Continuing with CDs?

O. Nate, how is that Yamaha single-disc player overall

It’s fine I guess. It sounds better than the one it replaced so I think it was money well spent. I have a phobia about spending a lot of money for audio equipment that I can’t try out first, but yeah as you mentioned to me even $400 seems like a lot for a cd player.

I did a cheap upgrade to my bookshelf stereo/cd in the bedroom. I got a pair of heavy yoga blocks to put under the speakers. It really does help isolate the speaker from the surroundings. I think it clears up the low end.

CD revival. it was funny when I revived this thread and was basically told “go buy a dvd player at a thrift store”

Post by brimstead from i need a cd player and i have no money on ILX - i need a cd player and i have no money

Are people giving up CD players getting rarer or more common? I picked up a 5-disc Onkyo off the street a few months back.

i thought i had more discs than i actually do... but i catalogued everything tonight and it was satisfying. this is two years of collecting. i reckon i would have been able to afford maybe 50-80 LPs in that timeframe. perfect sound forever!

http://www.discogs.com/collection?user=elinsound

I think by now a lot of people just don't have CD players at all

I still have a portable one, but I can’t remember the last time I had a CD-only player. Seemed either pointless or a luxury to have one thanks to DVD’s and later Blu-rays (not to mention video games but I never got into those).

Should say “buy” one, not “have.” I remember my family still had a hulking Pioneer CD player with a six-disc magazine that was really old but still functional. I don’t remember them ever giving it or throwing it away so I have no idea what happened to it.

i drive a 2017 car which has a CD player but i assume it'll be the last one i own which still has one. unless i'm completely misinformed on the supposed death of the car CD player.

i've actually bought more CDs in the past year than any other year in the past decade. i'm happy to be getting a CD for only $2-3 bucks, now that all records are $20. the shoddiness of a lot of new vinyl pressings has started to make the whole enterprise feel like a scam, save a few specific artists and extremely high QC labels. i'm still *mostly* buying records, but the scales are tipping.

My car (2009 Nissan Versa) has a 6CD changer, but I don't think I've ever used it. I just plug my digital Walkman into the aux port.

you can still buy head units with CD players for pretty cheap for cars. i got one last month for $100

the bass in my old subaru is hefty. reggae and Eyehategod CDs all day long.

(after work last night i put my dad in the car, started it, turned on the heat, and went across the street to Cheech & Chong's Dispensaria. when i come back to the car i totally forgot that I left the volume way up on my solo ride in to work that morning. dad got 5 prime minutes of very loud *In The Name Of Suffering*. i hope he doesn't start acting up at the Senior Center.)

I feel bad for even having an opinion about how physical media is produced these day, other than “stop making physical media”… but yeah CDs:

- it would be nice if one could buy replacement jewel cases that were thick and sturdy like in the 80s

- I hate digisleeves unless they’re those mini LP thingees with the soft inner sleeve for the disc. really hate how they’ve become the default for new releases in a lot of cases, the cd is obviously an afterthought.

I’m still using the same mid00s Sony DVD/SACD player I mentioned in 2021 and it still works fine.

CD packaging has always sucked, with the exception of a few thoughtfully designed box sets. I generally throw CD packaging away and put the discs in a binder.

I've definitely seen boxes of CD cases left out on the street, sometimes even brand new, though more recently I've seen just spindles of blank unused CD-Rs/RWs.

I can’t figure out why CDs from the ‘90s, including old favorites, sounds so muddy to me now, in comparison to modern discs (when played in the same player). Are they mastered differently now?

Tracks from the same albums sound great when streamed at high quality, but the CDs themselves are not pleasant to listen to anymore… it’s like night and day in comparison to new recordings (or remasters of the old recordings).

There's a whole world of surgical digital EQ, lookahead brickwall limiting, etc... could it be your own tastes lean more toward modern production? The traditional audiofool wisdom is that older CDs are better (I don't know that I personally agree).

Often it’s a simple level thing - hotter mixes are perceived as sounding better in general, and a lot of 90s discs were mastered for normal headroom before the “loudness wars” of the 90s / 00s in which mastering was goosed to try to cut thru on streaming / shuffle play. Try turning the older discs up!

I have… they just sound worse! :( It’s like a “clarity” thing… idk

Granted, some of these are “mid-fi” indie-rock albums; but others are big-budget studio recordings (…and for comparison, today’s indie-rock albums can sound great, anyway; like the last Big Thief album, that CD sounds terrific).

name some albums that sound bad?

Yeah, I’d say CDs started sounding bad in general around 1995 and got worse for about a decade, and have been improving since. (A very general statement— exceptions abound.) Pre-loudness-wars discs often sound sublime; I’ve never been tempted to buy Daniel Lanois’ Wynona on vinyl, and a remastered version wouldn’t tempt me, because I can’t imagine anything sounding better than the original CD. On the other hand, Sam Roberts’ We Were Born In a Flame is so poorly mastered that it literally hurts my ears to listen to, even at low volumes, and the LP is a huge improvement. Brickwall was/is a bitch.

There was an interview with Stephen Street where he said that, in the late 80s / early 90s, mastering engineers often filtered the bottom end and reduced the stereo field. Neither of those changes sound like they'd be for the better and he seemed as mystified as anyone else why they'd do that.

Reducing the stereo field & filtering out the bottom end is important for vinyl mastering.

Hilarious that this post was started over 16 years ago.

name some albums that sound bad?

10,000 Maniacs - Our Time in Eden
Bought this when it came out, was a big fan, listened to it a lot... recently got back into it on streaming; sounds so great & lush. Dug out the old CD... does not sound lush!

