What am I hearing???

You don't mention any of your equipment.

My first guess would be your speakers and their drivers potentially not being phase coherent especially at or around the crossover frequencies (most dynamic speaker drivers are not phase coherent to one degree or another).

Perhaps in your case, your speaker drivers lack phase coherence to a larger more obvious degree. If what you hear happens on many cd's and on another cd player.

Second guess is that it could be your cabling is producing a pretty good time-smearing effect.

Third guess would be a combination of 1 and 2.

-IMO

~~~~Stehno, I appreciate you taking time to reply! To eliminate speakers/cabling issues, I'll give it a whirl from direct cd through headphone output. Could I be subconsciously trying to find an excuse to upgrade cd?

Is the laser able to accurately track the non-concentric data without affecting sound? How much would it have to be off center before it started to have an influence upon sound?

Just The Facts,
By

Greetings,
Please excuse me for ringing in with a,some what, related question. What is smearing? What does it sound like?
Many Thanks,
Steve Bennett

Literally, upgrade CD!
There are still a number of variables:
a) CD has been manufactured with a defect;
b) CD was recorded with a defect;
c) CD-player has poor or bad analogue end;
d) CD-player hasn't sufficient drive for your headphones(btw which ones?)

Sbennet268, I was afraid somebody would ask. And somebody please correct me if I am wrong.

I believe time-smear has to do with the way the audio signal is transmitted through the cable.

In essence, a poorly designed cable will produce or generate the exact same (moment in time) musical signal muliple times before the signal completes it's travels to the other end of the cable. Thus a 'smearing' affect. Which really translates into a sound that is a bit mushy, grainy, or hash in the detail with a definite loss of articulation.

This is supposedly not uncommon with some to many cables. In fact, I believe that the vast majority of cables invoke this time smearing affect at least in the lower bass regions. So much so that most people have no idea what real bass sounds like and feels like without this time smear.

I'll go so far as to even state that some speaker manufacturers will voice their speakers with this time smear either knowingly or unknowingly.

I also believe that some cable designers are fully aware of this time smear affect and have either completely eliminated or at least absolutely minimized it in their cables.

-IMO