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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 3 responses by rcprince

rcprince
3,060 posts
 
Tweak1--While I don't doubt your findings, I am surprised that a player that supposedly gets everything on the disc read completely would make a "poorly-recorded" disc sound better. What this may be saying is that many of the discs we thought were poorly recorded instead have been poorly transcribed by our CD playback systems.
rcprince
3,060 posts
 
I'm in the camp for equalization; you could run it through a tape loop to keep it out of the system on your best material. The best equalizer for listening to music IMHO is the old Cello Audio Pallette, which had settings designed to compensate for known recording companies' tendencies and made everything listenable as a result. The best one-box cure for bad CDs might be the most expensive, the Linn CD12, which is the best one-box player I've ever heard (it is good enough to compete with your EMM Labs equipment) and also the one that best got to the music rather than every minute detail. You could also try one of the earlier Audio Logic Model 34 DACs, before they went to the 2400 and the transformer-coupled versions (I believe that the current version also works well for ordinary CDs, but the earlier versions definitely let you flavor the sound a little more).
rcprince
3,060 posts
 
The Cello is analog and very high quality, but no longer made. You'll need to find it used. The PARC is very good but only affects signals below 300Hz, and is designed to tame low frequency room problems by lowering peaks in frequency response, it's not what you're looking for in this application.
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