Digital Music sounds too bright?

Obviously the scattered background CD laser light is getting into the photodetector and producing errors. Which is why the Green Pen works, by absorbing red light as it spreads out from around the outer edge of the CD. Green, or more specifically turquoise or cyan, absorbs red light because it’s the complementary color for red. Now here’s where it gets tricky. The CD laser wavelength is actually around 780 nanometers nm which is in the near infrared spectrum of light, I.e., invisible light. There is some red in the laser light because the wavelength is close to visible red on the spectrum and because there is some discrete bandwidth to the laser light, it’s not monochromatic. Therefore one can reasonably conclude that the bandwidth of the laser extends above visible red )which stops around 700 nm) up to around 850 nm. Thus the Green pen only affects the visible red part of the spectrum below 700 nm. The rest of the laser light above 700 nm can not (rpt not) be affected by color. I.e., there is no complement for infrared (invisible) light. So, we have the situation where quite a lot of scattered laser light is getting into the photodetector EVEN IF MUCH OF IT IS ABSORBED BY THE GREEN OR TURQUOISE COLOR around the outer edge.

There are a great many reasons why digital needs a lot of help. The reasons are not limited to RFI/EMI, "quantum noise," or Gaussian noise. Other reasons include but are not limited to seismic and internally produced vibration such as transformer buzzing, magnetic field interference, from transformers especially but also any wire that carries current, interconnects and/or speaker cables in reverse direction, system/CD out of polarity, CDs aggressively compressed, background scattered CD laser light interfering with the primary signal, out of round condition of many CDs makes them wobble, and CD transport vibration.

Ivan_nosnibor
"But I would say the main conclusion from my experiences so far is that the notion that digital itself is somehow Inherently inferior sound quality-wise is actually a complete myth. It just needs some serious help."

Hmmmm, sounds like you actually agree with me. I never said digital couldn’t be improved. Thus the inherently inferior sound quality of untreated digital is pretty much as I described.

Cheers

I would go a little bit further. I’d say CDs, especially untreated CDs, sound not only too bright, but distorted, boomy, thin, harsh, hard, dry, threadbare, rolled off, bass shy, metallic, electronic, dull, generic, closed in, congealed, and like paper mache.