What am I hearing???

The most probable explanation is that you are listening to CDs originally recorded to analogue tape, and what you're hearing is the speed variation of that tape.

Things it is definitely not:
--non-concentric CDs
--laser problems
--"time-smearing" of cables
--transport "wow"

None of those things can cause the effect you are hearing.

I have what i believe is a similar problem...i notice it only on piano music, it sounds like the tweater of my left speaker is distorting, simmilar in sound to when a speaker clips, only not nearly as loud, but audible from my listening location...it also seems to be frequency dependent..ie. only occures, or occures to a much great level within a certain frequency range.

when i first noticed the problem i returned the speaker and they replaced the tweeter with a new one, but the problem persists...

my system is

totem arros
nad c350
kimber 8pr cable
eichmann express 4 interconnect
dennon dcd 3520 cd player

any idea what it could be...I wouldn't think two tweeters could both exhibit the same problem unless its a design flaw with that model of speaker (unlikely)... i thought mabey the piano notes happened to fall right around the crossover point of the speakers and that somehow caused the distortion...

any ideas...

Following the logic of using your headphones to isolate the problem,use a cd player you know is good and substitute it for your cd player to see if it your source or not.

Bomarc, 2 or 3 posters above gave their explanations of time smear in cables. It sure sounded convincing...why are you so categorical in saying that this is definitely not the cause of what Fbi is hearing?

Calanctus: Well, given that those posters all gave *different* explanations for time smear, which of them sounded convincing to you?

Given that this is a problem with only some disks, the source of the problem is almost certainly the disks themselves. I'd hate to see this guy sent on a wild goose chase to find a cable that will fix a problem that can't be fixed.