I have had the same experience. BB King and Eric Clapton "Riding with the King" has a cut on it that distorts on a lead guitar solo. Also the Eagles first album has a cut that also distorts with a guitar solo for a few notes. It's not the equipment but bad recording techniques. It is VERY annoying!!
CD Distortion
This must have come up in the past, but I'm having a hard time finding threads that discuss it. Anyone know of links to a discussion of distortion on CDs?
I've been working a heck of a lot of hours lately, listening to a Thinkpad T60 running XP sp2 with iTunes (all current) and lossless audio ripped from my CD collection > Airport Express > optical cable > Grace m902 > Senn 650s. There are a lot of tracks on a lot of CDs with a weird buzzing distortion. Most of my collection is early music and jazz.
The glorious CD "A Love Song" by Percy Heath is just one case in point. Track 4, "A Century Rag," at about 0:25 to 0:35 there is a piano solo that peaks with an annoying buzzing distortion -- as if there were a loose piece of sheet metal in the room. There are plenty of other tracks in my collection like this -- someday I'll compile an OC list...
Late the other night I decided to get to the bottom of this. I started swapping out components. I switched headphones. I listened to the CD instead of the ripped version on iTunes on the Thinkpad. I ripped the CD lossless onto my wife's g4 Mac laptop and connected the Mac's USB to the Grace. I used the wife's bookshelf JVC CD player to play the CD > optical cable > Grace. (Sure, the Mac sounded better than the Thinkpad -- fine, stop torturing me, there's nothing I can do about that right now.) But the same track, same spot, still has audible distortion.
So now I'm getting angry (as my friend guessed right away when I started this story with him - I was on a serious deadline at work). I drive to the office and pick up my Arcam CD-72 and connect that to the Grace with a Zu FireMine coax cable. Same noise.
The next day, in desperation, I put the CD into my livingroom rig. This is a nice basic-audiophile set of components that are hardly current or state of the art but a solid rig (Micromega Stage 6 > Linn preamp > borrowed Boulder AE-whatever power amp > Sonus Faber Grand Pianos -- all with decent but affordable interconnects). The point is, none of the components are in common with my work rig except the CD itesefl I turn up the volume on Century Rag and the distortion is still there.
OK, so what gives? Is this just bad studio technique on the recording? Is this a known artifact of the red book CD standard?
I'd sure appreciate any links to an informed discussion on this topic.
I've been working a heck of a lot of hours lately, listening to a Thinkpad T60 running XP sp2 with iTunes (all current) and lossless audio ripped from my CD collection > Airport Express > optical cable > Grace m902 > Senn 650s. There are a lot of tracks on a lot of CDs with a weird buzzing distortion. Most of my collection is early music and jazz.
The glorious CD "A Love Song" by Percy Heath is just one case in point. Track 4, "A Century Rag," at about 0:25 to 0:35 there is a piano solo that peaks with an annoying buzzing distortion -- as if there were a loose piece of sheet metal in the room. There are plenty of other tracks in my collection like this -- someday I'll compile an OC list...
Late the other night I decided to get to the bottom of this. I started swapping out components. I switched headphones. I listened to the CD instead of the ripped version on iTunes on the Thinkpad. I ripped the CD lossless onto my wife's g4 Mac laptop and connected the Mac's USB to the Grace. I used the wife's bookshelf JVC CD player to play the CD > optical cable > Grace. (Sure, the Mac sounded better than the Thinkpad -- fine, stop torturing me, there's nothing I can do about that right now.) But the same track, same spot, still has audible distortion.
So now I'm getting angry (as my friend guessed right away when I started this story with him - I was on a serious deadline at work). I drive to the office and pick up my Arcam CD-72 and connect that to the Grace with a Zu FireMine coax cable. Same noise.
The next day, in desperation, I put the CD into my livingroom rig. This is a nice basic-audiophile set of components that are hardly current or state of the art but a solid rig (Micromega Stage 6 > Linn preamp > borrowed Boulder AE-whatever power amp > Sonus Faber Grand Pianos -- all with decent but affordable interconnects). The point is, none of the components are in common with my work rig except the CD itesefl I turn up the volume on Century Rag and the distortion is still there.
OK, so what gives? Is this just bad studio technique on the recording? Is this a known artifact of the red book CD standard?
I'd sure appreciate any links to an informed discussion on this topic.