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Best player for Poorly Recorded redbook CDs?

There is lot on the cutting edge of digital players, Meitner, APL, Esoteric, Zanden, Reimyo, and the list goes on. Most have great reviews and their own followers. The problem is we usually test this with better recorded CDs or do not actually consciously think about how well a player plays poorly recorded CDs. If I have a main player for SACDs and avg-well recorded CDs, is there a player out there that somehow makes poorly recorded CDs sound better, and better than other equipment? Note this only pertains to poorly recorded CDs...and its not about being truthful/accuracy per se...all I want is something that will improve on bad CDs. Meitner is OK at this but I wonder if other players out there (and indeed it may well be a budget player,...who knows) that specifcally do this well. Given as music lovers, we generally own our fair share of poor sounding but great music CDs, I think this is potentially quite important and can pay lots of dividends after some investigation....at least that is the hope. Now thinking about this, its also somewhat surprising that professional reviewers do not really address this aspect much. Hmmm.

Any suggestions? Do you agree with this line of thiniking?
henryhk

Showing 2 responses by kana813

kana813
956 posts
 
If its not about being truthful/accuracy per se... instead of using cables and tubes as tone control,the most efficient way to modify the sound of Poorly Recorded Redbook CDs is to add an EQ devise to your system. This can
be done in the digital or analog domain. There's lots of talk about EQ devises on Robert Greene's(TAS) forum over at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/regsaudioforum/
kana813
956 posts
 
I seriously doubt Henryhk's system is suffering from poor quality cables.

Henryhk- does your Meitner DAC/Preamp have a tape loop?
If so you could try an EQ like the suggested Behringer T-1951. If not, a digital EQ devise could be inserted between the SPDIF output of your transport and a SPDIF input on your DAC. I'm not aware of any digital EQ devises which use ST connections like your Meitner gear.

If your Meitner DAC has a Toslink link input, you could also try using a cheap DVDP as a transport for Poorly Recorded redbook CDs.

I've tried ripping poorly recorded CDs to my hard drive and
burning them on black CDs, there's a slight improvement but
it can't fix compression/limiting problems as Onhwy61 points out.
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