Taming edge from remastered CDs?

Onhwy61 -
Thanks for your careful read and spot-on reiteration of the "issue". You are right of course, simply not listening to edgy re-masters is certainly one option. I was hoping there might be a relatively simple, low-cost "fix" since various of these recordings do have certain positive aspects over the "original". Some good suggestions have been provided. AC power "clean up" got me looking. While I am not likely to invest $1K+ into a conditioner, I did come across very positive comments about affordable devices from Blue Circle. Am thinking to pursue that avenue as well. Worth doing even if it doesn't tame the edge on the CDs in question - or so I think. Thanks once again to all. Certainly hope the discussion has been as helpful to others as it has been to me.

Cleaning up your AC can never hurt. Just don't expect miracles.

As an experiment rip an offending CD to your computer and run it through a program that can analyze its level and harmonic content. I wonder if there are consistent digital overs? The harmonic analysis can help you zero in on where you might use a parametric EQ to filter out the offending frequencies. I know that the playback software PureVinyl allows for use of high quality EQ plug-ins.

Nicotico - remastering from the master tape or disk is usually an improvement, but what we are talking about here is re-writing the disk to reduce jitter. Even remastered disks are made from glass-masters that have high-jitter in the pits. Rewriting them helps a lot. Jitter is the #1 problem in digital. This is the reason why I dont use or sell any modded CD transports anymore, only computer audio. Lower jitter.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Ivan - you are totally wrong in this one. Jitter is what makes 99% of digital systems edgy, harsh and fatigueing. You have just never heard a low jitter system, and if you did, there was probabl an active preamp in the way creating so much distortion and compression that you did not hear the benefits of low jitter.

Most DAC designers agree on this one. The ones that dont agree dont know what they are doing anyway.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Last_lemming - The pits in the commercial disk made from a glass-master are not precisely placed. This is because these are virtually "stamped-out" rather than written using a laser and a drive.

When you use a laser disk writer with a low-jitter master clock, clean high-quality media and write the CDROM disk at a 1X rate, the pits are not only more geometrically perfect, the positions of them are more accurately placed on the disk. These things enable the disk to be read in a CD player with lower jitter, since the clock in the drive must synchronize to the pits in the disk.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio