How can I improve on mid 80s CD recordings?

[PTdacapo]

Hi all Im new in this forum.
I am a music enthusiast, not what one might call an aficionado. I had been using Meridian 500 feeding a PT Dacapo for years. The Dacapo stopped working recently so I have a new SMSL D300 taking its place.
I have a modest collection of CD dating back to 80s. How can I tone down the Harshness? Eg on Philips label Mozart sonata KV284 played by Mitsuko Uchiha, the sound is so bad u hear what seems like bad clipping and frequency dependant ringing. This is most evident on piano trills that should sound clean and articulate. It is easy to dismiss this as bad mastering. Somehow the same title played on spotify or Tidal has less of this problem. Q1)Is this a transport issue? Q2)Is there any benefit to be obtained from ripping the CD to Flac and playing it through a modern Dac? Q3)Lastly what are the causes of bad sound in that CD? Is it low bit depth, Downsampling error, lack of Dithering?
Thanks so much.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

Hi all Im new in this forum.
I am a music enthusiast, not what one might call an aficionado. I had been using Meridian 500 feeding a PT Dacapo for years. The Dacapo stopped working recently so I have a new SMSL D300 taking its place.
I have a modest collection of CD dating back to 80s. How can I tone down the Harshness? Eg on Philips label Mozart sonata KV284 played by Mitsuko Uchiha, the sound is so bad u hear what seems like bad clipping and frequency dependant ringing. This is most evident on piano trills that should sound clean and articulate. It is easy to dismiss this as bad mastering. Somehow the same title played on spotify or Tidal has less of this problem. Q1)Is this a transport issue? Q2)Is there any benefit to be obtained from ripping the CD to Flac and playing it through a modern Dac? Q3)Lastly what are the causes of bad sound in that CD? Is it low bit depth, Downsampling error, lack of Dithering?
Thanks so much.

It's almost impossible for anyone to know this. I don't have the specific disc, but if I did I would rip the file as a WAV and analyse the frequency distribution and look for headroom (or lack of it). You can also do this yourself with free tools such as Audacity and SOX.

CD replay is not intrinsically "harsh". If you find all or even most CDs sounds like this, you may a resonance or imbalance in your system, which you can measure end to end using a calibrated microphone and the free tool REW.

You can tune the sound - 1) pick a speaker that measures well and sounds good to you in your room; 2) apply equalisation. For the latter, you can use tone controls in the analogue domain, but these can often be too coarse for fine control. Or, you can invest in Digital Signal Processing (DSP) either in your playout system, which if it is PC based can use the free Equaliser APO, if it's hardware based on something else, you could consider miniDSP.

HTH

 

[PTdacapo]

Hi HTH
Thanks for your reply.
The bad sound is specific to some CDs only

 

[dlaloum]

This is not a generic issue - in fact the mid 80's were a high point for many CD mastering techniques- at that stage they were still aiming for maximum dynamic range - and were not engaging in the loudness wars which took over in the 90's.

If the CD is sounding bad, it's probably because it was badly mastered - and one of the issues in the early days of digital, was that not every engineer knew how to get the best from the medium - hence some are shockingly bad, and others are brilliantly excellent!

What people are advising you to do (rip, investigate the frequency spectrum and adjust) is effectively re-mastering the CD....

And yes, there is nothing wrong with that - and it may well fix the bad recordings you have! (assuming that it is the recording/mastering that is the problem and not the performance that was being recorded!)

 

[notsodeadlizard]

Hi all Im new in this forum.
I am a music enthusiast, not what one might call an aficionado. I had been using Meridian 500 feeding a PT Dacapo for years. The Dacapo stopped working recently so I have a new SMSL D300 taking its place.
I have a modest collection of CD dating back to 80s. How can I tone down the Harshness? Eg on Philips label Mozart sonata KV284 played by Mitsuko Uchiha, the sound is so bad u hear what seems like bad clipping and frequency dependant ringing. This is most evident on piano trills that should sound clean and articulate. It is easy to dismiss this as bad mastering. Somehow the same title played on spotify or Tidal has less of this problem. Q1)Is this a transport issue? Q2)Is there any benefit to be obtained from ripping the CD to Flac and playing it through a modern Dac? Q3)Lastly what are the causes of bad sound in that CD? Is it low bit depth, Downsampling error, lack of Dithering?
Thanks so much.

1. No, the _transport_ is not responsible for this unconditionally. But the CD player (which is much more complicated than a transport)... it depends.
2. No, the result will be exactly the same because it will be precisely the same digital stream.
3. Bad mastering of course. Alas, this is a big problem. Some records exist only in this corrupted form. In some cases, some labels find digital or analogue originals and remaster, sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't.

 

[TheZebraKilledDarwin]

Hi all Im new in this forum.
I am a music enthusiast, not what one might call an aficionado. I had been using Meridian 500 feeding a PT Dacapo for years. The Dacapo stopped working recently so I have a new SMSL D300 taking its place.
I have a modest collection of CD dating back to 80s. How can I tone down the Harshness? Eg on Philips label Mozart sonata KV284 played by Mitsuko Uchiha, the sound is so bad u hear what seems like bad clipping and frequency dependant ringing. This is most evident on piano trills that should sound clean and articulate. It is easy to dismiss this as bad mastering. Somehow the same title played on spotify or Tidal has less of this problem. Q1)Is this a transport issue? Q2)Is there any benefit to be obtained from ripping the CD to Flac and playing it through a modern Dac? Q3)Lastly what are the causes of bad sound in that CD? Is it low bit depth, Downsampling error, lack of Dithering?
Thanks so much.

