EMM Labs on Bad Redbook

Don't know how well the Meitner does, but I can say that it is not a truism that the better a system gets the worse badly recorded CDs sound. Though I also had this misconception, over the years we have found that, like everything else in this hobby, blanket statements of fact are rarely true more than, oh, say, 50% of the time.

This concern of how to build a system that allows us to play (yes, and even listen to) older CDs is one which we share - as we were young(er) and no smarter then than we are now at the time of the early 80s and so foolishly bought up new CDs as if they actually had the music on them that was displayed in the pciture on those tiny little pieces of paper showing through their often cracked and chipped plastic containers; this picture (and, as we came to discover, the music on the CD itself) often resembling in some lilliputian way the covers (and music) of LPs that we knew and loved. ;-)

Luckily, some tube digital seem to have a way of creating music out of too-few-bits and somehow do it in a way that is able to communicate the original feeling and instensity of the music. Luckily, it also helps that in a lot of the badly recorded music of the early to mid 80s, not a heckuva lot was really going on in terms of the complexity of the music (though, of course, there is also stuff like King Crimson, Frank Zappa, etc. are just plain hard to render on any system - no matter how good the recording is).

For example, we have found the Audio Aero Capitole to be excellent and making bad recordings sound decent, the Audio Note DAC 3.1x Balanced and 4.1x Balanced also, though slightly less so. It would seem that other tube CD players (like the Cary) and DACs (like the Zanden) might also do a good job (I have no extended experience with these regarding this matter of The Infamously Awful Sounding CDs).

This is not to say that solidstate digital is unable to render a bad CD in a listenable fashion - just that it seems that many do not (Levinson, Krell, Wadia, etc.) and do infact do as badly or worse than cheaper CD players.

Enjoy!
-Mike (Audio Aero and Audio Note dealer with lots of bad - and, yes, quite a few good, as well - sounding CDs)

VVrinc, VVrinc, VVrinc, ...

“If we don't sell it, it must be crap.”

This "blanket statement" would perhaps be a truism, regarding digital, if we ever add the Burmester, Meitner, Ensemble, MBL, Zanden, Weiss, and perhaps the Northstar and Audio Synthesis lines and mods of various others and who knows what else.

Many people *do* try to optimize the sound of good recordings and do not give a care about how bad those bad old recordings sound.

But, oh yes, the topic was whether high-end digital sounded worse than low-end digital playing horrible recordings. I said nay and provided examples and counter-examples. Sorry this offended you.

Later,
-Mike

Hi Metralla,

Well, there are a number of categories:

1. Plain bad sounding CDs (beatles, early pressings of led zepplin, etc.).

2. There are a number of bad sounding CDs whose remastering made them sound better which indicates that it was the orignial pressing/manufacturing that was at fault (Verve early stuff versus their stuff on 20bit, Miles' Sketches of Spain versus the same on DSD, etc.)

3. There is stuff that sounds so much better on vinyl that one must only conclude that the CD must have been badly mastered (led zepplin, dire straits 'brothers in arms' (even the $$$ XRCD pales before the quality of the analog))

4. Then there is stuff that sounds bad on both vinyl and CD that makes one question the quality of the original recording itself (al green, dean martin (yes I like dean martin :-))

AS per the above topic, however, one need but play a CD on, say, our Levinson 390S and then, say, the Audio Aero Capitole - and if it sounds nasty on the first and decent on the second we have a member of the set of bad sounding CDs that can be made to sound better by chosing one's CD player carefully [though, I would personally argue, as I do not beleive all CD players sound the same, that depending on the choice of the first CD player, in this case the levinson, that ALL CDs might possibly be members of the set :-)].

Unfortunately we are updating our house from the 70s and when we moved out the few hundred CDs we took with us did not include bad sounding CDs, strangely enough :-) nor our Levinson 390S. So the last in-home test bad CD, an old Buffalo Springfield, is in a box in a stack of boxes somewhere :-(

At shows, we have used Miles' Porgy and Bess as a test 'bad CD' which was close enough to the accepted fair that we did not get thrown out of rooms for playing it.

And as far as 'infamously', that has to be reserved for the Beatles, does it not? - some of the best music ever produced that a whole generation got to listen to on really awful sounding CDs.

P.S. It was great to see you at CES. I have been wondering for awhile what you thought about those BIG Wavacs on the ESP speakers...

Take care,
Mike.