Surely if you're using a good enough system all of your CD's will sound pretty decent?

I only ever find problems with "poor recordings" if I'm using a low-quality source like a PC, DVD player or cheap CDP. High-end equipment just lets the music shine through.

Generally speaking, the worst mastered cd's sound the best on portable devices, in the car, boomboxes, etc.

Good point. No matter how well recorded the CD, you won't get good sound if you play it with, say, a DVD player or PC.

It might sound OK to the inexperienced ear but compare it to a good CD player and you will hear a pretty major loss of musical subtleties. I have yet to hear a cheap CD player that can do proper timing and syncopation. Poor syncopation is a particular problem for me - my ear is very sensitive to syncopation.

So if you want good sound out of CD don't forget to buy a musical CD player!

Yes! Most kit can expose the gross problems with mastering: poor microdynamics, increased digital hash and the way that those inky-black silences between the notes transmute into a kind of muddy brown.

The musicality and emotion of the performance is, for me, carried in the more nebulous attributes of syncopation, timing and that all-important "groove factor." This is where spending say $5k on a CD player pays off big-time.

So a $5000.00 CD player has better groove ?


Cheap CD players don't have good timing ?

This thread is getting weird.

Of course! What do you think you are paying the big bucks for, fancy casework?

You can only go so far with supports, cables and CD treatments: at some point you have to grit your teeth and put your hand in your pocket.

Depends on what CD player! I have yet to hear a Krell groove, for example, but Krells excel at tonal shading. Take a listen to a top of the range Naim CD and then you'll know what groove is!



Again, I have yet to hear one that does have good timing.

Music is very close to me - my next door neighbour is a piano player - so I know good timing and syncopation.

Listen to a cheap CD player and the musicians often sound a bit sleepy and out of tune. It's as if they had never played together before.

Spend a few thousand on the right CD player and now listen again! The joint is jumpin' and the musicians are smokin'!

Yes, and probably some fancy knobs too.


As a guitarist of 6+ years I've learned some things about timing and syncopation, one of them being that practice makes perfect. Once a "perfect" performance is recorded digitaly and played back digitaly, it's not possible to have the the instruments sound out of tune in comparison to each other on the recording on some systems and perfectly in tune on other more expensive systems. It's also nearly impossible to be able to detect the extremely small percentage of playback speed variation and interpret it as bad timing on the recorded performance.

I think you're confusing timing with "keeping time". An easy mistake to make.

OK, you're right then

There's too much knowldge being tossed around here for my brain to comprehend.

All nurses are on the beach, and the audiophile ward missed their daily Prozac dose.

I find that CD players that keep good time usually have an accurate clock. I think the cheaper players use an anallog clock and the expensive ones have a digital clock

Syncopation is not the word you are looking for:
Main Entry: syn·co·pa·tion
Function: noun
1 : a temporary displacement of the regular metrical accent in music caused typically by stressing the weak beat

I think the word you are looking for is "syncronization."

Another county heard.

Is that anything like a herd?

More like "I don't know what I'm talking about".

Read: in these days no one, I mean it, uses analogue clocks. (these were based on LC connections, right? It's not 1900 anymore.)
I don't even think it's possible to build one supporting required 44100 Hz frequency.

I think you're talking about your wall clock or the analogue meters.

What's more, current CD players do provide high quality output, some even truly digital. The most likely difference to hear is when you're reading a direly scratched CD - good sources provide better error hiding.

The oldest CD drives (like 1970-80s) indeed had worse quality (about 15-bit) DACs, but I think nobody is that dumb today to install these to save 0,0005$ per unit.

The most expensive thing in modern drives is the casing+knobs, the second being the CD laser or the drive step engine - which have no impact on sound quality (unless the disc is scratched or the laser goes misaligned, or the engine dead).

Please stop talking dung. :-) It's not LaserDisc anymore.

What we have here is the result of the decision to allow registration with free email accounts.

I disagree, good systems make poorly mastered CDs sound even worse. Or at least worse in comparison to playing the same CD on a $75 boombox.

I disagree, my DVD player also plays CDs, SACDs, DVD-Audio and MP3, and only cost AUD$190. It sounds best when playing well mastered material, it sounds worse when playing poorly mastered material.

And I thought analog was meant to be good.

Hey, no fair... I registered on a free account. But I usually think before posting.

Even on the cheapest of CD or DVD players, I've never heard musicians sound 'out of tune' unless they were...out of tune. If so , they sounded out of tune on the 'better' gear too.

I think this thread has reached its silly audiophile claims limit.