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Why Does CD Sound So Good?

Over the years, I’ve tried countless variations of system components in order to find the best sound. CD players, CD transports, DACs, streaming DACs, iPods, iPads, phones, computers, amps, tube preamps, you name it. System types include home audio, car audio and headphone audio. There has been a consistent recurring trend: After I’ve played around for a long time and mixed and matched components, I always find a CD player to deliver the best sound.

Sure my laptop computer and DAC sounds really good in my 2-channel rig, but my much lower priced CD player sounds more musical and more listenable, which is really what matters to me. 

In the car, I’ve got radio, XM Radio, streaming through my phone, playing files off my phone, etc. and yet the CD sounds best.

In my headphone rig, I’ve tried fancy DACs and headphone amps, tube buffers and preamps, better power cables and power supplies, etc. and yet a portable CD player has gone the furthest in making my headphones sound the best.

The CD consistently outperforms any streaming player I’ve tried. Don’t get me wrong, there are non-CD based solutions that sound fabulous, but I find myself always going back to the CD in the end. I find a properly setup CD-based system to have non-fatiguing highs and tight, accurate bass; the former being an absolute requirement for me. I don’t care how good the system measures or how expensive the gear is if the sound is fatiguing in any way. That’s a hard line I draw in the sand and one I refuse to negotiate on. It can’t be fatiguing and it has to be musical.

Where I’m lost for an explanation is the “why” behind all of this. In theory, a CD player shouldn’t be so good. We’re spinning a (usually wobbling) disc at many RPMs and trying to track it with a laser and then error correcting what we can’t read. A solid state hard drive or even a normal hard drive should have a walk in the park acquiring the data and should sound better because of it. My phone should sound excellent having solid state memory, being battery powered and having very short signal paths between the memory, DAC and output stage, and yet a cheap $25 portable CD player blows it out of the water.

So why does CD sound so good?
128x128mkgus
brayeagle
362 posts
 
magister,

Walcha sends me emotionally, as he has figured out how a blind man can play the organ.

I saw a video several years ago showing how Walcha first listened to the diapason line, then built on it. Of course, assistants had to set the  stops for him.    Still, the music that man makes is etherial. I'm always in  awe, listening to him.

cheers
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,475 posts
 
brayeagle

Same experience here...

My best my friend...
glupson
7,842 posts
 
It is nice to see so many people have similar experience. I thought I was alone in it.

Streaming ripped CDs through the CD player’s DAC is still slightly less good than CDs themselves. At the same time, I have not tried more than ten CDs on this CD player. To me, convenience of files is worth more than relatively small advantage in sound.
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,475 posts
 
To me, convenience of files is worth more than relatively small advantage in sound.
Glupson I had so many files (flac mainly now wav and 24 bits one also) that keeping that in material forms would be impossible...And most cd cannot be listen to more than 1 or 2 times... All music is not pure genius tough interesting...Exploring music implicate listen to thousands of cd....I think the same than you about files...

And except for a costly cd player the sound of a cd dont beat a lossless file...And my computer is tweaked so much and my electrical grid that the sound of a lossless file is better than a cd on an ordinary cd player....
cakyol's avatar
cakyol
940 posts
 
Coz it is not compressed like MP3 or other formats.  CD samples at 44 khz ( 1,411,200 bits per second) and that is more than enuf to losslessly reproduce all the way to 20khz.  Furthermore each sample is 16 bits wide giving you approx an amplitude spread of about 65000.  That is how you can get it to produce such quiet & such loud passages.  Most analog systems can not match that.   It is good enuf for every human being on this planet.  There will always be some people claiming that they can hear beyond that with more sampling.  Do not believe them, unless they have any dog genes in them.
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