Anyone out there know the secret as to why I can't listen to cd's on any of my players I've tried or anyone elses either? What is interesting is that I can listen to FM, which is mostly CD's and I don't get the ear pain I get from mine. Why not a bother? Don't give me any easy answers. I've tried them more that likely. I've spoken to the engineers at many radio stations and they all tell me that they are not placing any "correction" electronics at their stations. Got to be an answer to this. Love to be able to to listen to them. Thanks, you guys!.
FM stations limit frequency response. If I remember correctly 50-15000 is it. They have an SCA marker tone at 19000, so FM radios will never pass even close to that frequency.
You may want to try a decent power conditioner and make sure of NO ground loops / hum / noise in your system. Turn it up with NOTHING being played and you should get Zippo out of your speakers. Get an outlet tester....a few bucks at the local Home Despot. use it.
All those tweaks are the last things to try. You'll drive yourself nuts with tennis balls VS squash balls VS Edmund Scientific 'no bounce' balls (hi hysterisis)
I have no doubt, a change of interconnects, power cables and supports make a big difference. For the first 2, the cable company may be able to advise you and lend some cables. For support, I like a svelt shelf with rollerblock juniors. There are certainly warmer sounding players around, the Shanling CDT 100 I used for years, Marantz, Lector all come to mind
Put a transparent MM PC on your CD player and support it on mapleshade triplepoints into a maple wood platform which is also supported by isolation feet.
Modest(average) CD players are very sensitive to AC noise incoming and also output digital noise which is very audible. The beauty of FM broadcast is that you don't have the digital electronics of a CD player creating the digital noise into your system; and, many quality broadcasters have some form of AC conditioning(balanced power)for their systems. Your CD player will be far more listenable if you use isolation/conditioning on the AC feeding it and will improve further if you do the same for your preamp. Best wishes for improved sound, there's a lot of great music on CD.
No question, CD is an unforgiving medium. It's takes attention to detail and a good player. Everything matters- power cord, interconnects, vibration control/isolation, demagnetizing discs before play, cleaning off the mold release, treating the surface...
Every CD player is different. A laid back sound (What comes to mind first are Marantz SA-11s12? SA-7s1? SA-15s1?). Simaudio? Accuphase? Classe? Read some reviews and try to get a clue from that. Audition carefully. System synergy plays a real big role. Thanks
How do you go listening to compressed music files (eg mp3)? If these sound ok like FM radio, it could be that your hearing is especially sensitive to some forms of digital distortion which would be annoying to your ears from a quality CD player and rig, but not audible in compressed files or the dynamically compressed and imperfect nature of FM radio. Try burning an audio CD from some compressed files (like mp3 or aac) of songs you're familiar with and play that on your rig. I'd be interested to hear what you find.
Radio stations have a bigger budget to spend on audio reproduction than you do is probably the answer. Independent and college stations can sound even better.
you will get much more enjoyable sound out of CDs when you A) address vibrations B) address noise on AC / ground
lots of ways to do it---but you have to experiment. inner tubes under a maple butchers block for vibration is a nice cheap tweak, and i'm still playing with products on treating AC (the Acoustic Revive ground conditioner is a very nice product, and their power conditioner is a great product, and i'm about to plug in Audio Magic's Pulse Gen).
i can listen to CDs all day with no fatigue. having an EMM CDSA helps ;-)
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