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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
kw6
692 posts
 
Try a Linn Ikemi or higher up in the line. If you can find a used CD12 that would be the best.

Good Luck!*>)
yes9
15 posts
 
Henry, I had a similar dilema not long ago. My wife buys mostly new, well recorded CDs. I buy mostly 70s, poorly recorded CDs. And we have alot of average sounding CDs as well. The new stuff sounded bright, the average stuff was listenable and the old stuff sounded like Charlie Brown's mother speaking over the telephone. I called my audio advisor and explained the problem and his immediate response was,"you need better speaker cables". I thought that was completely counter intuitive but since he never steared me wrong before, I auditioned about seven different pairs. In the end, he was right. EVERYTHING now sounds better than before. Replacing the power cord later brought marked improvements but not as great as the speaker cables. Matt........
kana813
956 posts
 
I seriously doubt Henryhk's system is suffering from poor quality cables.

Henryhk- does your Meitner DAC/Preamp have a tape loop?
If so you could try an EQ like the suggested Behringer T-1951. If not, a digital EQ devise could be inserted between the SPDIF output of your transport and a SPDIF input on your DAC. I'm not aware of any digital EQ devises which use ST connections like your Meitner gear.

If your Meitner DAC has a Toslink link input, you could also try using a cheap DVDP as a transport for Poorly Recorded redbook CDs.

I've tried ripping poorly recorded CDs to my hard drive and
burning them on black CDs, there's a slight improvement but
it can't fix compression/limiting problems as Onhwy61 points out.
bsal
41 posts
 
Most of my poorly recorded CDs are re-issues of recordings originally issued on vinyl and not remastered. No CD player in my experience makes these sound good. You might want to consider a turntable if you listen to lots of music recorded before the 90s.
henryhk OP
648 posts
 
To some extent, I suppose such poorly recorded CDs are doomed and one has to adjust which I do. Meitner DCCs clock slaves the transport. Yes defintely EQ is something to consider as it may also improve all playback...though I need to wait for that until I move houses which will be in April. I like the concept of the TACT but it cannot process DSD signals if I recall correctly, and that is an issue for me not due to SACD playback but for also well recorded CDs which I am more than happy with my Meitner gear which converts PCM to DSD. I understand Rives has a parametric analogue EQ...is it transparent? Never heard about the Cello Audio Palette nor the Behringer....analogue or digital? As for RealityCheck etc....I have no way auditioning from where I live (Hong Kong) I think...will investigate if not then I would buying blindly something I never do. One other avenue I thought about was getting a tube pre-amp: the DCC2 then would used just as a DAC. So many options yet no clear and obvious one...sigh.
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