put inside, I opted to squeeze all of the lyrics onto a single panel. While you’ll probably need a magnifying glass to read it, it’s still perfectly sharp and readable.

The only complaint I have is that the layout teplates Kunaki provided were very minimal and it was difficult to get an idea of where the bleed/crop/trim/bend marks would be, and they don’t seem to be symmetrical. As a result, the spines are a bit inconsistent and not quite up to professional standards:

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But it’s Good Enough for now and it’s only the back-facing spine that seems to be affected. I’ll definitely be tweaking my layout templates going forward, though.

Anyway, the other thing I was concerned about was the print quality for the CD labels themselves, and I’m happy to say that they look fantastic.

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As far as the actual CD replication goes, I was impressed to see that even though they’re burned CDs, they look just like a pressed CD to me. And of course, the CDs play just fine in both my Playstation 2 and on my Windows computer with its external optical drive.

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And, thanks to the gapless mastering from Bandcrash, the tracks all flow exactly as they’re intended to, with no extra gaps. The albums that I uploaded using Kunaki’s per-track uploader do have two-second gaps between them, unfortunately, but going forward I’m always going to use Bandcrash for my CD authoring, because it Just Works and is a hell of a lot easier to deal with anyway.

So, anyway, yeah. Kunaki’s output is great and while I wish they had a four-panel insert option and slightly more flexibility in their authoring process (like supporting CD-Text and such), their output is professional and I absolutely recommend the service to anyone who’s interested in short-run CD manufacturing and drop-shipping.

]]> CD upgrades on the honor system 2025-10-13T13:12:11-07:00 2025-10-13T13:12:11-07:00 urn:uuid:2ab29eaa-636a-5e18-8d49-c5afb806dc89 fluffy I’ve finally gone and set up on-demand CD manufacturing for a bunch of my albums. However, because of how CD sales work on both Bandcamp and Mirlo, I can’t easily offer a discount to folks who have already bought the album digitally, and also the shipping rates I have to charge through those sites are not optimal, especially for international customers or people buying multiple albums at a time.

]]> I’ve finally gone and set up on-demand CD manufacturing for a bunch of my albums. However, because of how CD sales work on both Bandcamp and Mirlo, I can’t easily offer a discount to folks who have already bought the album digitally, and also the shipping rates I have to charge through those sites are not optimal, especially for international customers or people buying multiple albums at a time.

So, for now I’ve come to a compromise: if you want to buy just the CD of any of my albums, you can do so directly through Kunaki. Note that these versions do not come with downloads, and more importantly, since I’m only charging minimal markup over my own costs, I ask that you only buy the CDs there if you’ve already bought the album digitally (including via one of my discography bundles).

Using that link will give you the best shipping rates (especially if you buy multiple albums at a time or are outside the USA) and is also a lot less hassle for me, so it’s a win-win.

On that note, if you want to buy a CD for an album you don’t own just yet, it’s actually a bit easier and cheaper for everyone if you buy the album digitally and then use my Kunaki store to get the CD. Or, you could buy just the CD and rip it yourself like it’s 2003, and then send me a few bucks some other way to make up the difference.

Anyway, now you have choices for obtaining more collectible forms of my music without it being super expensive.

Thanks for listening!

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