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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
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,838 posts
 
"Conversely, hard rock/metal music sounds really bad on an excellent CD player- I live w/ this. "

I find hard rock/metal sounds similar on my system to what I hear live in different venues. That for all kinds of music is what I strive for with my home setup. The room end up being the biggest bottleneck in that it is hard to reproduce the sound of a large venue in a smaller room. Other than that, no complaints.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,838 posts
 
Also, if a better player does not make anything sound better, can it really be a "better player"? Does not make any sense.

Lowering the noise and distortion is the key. That would be inherent in a better player, but alone does not assure success in that noise and distortion can come from many sources and the best gear is not necessarily immune. If you get a handle on noise and distortion, anything will sound the best it can. Of course some recordings include noise and distortion, by design or by oversight as well. A better player will reveal everything and allow one to determine what belongs and what does not.
robsker OP
132 posts
 
JaFreeman --- THANK YOU!

I replaced my 6CG7 tubes that came with my AVA preamp (a Transcendence 8+) --- which were new Russian tubes --- with NOS Sov Tec tubes and all the etch and grain went away and the difference is rather amazing! Many CD's I could not enjoy before I can now enjoy. Why does AVA put crap tubes in their gear?

Again... thanks JaFreeman, your counsel helped a great deal.
coli
291 posts
 
I've come to the conclusion the only thing I look for is musical-ness, everything else is irrelevant.
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
A revealing, resolving system is superior, however all it takes is one sibilant component or cable to skew the balance and make it harsh sounding. It is possible to have your cake and eat it too, but not inexpensively.

One can certainly add tubes or cables with roll-off to deal with this, but ultimately you are going down the garden path, not improving the overall system.

The best thing is to identify the offending component or cable and replace it.

Typical offenders are active preamps that are too cheap. I have found that active preamps under the $10K mark, particularly solid-state are usually poor and add the most sibilance and compression to systems. This is why I use either a transformer passive linestage or the volume control in my DAC, which is not like a preamp.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
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