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'Unlistenable' early digital recordings?

Obviously, today’s engineering of digital masters is far superior than the early years. Some say that many CD’s from the early years are ’unlistenable’. I used to agree. But, over the past couple of years, I’ve spent considerable effort to clean up the power to each of my digital components. Now, early CD’s are quite listenable. They might not be ’audiophile quality’ but the music comes across just fine. No more digital nasties. No more glare or etch in the HF. No more excessive boominess in the LF. I’m definitely a clean power convert. So much so, that I recommend cleaning up the power before upgrading to a new DAC. What’s your experience?

steakster
erik_squires
15,675 posts
 
Don't forget the DACs.


They've gotten so much better over the past 10 years, especially with Redbook playback.



tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,538 posts
 
Early cds can sound very good or very bad, just like more recent pressings. Early playback gear was more often the problem.

Some people prefer 1980s vintage cds because their dynamics are not as compressed as many, but not all, cds mastered since the early 1990s. You have to decide which release of a particular album you prefer on a case by case basis. Power conditioning can help too, of course.
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,424 posts
 

In the rush to get CD’s to market in the format’s early days, record companies used the old production masters made for the pressing of LP’s. Those LP-mastered tapes had their low frequencies filtered out to make the records playable by the cartridges the vast majority of consumers owned, and the highs were boosted to compensate for the losses incurred during plating, pressing, etc.

Newer recordings in most cases have not not mastered for LP pressing, and the sources used for mastering haven’t been subjected to the same filtering as were the older tapes. But as many have noticed, they ARE being compressed so as to create a higher average-level (louder) signal.

lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,393 posts
 
Some record labels adapted to digital technology better than others in the early to mid 80’s. Deutsch Grammophon was way behind the other classical labels and released terribly harsh CDs for years. Their multi and close mic’d recording style combined with new digital technology produced many unlistenable CDs. Since the problems are on the master, there’s no going back to fix them. Although, they keep trying to remaster these discs.
It’s a shame since many of the great conductors and orchestras were under contract with DG.

It’s true that many of the "unlistenable" CDs in all genres can now be reproduced well by modern components. The control of jitter and clean power contribute greatly to digital playback.

geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
My vote goes to Ry Cooder’s Bop til you Drop. 
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