Which frequencies in these recordings are creating the harshness you mean? 2k? 4k? Aliasing?
If its not aliasing, I would check the measurements (not only SPL over frequency but also the time domain), if there may be a room or speaker characteristic, that emphasizes this frequency.

 

[FooYatChong]

The bad sound is specific to some CDs only

Could be those are pre-emphasized CDs and you're current setup doesn't deal with that, which causes them to sound very bright.

 

[PTdacapo]

1. No, the _transport_ is not responsible for this unconditionally. But the CD player (which is much more complicated than a transport)... it depends.
2. No, the result will be exactly the same because it will be precisely the same digital stream.
3. Bad mastering of course. Alas, this is a big problem. Some records exist only in this corrupted form. In some cases, some labels find digital or analogue originals and remaster, sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't.

Hi yes it must be bad mastering, I listened again to the same title on Spotify and it was pretty good

 

[PTdacapo]

Which frequencies in these recordings are creating the harshness you mean? 2k? 4k? Aliasing?
If its not aliasing, I would check the measurements (not only SPL over frequency but also the time domain), if there may be a room or speaker characteristic, that emphasizes this frequency.

Hi I would guess 2k region? I think it's aliasing a very intrusive distortion

 

[PTdacapo]

Could be those are pre-emphasized CDs and you're current setup doesn't deal with that, which causes them to sound very bright.

Hi no it's not a CD with pre emphasis

 

[PTdacapo]

1. No, the _transport_ is not responsible for this unconditionally. But the CD player (which is much more complicated than a transport)... it depends.
2. No, the result will be exactly the same because it will be precisely the same digital stream.
3. Bad mastering of course. Alas, this is a big problem. Some records exist only in this corrupted form. In some cases, some labels find digital or analogue originals and remaster, sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't.

If it's a corrupted form then I need to download a good copy and forget about that cd

 

[fpitas]

A lot of popular music has been re-mastered since then. It's possible you can find a better version.

 

[PTdacapo]

A lot of popular music has been re-mastered since then. It's possible you can find a better version.

Noted on this thanks

 

[Gorgonzola]

My highly subjective 2 cents worth. Let me say I listen mainly to Classical music which, IMO, is the most demanding in terms of recording and mastering. In that context I feel that CDs -- I mean the quality of sound delivered on that medium -- have generally improved over the decades. It's true that there are excellent CD recordings from the '80s, it just that quality is more consistent today.

The solution to your problem is the same for old CDs as it is for new CDs -- a reproduction equipment chain that is as nearly prefect as budget & circumstances allow. DACs as one link in the chain have definitely improved since the years; the same is true for amplifiers. Equipment improvements I've made, especially in the last decade have generally improved the sound of recordings that I once considered "harsh" (for example); transparency and "air" are evident where as previously my impression was harsh, impenetrable highs.

The really good news is that SOTA DACs and amps today are much cheaper than they once were. Some that come to mind are Topping and SMSL DACs and Hypex and Purifi-base amplifiers; (there are other examples too, of course).

 

[PTdacapo]

Like you I listen mostly to Classical and agree that it is highly intolerant of bad mastering

 

[A Surfer]

The odds of the DAC or amp having any audible effects on the perceived musical fidelity is very low unless the devices are objectively so flawed as to introduce audible errors. Not super likely. The culprit is probably simply poor recordings. I find much of what I hear in Classical music to be very hard to listen to due to the frequent poor recordings. Shame.

 

[PTdacapo]

It's almost impossible for anyone to know this. I don't have the specific disc, but if I did I would rip the file as a WAV and analyse the frequency distribution and look for headroom (or lack of it). You can also do this yourself with free tools such as Audacity and SOX.

CD replay is not intrinsically "harsh". If you find all or even most CDs sounds like this, you may a resonance or imbalance in your system, which you can measure end to end using a calibrated microphone and the free tool REW.

You can tune the sound - 1) pick a speaker that measures well and sounds good to you in your room; 2) apply equalisation. For the latter, you can use tone controls in the analogue domain, but these can often be too coarse for fine control. Or, you can invest in Digital Signal Processing (DSP) either in your playout system, which if it is PC based can use the free Equaliser APO, if it's hardware based on something else, you could consider miniDSP.

HTH

Hi in case u were wondering this is the mentioned title

Redirect Notice

 

[TheZebraKilledDarwin]

Hi I would guess 2k region? I think it's aliasing a very intrusive distortion

If the room and the setup is measuring well and can be excluded, I would rip the CD and make a frequency analysis of the problematic title.

 

[FrankW]

Hi HTH
Thanks for your reply.
The bad sound is specific to some CDs only

Indeed, but not so much "CD" as in the transfers from analog to digital distribution mastering, by totally deaf people. I use EQ, but old fashion tone controls can work too. Slight boost of the bass, cut of treble makes the whole spectral balance tolerable/enjoyable. Plenty tracks on streaming sites like this!