CD mastering a lost art?

I agree that most cds aimed at the top 40 sound like crap, but I find that many artists out of the mainstream put out very good sounding cds. Most of the remasters of classic rock, country, blues and jazz sound very good also.

There's more good stuff out there than I can afford to buy.

Tomcy6,

Agreed. There are some really great recordings out there off the beaten path that don't require that big of a walk to find. One just has to widen their tastes a bit, and look outside the mainstream labels. The sonic rewards can be breathtaking.

Dynamic compensation, equalization, whatever. Tonally they are unlistenable. This major fault of most recordings is intentional. I know this to be the case because a "poorly recorded" CD sounds listenable on my ipad or in my car, and is horrific on my hifi. Maybe someone should make a modern high end audio CD player that is voiced accordingly.

Nicely said Mezmo. Too bad.

IMHO, most of the remastered CDs I have bought (Bowie, EJ, Floyd) sound better than the original CD I purchased 10-20 years ago, although usually the difference is subtle. But Jimmy Page's Zepplin re-masters suck. The engineer doing the mixing and his priorities are a huge factor here.
There is a disturbing trend in recording/producing these days that compresses the dynamic range and just makes the music sound screechy. Arctic Monkeys is fun music, but it sounds like hell on my system. The indie rock genre is the worst purveyor of these ill-sounding CDs; its almost like a lack of quality sound is becoming a way to protest against the establishment.
Recent CDs I've bought that have good-to-great sound quality: Maximum Balloons, LCD soundsystem, James Blake.