The Sugarcubes - Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week!
Bought this sealed on eBay (a new "record club" pressing, from back in the day)... I won't say it sounds "bad," but it's fairly harsh and tiring on the ears. Very "CD" sounding, in that way that CDs used to have.

Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
Another one I bought on release day, and have listened to a lot over the years. I bought the 2011 remaster a few years back; it sounds so much better! (this one may be a matter of a taste; I won't be the one to say that the original SD mastering is "bad")

Liz Phair - Whitechocolatespaceegg
Yet another I used to love, and dug back out recently... it just sounds muddy! Unpleasant to listen to, compared with streaming the same tracks.

Built to Spill - There's Nothing Wrong with Love
Probably the worst offender here. I got way into this album recently (via streaming), and dug out my old copy from college. Could barely make it through the disc! It sounds so harsh and shrill. And I know it's a Sub Pop album by an indie rock band, we're not talking Fleetwood Mac... but it made in the studio w/Phil Ek, it's not like it was recorded on a tape deck.

The two Use Your Illusion reissues are another case of the remaster sounding a lot better to me than the ‘90s originals… as with Siamese Dream, I A/B’d them (and keep in mind, this isn’t always the case when we’re talking about multiple remasters of older recordings).

do you have any thoughts on the REM Monster remaster, I’m listening to the original CD right now and don’t think I would want it to be smiley face EQd or whatever, it sounds like a purring engine

That’s another good example, I’ll have to pull out both versions and compare…

The original disc sounds very good… this is not a CD I would complain about! I’m not even ready to stop listening for the A/B…

OK, so I do think the remaster sounds better… every instrument is more clear, the drums sound more like drums, the bass has more presence, etc.

So even though the original CD isn’t a good illustration of this phenomenon, the remaster does illustrate what I’m talking about… and it’s not just a matter of brickwalling, like in the way the 2010 remaster of Exile on Main Street sounds awful compared to the one from the 1994 disc.

Yeah, the 1994 Virgin Records remaster of Exile is the one to have.

wait morrisp - siamese dream, for example, only the 2011 remaster appears to be on spotify. so you’re saying the 2011 remaster sounds better when streamed than the 1993 original cd? not really an apples to apples comparison

No no, I’m comparing the actual CDs…!

My comments re: streaming related to some of those other albums (that haven’t been remastered); I’m comparing how they sound on Amazon Music versus how the old CDs sound.

(and those are not being heard through the same system or speakers, so that is definitely not an apples to apples comparison; just a point of reference)

oh well if you’re comparing a remaster cd to the original cd of course it’s gonna sound different?

same with comparing a cd on one sound system to a digital stream on another. maybe you just don’t like your cd player sound system anymore?

Well, the new CDs sound great in it... that's my main point, the streaming & remasters are more a distraction / "how I came to notice it" (it's true that if I tried multiple ways of listening, maybe the old ones would sound different)

which of these 2 do you prefer, morrisp?

https://mega.nz/folder/t2xByYwC#Z9eC7fNnra3dXuRuyi36gw

Uhhh is that link safe to click(?) lol

it's just 2 untagged FLAC files, track 1 of SD from the 1993 and 2011 CD masters, loudness normalised

Cool, thx, I'll check it out

Ok, so I'd say the remastered version sounds just as much "better" to me as it does on CD – the guitars are crunchier, vocals are clearer, drums are punchier (when played at the exact same volume.) It's like there's a thin layer of gauze over everything in the 1993 version, that's been pulled away in the remaster.

The difference isn't dramatic – and the OG CD isn't one I'd complain too much about! – but I have a definite preference.

(...Watch you now tell me that you pulled a switcheroo, and "b" is actually 1993!)

Your Kickstarter Sucks just alerted me to the HOTT CD player: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/553318161/hott-cd-player-rediscover-the-soul-of-music

A stand-up version of the wall player design! lol. Looks technically better than the Muji knockoffs. Headphone jack, optical port, etc.

― maf you one two (maffew12), Thursday, August 31, 2023 1:47 AM (four months ago)

(...Watch you now tell me that you pulled a switcheroo, and "b" is actually 1993!)

i didn't make a note of which was which but i checked and you're correct, b is the 2011 remaster indeed

for science, one more test if you're up for it? albeit not one of your examples this time, it's running up that hill, 85 vs 97
https://mega.nz/folder/Mm4SDRLJ#K2B-leqHjMFI1QG7KC0Qvw

Thanks, this is fun... in this case, it is (b) that sounds more "muffled" and less dynamic than (a). I would guess that (b) is the 1985 version, and (a) the later remaster?

B is the louder 97 remaster, i agree that A sounds better btw, which is why i picked this track to test. trivially noticeable at around the 3 minute mark

this is how i'd expect most comparisons to turn out but as you've seen, remastering isn't necessarily a loudness boost only and some remasters can be an improvement despite also being louder for no good reason.
merely comparing ReplayGain figures or DR meter scores without actually listening to the different versions is a fool's errand. if it sounds good, it is good, etc

(despite all that, unless told otherwise i'm biased to pick the older, quieter masters as a lazy rule of thumb)

i'm biased to pick the older, quieter masters as a lazy rule of thumb

100% agree, unless I hear or experience otherwise e.g. the Stereolab reissues

Interesting – yeah, they made it worse in this case for sure.

sometimes looking at those botched remasters in a WAV editor shows the most insane brickwalling, tens of thousands of clips per song.

is there some "pro" reasoning behind this? even as someone who is only a dabbler in home recording it seems like that would be something to avoid from a listener POV, "Loudness war" attention-grab-at-low-volume issues aside

btw chihuahuau thank you for all yr posts here, very educational