I was very intrigued with CDs, especially as a replacement for cassette tape. I started buying them at a rate of about 1 per month. $17 bucks for a classical CD was a lot for me in my youth. Each CD got listened to a LOT! I didn’t ditch LP right away because I had too much music on LP to do that. However I noticed early on that some albums sounded better on LP than on CD. Chariots of Fire was one I remember specifically. On the LP the sound was very immersive and filled the room with spacy effects. And that was from a JC Penny MCS cheapo stereo. On CD it seemed too bright and the sound stage was clear and precise but flat and limited to between the speakers. There were also very obvious low level linearity issues with early cheap CD players like I had, causing flutes to sound unnaturally breathy, and even causing some CDs to exhibit audible buzzing sounds. A few generations later those issues disappeared, but tonality seeming to be too bright on some transfers from older LP releases remained.
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- 88 posts total
- 88 posts total

