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Here is some email exchanges a friend sent me. Can anybody provide some input. I told him it may be a poorly recorded cd's, but he claims they don't sound bad in the car...

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Randy,

I own a 12 year old Technics component stereo system consisting of a receiver, dual cassette deck, 5 disk cd player and two speakers. The original sytem cost about $800 12 years ago.

Recently when playing new cd's I've noticed the sound is distorted. I recently purchased two new Paradigm speakers thinking the speakers were worn out. This did not help the problem. Older cd's typically jazz r & b sound just fine. But a new cd by Natalie Cole, "Leavin'" sounds terrible. Same thing for a new "Snow Patrol" cd.

I've taken the receiver to Audio Labs and they say it's fine. I've not replaced the speaker wires. But the folks at audio labs didn't think that's would be the problem.

Any idea on what may be wrong? I'm stumped! Thanks in advance.

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Randy,

Thanks for the phone call! I typically listen to jazz (ella fitzgerald, billie holiday, diana krall, natalie cole, etc.) and r & b. The old stuff I've got sounds great. Some of the newer cds' I've purchased sounds terrible. Perhaps it is just poor recording quality? But I can put those cd's in my car (2006 Honda Accord) and they sound better! My Paradigm speakers were only $250 for the pair and are bookcase size. Perhaps that's part of my problem? However I also wonder if a 12 year old Technics receiver might be part of the problem? I hate to pour much money into this old system. Nor am I satisisfied with the sound quality. Would I be better off to start over?

My townhouse main level is only about 550 sq ft. I don't need a lot of sound to fill it up. When a $150 Sony bookshelf sounds great by comparison…I know something is wrong!

Thanks for any advice in advance. I really enjoy listening to music and want it to sound good!

Well as cd players go 12 years is fairly old although he did say his old cds sound ok. Maybe a loose connection somewhere or speaker connections out of phase.

maybe a better description other than "distorted" or"sounds terrible" would help diagnosis. CD player not spinning consistently might cause his issues. Have him run out and buy one of those ultra cheap DVD players($20-30) from Wal Mart and such and see if it helps.

I suppose it could be the older cd player, it is strange that some of his older cd's are fine, just these newer titles.

Have there been any changes in newer cd burning styles that possibly would be not compatible with his older cd technology?

Sure sounds like hot cd disease to me. The car system is probably making the hot cd's listenable, as that kind of equipment is what they record for these days.The bastards.

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I suppose it could be the older cd player, it is strange that some of his older cd's are fine, just these newer titles.

Have there been any changes in newer cd burning styles that possibly would be not compatible with his older cd technology?

Maybe not technology changes but it could be just poor composition of the CD material as they try to cut costs. I did take a quick look around the web after I posted last time to see if CD's are being made differently but couldn't find any definitive answer. I was thinking that maybe as they pushed the limit of the CD right to the end, that maybe the laser was not able to read properly on the newer CD's, as the older ones most likely have fewer songs on them and the spacing of the track might be different.

One difference I see in some CDs is thickness. Especially from the 12-for-a-penny CD clubs. I have a few that are markedly (like 70% of the thickness of a regular CD) thinner... my H/K carousel doesn't like to play those.

Other issues may be if they new CDs aren't Redbook-compliant compact discs.

Bren R.

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I did take a quick look around the web after I posted last time to see if CD's are being made differently but couldn't find any definitive answer.

I don't know if this is factual or if it applies to this situation, but I copied this from another forum where a similar subject has come up.

Albums are getting louder and the sound quality is suffering. Audiophiles and engineers despair of the trend, but who is driving it?

Tim Anderson, Thursday January 18, 2007 - The Guardian

"I can't stand the sound of today's CDs," says Roland Stauber, a 39-year-old music lover who works in the automotive industry. "They sound harsh and loud. I hardly buy new releases any more."
Music nostalgia is nothing new, but this is different. There are solid technical reasons why CDs mastered today sound inferior to those made 15 years ago. The engineers who make the "master" - the mix from which the CD is pressed - are under irresistible pressure to compromise sound quality.

Tim Young masters albums at the Metropolis Studios in London. He has impeccable credentials, having worked with bands from the Clash and the Smiths back in the 1970s to Madonna, Iron Maiden and the Sugababes today. "Everyone's chasing immediate impact," he explains. "What happens is all the loud parts of the album have to be as loud as the opening track. So you get a fatiguing effect. There's no light and shade in it."
Young has first-hand experience of the "loudness wars", where studios compete to make ever louder CDs. "When CDs emerged as a format in the mid-80s, there wasn't a great deal you could do to make them louder. In the first half of the 1990s, various [electronics] boxes started to appear that meant you could get more apparent loudness. Mastering engineers, initially in America, started using these to make CDs louder. The impact travelled across the Atlantic," he says.

Damaged music

"In 1992 I did an album for a British heavy metal band. I got a panic-stricken message from their A&R man in America, saying 'We're really worried, the new album, it's not as loud as Aerosmith' or something. That was the start of it."

Of course, the mastering engineer has no control over how loud a CD gets played. But this is about the volume of the low-level signal encoded on the CD. Artists and record companies hope that louder music will stand out, but in practice the listener may just turn it down. Unfortunately, the techniques used to maximise the volume are damaging the music itself.

Steve Hoffman specialises in remastering classic rock albums, and he's a vocal opponent of the loudness wars. Asked to comment on recent releases, one from Lily Allen and the other from the Arctic Monkeys, he says: "Everything is loud, everything is bright, there's no subtlety in it at all, it's a sound that one would tire of fairly quickly."

