What of your CD's have good sonics?

Agreed with Bar 81,Demag your cd's for a remarkable improvemnet. Granted, these macines are not cheap, but worth every penny. I demag all cd's and blu-rays.

All disc have been lathed as well with the Audiodesk lathe, even gold Mofi's and Audiofidelity gold disc. The improvement is substancial.

Cheers, Greg

Chanticleer, "Sound in Spirit".
Adrian Legg, "Waiting for a Dancer"

These are 2 I think are great recordings. As I've improved my system, my experience has been that more things sound better- not worse.

Most are good to excellent.

None are un-listenable.

Different CDs are recorded differently and have different sonic natures to them that you just have to accept. As long as the music comes through cleanly without audible distortions or colorations introduced, I am good to go.

stehno,

I have to respectfully disagree. You're position is the reason why so many audiophiles don't own any music they actually like. Many audiophiles abandon all the music they originally fell in love with in favor of audiophile recordings that sound good on their systems. It's a shame because it's not necessary.

I also totally disagree that a warmer fuller sound is adding distortion. It actually is providing a much needed and missing element to most high end systems. Lots of the low level detail that makes a performance seem real is in the low frequencies. Frequencies that are notoriously absent from many high end systems.

Additionally, I suspect that the warmer fuller sound with a laid back treble IS actually closer to the live performance. Many of the so called neutral honest high end systems I've heard don't sound real at all. They sound very vivid and clean, but if you compare them to a live instrument they sound a bit like a characature of the actual thing and this is because audiophiles often equate that over exposed top end with audio perfection. This misguided attitude leads to problems like the OP. Spent a lot of money, but end up with a system that is far less enjoyable than the stock car stereo in a mid-priced toyota. Pretty common actually.