poor source material

You may be new, but it didn't take you long to discover one of the biggest banes of our hobby. Poor recordings, often times, just might be the weakest link in our systems. A good equalizer might help sometimes, not help other times, and a poor equalizer might make things worse most of the time. The balancing of a systems resolution to deal with the variable quality of recordings often times comes down to very personal choices.

As Fafafion suggests, you could start to think about component upgrades. If you find the right combination of pieces, the poorly-recorded music can sound much better.

There is a caveat, though. Systems, and people's listening tastes, can take different directions. Some like a setup that can pull the last squeak of detail out of the recording, revealing the mechanics and structure of the music like sunlight on Mercury (the planet, not the label). Systems like this can make the poor recordings stand out with embarrassing clarity.

It is also possible to build a system which, while still providing piles of detail, doesn't make you want to sideline a great performance just because the recording is blah. If this is the kind of system you want, build it by shopping with your favourite poor recordings among the test material.

If I had your problem I'd simply get a cheap 2d CD player and put a cheap equalizer between it and your receiver and reserve its use for those times you must hear the poorly recorded CD's.

There is no really good way of dumbing down a system so bad CD's will sound good, but I agree that you can improve the sound of a lot of 'bad' CD's if you put the money into a carefully thought out up-grade of your system.

A lot of folks have found that using (some, not all) tube CDP's and tube buffers helps with some CD's which are simply recorded hot and need some taming in the highs. With a buffer or tube CDP/DAC you can also control the tone quite a bit by tube selection.

Just something to think about.

Oh, another cure of sorts - when you are listening to the 'bad' CD's turn down the volume! :-)

Hi Ucsb21, Tell us a little more about your system, are the speakers new? The reason I ask is that some new speakers need to be played for a while so the rubber surrounds can loosen up, and I've read where your speakers are notorious for that and takes lots time. How are they positioned? Try aiming straight ahead with no toe-in and see if that helps, sometimes aiming a tweeter straight at your ears can sound harsh, but not always. also, how close are they to the back wall? Try moving closer or farther, it can change the tonal balance and help sometimes. Maybe a tube CD player will help, if you know someone that has one ask to borrow, their are used ones that come up here on the GON for not too much $. Look for Jolida or AH tube. etc. Good luck!!

Thanks for the replies people!

Let's see. To Musicnoise and Racamuti: I have a Rotel RCD 1072 connected to a Rotel RX 1050 via some basic Mogami cables. My speakers are Dynaudio Focus 140s and my speaker wires are Tara Lab Prisms.

The major issue I have with some of my albums is that the mids and highs appear to be hidden behind the music. The crash of cymbals, the snap of the snare, vocals etc. sound muted or veiled. If I adjust the treble and turn the volume up it makes it a little better but, not always.

The speakers are new and are nowhere close to the 100+ hours of break in but, I do have a lot of albums that sound fantastic with this current set up. Some examples include, Demolition by Ryan Adams, New Amsterdam Live at Heineken Music Hall by Counting Crows, Graceland Paul Simon, James Taylor greatest hits, Confrontation Bob Marley etc.

Albums that sound ok but, wish could be better include The gentle side of Coltrane and Subtitulo and Home by Josh Rouse.

Albums that were disappointments: Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins and Let's talk about feelings by Lagwagon (HDCD), Futures by Jimmy eat World and Till the sun turns black by Ray Lamontagne and Lifted by John Legend.

Like, Shadorne mentioned, the recordings by the pop/punk labels sound the worst. With that being said I have plenty of pop/punk/hip hop albums that sound fantastic like, Lagwagon's Hoss and Wyclef Jeans' Carnival so again it is very hit and miss.

Again, the major issue for me was the missing mids and highs. Bass is not usually a problem. Sometimes it is a little boomy and loose but, that is most likely because of speaker positioning and the shortcomings from my receiver.

I am definitely going to have to start looking at higher quality recordings from now on! I'm very interested in seeing how much of a difference a dedicated amplifier and pre amp makes. Since I don't have enough money to upgrade both I'm thinking of using the receiver as a pre amp for now.

Thanks again for the replies!!!