Why does it sound bad? "A lot of signal processing is in the mastering stage, the type of processing that was almost impossible in the old days of analogue," says Hoffman. "Now you have digital workstations which mercilessly zap all the dynamics out of music. The other problem is overuse of equalisation (EQ). Equalisation done digitally is very harsh, and most mastering engineers tend to overuse it. You just crank up the EQ and then you compress it digitally so everything sounds like a machine gun, and then it all sounds really loud.

"Unfortunately, once the dynamics are shaved off music, it's impossible to get them back," says Hoffman. "It doesn't matter what volume you're playing at. When everything is loud, it doesn't sound loud any more. The only way that something can sound loud is if there's something quiet that precedes it, or else there's no frame of reference."

Jason Howse is a sound engineer who has worked with artists including Diva, Faceless and A Guy Called Gerald. Referring to dance music, he said: "You basically want the record as loud as you can possibly get it, because it's going to be played in an environment where level is everything." But why not use the volume control to avoid the loss of dynamic range? "That would be the thing to do," he answered, "but it's just what's demanded from record companies, not from the listener, but from record companies and artists."

Mastering engineers have little choice. "One of the myths that I'd like to eradicate is that this is all down to mastering engineers going crazy with their controls," says Young. "It's not. It's the artists and the producers who demand it.

"I had a famous 60s singer who's making a comeback this year. I'd mastered his album and I said, 'What do you think of it?' He said, 'It's great, but it's not as loud as the new Paul Simon. You've got to make it louder'."

Hitting the wall

How much does it matter? To a small but vociferous minority it matters a lot. Internet forums buzz with discussions about which older CD or LP release has the best sound as fans seek out the music of their youth.

"There's nothing wrong with distorted over-limited CDs per se," says Graham Sutton, a musician with Bark Psychosis and a sound engineer. "It's all aesthetics, after all. But what might suit Whitehouse or Merzbow might not be right for Norah Jones. It's now at the point where CDs cannot get any louder, just more distorted.

"The brick wall has been reached. I wonder how long it will be before the record companies re-re-release their back catalogue, re-re-mastered for additional dynamic range?"

I think it's factual. I've read other things that suggest this is the case. I've also read that over-compression also creates a harsher sounding CD.

When will people learn that QUALITY never goes out of style? Sizzle-boom sound may grab your attention quickly, but long term listening requires quality. There's plenty of music in my collection that I really like, but just can't listen to it at length due to poor recording quality. I tend to listen to the better quality recordings, even if it isn't from my favorite artist.

Once again, the promise of sound technology is hampered by the recording industry, which continues to think it knows what the consumer wants.

Here's the problem:

on average, the consumer doesn't give a rat's ass. If only there were more audiophiles...

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Here's the problem:

on average, the consumer doesn't give a rat's ass. If only there were more audiophiles...

And to add to that most consumers have never heard what a crappy recording sounds like on a good system. Heck most have never heard a good system period.

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Unfortunately, the techniques used to maximise the volume are damaging the music itself.

Steve Hoffman "Everything is loud, everything is bright, there's no subtlety in it at all, it's a sound that one would tire of fairly quickly."

"The brick wall has been reached. I wonder how long it will be before the record companies re-re-release their back catalogue, re-re-mastered for additional dynamic range?"

Nice find. I knew I had read something to this effect somewhere else. The article I had read put the onus on radio play as to why the CD's are getting louder, making the song seem better on the radio driving up sales. Could it be that with all the downloading, the songs are getting mastered even louder to try to make up for the loss in the extreme compressed formats?

The recording quality of many pop items sucks. Listen to classical discs to hear how music is supposed to sound.

I've mentioned this before.

Bren R.

I don't disagree with any of the above, but c'mon...

It's a very old shelf system. Isn't it *possible^ that the amp is fried? There are lots of valid avenues to isolate the problem, but I don't think the car is one of them.

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I don't disagree with any of the above, but c'mon...

It's a very old shelf system. Isn't it *possible^ that the amp is fried? There are lots of valid avenues to isolate the problem, but I don't think the car is one of them.

We are just going with the fact he was told it was OK after he took it in, because he thought there was something wrong with it too.

From the thread that Bren linked to above:

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I've found it's much better through my ipod. The ipod actually saves some of these cds.

I have to agree. When listening to a bad sounding CD back to back, it does sound smoother, and not so harsh through the iPod. Now, some of the detail has been stripped away as well but IMO, it's worth it. Those particular CD's were virtually unlistenable in their original state on the M80's.

First, I'd ask if he's lacking bass. If that's what's making them sound terrible, then but a sub. He's tried two different sets of speakers so it is probably NOT the speakers. Generally any decent pair of bookshelves will reproduce more of the high end of the audible frequency range than all but the best car systems. They will also tend to be more accurate. I've got a TON of CD's that will never see play in the HT that live in the car. I love them in the car. The car rolls off the highs, bloats the mids, and generally sounds all distorted. But those CD's sound OK in there. Take that same CD in the HT and they are unlistenable after a few seconds. My suggestion, get a CD that you KNOW is of good quality (tons of suggestions abound so I won't bore you) and have him listen to it. If he says that CD sounds bad, then it's the equipment. He's out $15 max with the bonus of having a good CD to enjoy once he figures out what the real problem is.