What to do with bad recorded CDs

If it's an older CD you really love to listen to, do some research to see if you can find a remaster or audiophile copy. Some older albums have been remastered over the years as much as 4 or 5 times!!

This should be obvious but, try to find discs that are made from the original master of the recording. And be aware that the newest versions of albums are not always the best sounding. Studios have been employing the use of dynamic compression more and more over the years to best suit the portable MP3 market with little to no regard for high-end audio reproduction.

good advice above. the song is the thing.

What did you do with bad recordings on LP? I can think of countless LPs where either the recording or the pressing were so poor that it distracted from the musical performance.

You've received a good suggestion about looking for remasters. (Of course the reverse can be true. Sometimes the original mixes are better than the remasters. A friend had a "Yes" LP he loved and bought the CD which he thought was terrible. We solved the problem by my converting the LP version to CD for him.)

However, it is simply a fact of life that many recordings are mediocre and a few are just downright bad. At that point you have to decide whether the music is more important to you than the recording quality.

Why not add a second CDP to your system that is more forgiving of lessor recordings?

Seems that only one out of ten CD's are mastered to audiophile standards. To overcome this shortfall you might consider adding a turntable to your system. It will open a whole new world (or old world) of superb recordings that CD's have failed to imitate.