Sentence Correction

Since digital recording offers essentially perfect reproduction - on compact discs, digital audiotapes, or videodiscs - audiophiles can accumulate vast collections of music, transferring them from one format to another, copying it, and digitally altering it with little effort and not damaging the sound quality.

A. Same
B. music, transferring it from one format to another, copying it, and digitally altering it with little effort and no damage to
C. music, transferring them from one format to another, copy them, and digitally alter them with little effort and no damage to
D. music and transfer it from one format to another, copy it, and then digitally altering it with little effort and not damaging
E. music and transfer it from one format to another, copying it, and digitally alter it with little effort and no damage to

OA: B
The OE says the object is [spoiler]"music" and hence singular - it.[/spoiler]

So, its about parallelism and SV agreement.
Parallelism in this case is pretty straightforward, but struggled with SV agreement (got the answer right because it was the best choice amongst all)

Question:
1. When I read the sentence for the first time, I immediately thought the answer choices should include "them" and not "it". Why can't "vast collections of music" be the object which are being described by the series of participial phrases - transferring, copying and digitally altering - in which case the answer includes "them"?

2. If option C was "music, transferring them from one format to another, copying them, and digitally altering them with little effort and no damage to", would it be right? Also, could we have option B and this modified option C in the answer choices?

2. How to identify what the object is confidently in similar sentences that could show up on the GMAT and get them right?

Could someone please explain?
Thanks in advance

I will say that this is a tough question to find the object. In fact, I wouldn't even try. The parallelism is clearer to identify here, so stick with that. There is only 1 answer that has all the verb forms correctly.

C would not be correct even if you switched the verbs. The reason is that you are transferring 'music' and not the entire collection. The clue is transferring from one form to another. You cannot transfer collections to a different form.

So, the best way to identify is to look at the meaning of the underlying phrases.

Hope this helps...

Thanks Jim.

Your point about the clue makes sense.

At a first glance, I thought I spotted 2 errors - one in parallelism and other one being "them" instead of "it", so quickly eliminated all answers containing "it". I was surprised that I had to chose answer with "it".

Need to be a little careful on GMAT about eliminating answer choices on tricky questions such as these.

Appreciate the response.

No problem happy to help.

how i answer this question!
Since digital recording offers essentially perfect reproduction - on compact discs, digital audiotapes, or videodiscs - audiophiles can accumulate (accumulate is the main action showing that how one can collect or gather together) one can accumulate vast collection BY:
-transferring
-copying
-altering

But i have some issues
is "audiophiles" a main subject or "digital recording"?
If "accumulate" is the main verb then the original sentence lacks something.

Audiophiles iS the main subject, digital recording is in a subordinate clause.

Audiophiles can accumulate vast collections of music is a complete clause - albeit uninformative.

Hi tommy
Dont you think that the statement lacks a preposition "BY"
it should be like "Audiophiles can accumulate vast collections of music BY transferring it from one format to another, copying it, and digitally altering it with little effort and no damage to the sound quality"

Here is the similar example from OG verbal review 2nd edition
"Like ants, termites have an elaborate social structure in which a few individuals reproduce and the rest serve the colony BY tending juveniles, gathering food, building the nest, or battling"

While there might be some confusion about the usage of "it" Vs "them", it is not logical to think that "collections" are being "digitally altered"; "music" can be "digitally altered", not "collections". So, this serves as a clue that all the pronouns in the underlined portion should be in singular ("it") and not plural ("them").

As posters above have noted, even if we are not able to decide on "them" Vs "it", we can solve this question by parallelism. The intent is clearly to convey that audiophiles can accumulate vast collections of music by doing the following three things:

1. Transferring music from one format to another
2. Copying music
3. Digitally altering the music with little effort and no damage to the sound quality

Hence, grammatical parallelism between transferring, copying and altering is the key. Only B provides this.

I a curious though that you mention it is a "GMATPrep" question and then you also mention "OE". I thought GMATPrep questions do not have OEs...

Thanks Tommy, now everything is clear to me