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'Unlistenable' early digital recordings?

Obviously, today’s engineering of digital masters is far superior than the early years. Some say that many CD’s from the early years are ’unlistenable’. I used to agree. But, over the past couple of years, I’ve spent considerable effort to clean up the power to each of my digital components. Now, early CD’s are quite listenable. They might not be ’audiophile quality’ but the music comes across just fine. No more digital nasties. No more glare or etch in the HF. No more excessive boominess in the LF. I’m definitely a clean power convert. So much so, that I recommend cleaning up the power before upgrading to a new DAC. What’s your experience?

steakster
aberyclark
1,357 posts
 
I recently purchased a Torus power conditioner. And I am now using ZU event power cables. The sound seems to come from a much deeper - blacker place. I think mostly because of noise reduction. There is so much noise around us due to technology, wi-Fi, lights, appliances, electric, etc, that addressing multiple noise generating sources at one time really shows a major improvement. 
erik_squires
16,327 posts
 
Don't forget the DACs.


They've gotten so much better over the past 10 years, especially with Redbook playback.



tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,598 posts
 
Early cds can sound very good or very bad, just like more recent pressings. Early playback gear was more often the problem.

Some people prefer 1980s vintage cds because their dynamics are not as compressed as many, but not all, cds mastered since the early 1990s. You have to decide which release of a particular album you prefer on a case by case basis. Power conditioning can help too, of course.
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,883 posts
 

In the rush to get CD’s to market in the format’s early days, record companies used the old production masters made for the pressing of LP’s. Those LP-mastered tapes had their low frequencies filtered out to make the records playable by the cartridges the vast majority of consumers owned, and the highs were boosted to compensate for the losses incurred during plating, pressing, etc.

Newer recordings in most cases have not not mastered for LP pressing, and the sources used for mastering haven’t been subjected to the same filtering as were the older tapes. But as many have noticed, they ARE being compressed so as to create a higher average-level (louder) signal.

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