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Best player for Poorly Recorded redbook CDs?

There is lot on the cutting edge of digital players, Meitner, APL, Esoteric, Zanden, Reimyo, and the list goes on. Most have great reviews and their own followers. The problem is we usually test this with better recorded CDs or do not actually consciously think about how well a player plays poorly recorded CDs. If I have a main player for SACDs and avg-well recorded CDs, is there a player out there that somehow makes poorly recorded CDs sound better, and better than other equipment? Note this only pertains to poorly recorded CDs...and its not about being truthful/accuracy per se...all I want is something that will improve on bad CDs. Meitner is OK at this but I wonder if other players out there (and indeed it may well be a budget player,...who knows) that specifcally do this well. Given as music lovers, we generally own our fair share of poor sounding but great music CDs, I think this is potentially quite important and can pay lots of dividends after some investigation....at least that is the hope. Now thinking about this, its also somewhat surprising that professional reviewers do not really address this aspect much. Hmmm.

Any suggestions? Do you agree with this line of thiniking?
henryhk
armstrod
614 posts
 
Tvad,

I think you were too quick to withdraw your suggestion of adding tubes. In my experience, tubes improve the sound of ALL CDs, not just the poorly recorded ones. While EQ might do some of the same things, I would think it might hurt the good CDs while helping the bad ones, unless you adjusted it from one CD to the next.

Truth is, there are number of valid approaches to this problem. Or maybe we need to listen to poorly recorded CDs occassionally to help us appreciate the good ones...

:-)

henryhk OP
648 posts
 
Thanks for the suggestions...I still think this is underappreciated issue....Tvad, yes I completely agree with having the best front end in place....its just that I wonder if I can improve on the poor CDs ...its second player, a luxury if you will to consider.

Introducing a tubed player or tube pre-amp is something I guessed...the EQ idea is something I did not think about so thanks...however EQ doesn't ameleriorate the "metalness" or thin sounding tizziness of poorly recorded CDs...correct?

Learing to live with us...I guess...and I do enjoy my iPOD (loseless codec) when traveling...but that shouldn't stop me for looking at ways to improve things, no?

I also wonder whether the claimed benefits (I don't have 1st hand exp) with the likes of Reality CD or hard disk drives such VSR or Zero would be much more the case on poorly recorded CDs?
henryhk OP
648 posts
 
I guess my initial description was not clear....I want an additional player (or at least want to explore) to my Meitner that will specfically address poorly recorded CDs...for avg to well recorded ones and SACD, I am very happy w/ my Meitner set up.
henryhk OP
648 posts
 
& this whether they "work" or not, using cable as tone control etc is not the answer as it would chg things with my existing set up of Meitner: do not want chg cables just for the sake of poorly recorded CDs as it may worsen the perfomance of better recordings playback....the idea is "specialize" if indeed there are solutions out there.
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