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Is revealing always good?

I recently bought a very revealing and transparent CD player (and AVM player). Because I listen to redbook CD's and 705 of the CD's I listen to are jazz recordings from ca. 1955-1963 the recordings often have bad "digititus." The piano's ring, clarinet is harsh, transients are blurred --- just the nature of the recordings. With a revealing CD player, all this was palpably evident so much so that at least 1/2 those CD's were rendered unlistenable. Now, with a cheaper, more colored CD player (a new Creek) --- not nearly as revealing --- one that "rounds off" some of this digititus, these CD's are again listenable.

So... is revealing a particularly good thing for redbook CD playback? I think not. is "colored" always a bad thing? I'd say no. At least for CD playback. Thoughts?
robsker

Showing 2 responses by kijanki

kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
In my revealing system some CDs were unbearable but changing speakers solved the problem. Now it is even more revealing but never bright. There might be many reasons for brightness including some metal dome tweeters, amps with deep negative feedback, jitter, electrical noise etc. Covering the problem with overly warm/colored component is not the way to go IMHO.

John Siau, technical director of Benchmark, stated:
We designed the DAC1 for maximum transparency. If you want to add warmth, you can't add it with a DAC1. Personally, I do not like what warm sounding equipment does to the sound of a piano. Warmth is wonderful on vocals, guitars and certain instruments, but it beats against the streched overtones of a piano. The overtones in a piano occur at slightly higher than harmonic ratios, and these create beat notes with the exact integer ratios produced by electronic equipment (and speakers). Too much harmonic distortion will make a piano sound out of tune.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
Bombaywalla, to me it also means "low distortion & accurate sounding". Many low-end systems sound muffled to me and that might be good in comparison to open sounding low-end systems projecting brightness harshness and distortion, but to me revealing is the objective. I had problem with many CDs sounding harsh or bright with new revealing DAC and amp. Changing speakers made sound even more revealing but pretty much all CDs sound good now.

Early CDs were digitized with jittery A/D converters. The only way to fix it is to digitize them again if original analog master tapes still exist. They will sound harsh but would you make your whole system less revealing just because of that?
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