Music copy

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Music copy

by GmatGreen » Fri Feb 07, 2014 8:53 am
Since digital recording offers essentially perfect reproduction - on compact discs, digital audiotapes, or digital 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) music, transferring them from one format to another, copying it, and digitally altering it with little effort and not damaging

(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
Source: — Sentence Correction |

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by Patrick_GMATFix » Fri Feb 07, 2014 9:07 am
The underlined portion introduces a modifying phrase expressing 3 ways in which audiophiles can accumulate vast collections of music. The forms used for "transfer", "copy" and "alter" must be parallel. Most wrong answers fail in this respect. The full solution below is taken from the GMATFix App.

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by Bill@VeritasPrep » Fri Feb 07, 2014 11:14 am
Oh man, I remember missing this one the first time I saw it. We need the pronoun "it" to refer to music, so we can rule out A and C for using "them".

Choice D tries to create parallel from between "accumulate" "transfer" and "copy", but transfer and copy are part of the accumulating; they are subordinate to it.

E is a mess of failed parallel form. "accumulate...and transfer..., copying it, and digitally alter."

The transferring, copying, and altering are part of the act of accumulating music, so it makes sense to say "accumulate vast collections of music, transferring it..., copying it, and digitally altering it..."
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by [email protected] » Fri Feb 07, 2014 4:03 pm
Hi GmatGreen,

Both Patrick and Bill have properly explained the correct answer, so I won't rehash that here. I do want to point out that this SC is built around a "3 item list", which means that parallelism rules are required. The GMAT is going to present at least 1 SC on Test Day that is built around this concept, so you should be on the lookout for a list (separated by commas) and make sure that all 3 items in the list are presented in parallel format.

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by [email protected] » Fri Mar 21, 2014 3:32 am
Why can't "them" refer to "collections of music"?
Music is in the prepositional phase!!
Therefore, use of them to refer collections must be correct!?
Am I wrong?

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Mukherjee

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by GMATGuruNY » Fri Mar 21, 2014 5:35 am
[email protected] wrote:Why can't "them" refer to "collections of music"?
Music is in the prepositional phase!!
Therefore, use of them to refer collections must be correct!?
Am I wrong?

Regards,
Mukherjee
In B and C, them has a viable referent -- collections -- but these answer choices are not error-free, so they must be eliminated.
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