Some older CDs play much lower than newer ones

Most modern recordings have a lot of compression applied in the mixing process. This will make them louder, but will compromise the dynamic range.

Some older recordings were captured at lower levels, because they were afraid to approach the 0dB limit of the CD. Nowadays, most recordings hit this limit.

If you rip any of these older recordings, they can be normalized and dithered to make them hit the 0dB limit, so in other words, they can be fixed. However, many of these older recordings were also lacking in bass, which can also be fixed digitally, but harder to get right.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Hi Nimbus109

Do you happen to have another CDP to test what you are hearing? If not I"d get a DVD or CD player from Target or Walmart and play both CDs to hear if there is a volume difference. Are the CDs you are listening to are of the same artist just one was the original and one was re-mastered? Are the CDs you are listening too one from the 90s and others are from today?

The reason I ask these questions is that I find with some newer CDs the gain or volume on them is really high. I had a CD from a band in the late 90s to early 2000s listened to it and then put in one of their newer albums from recent years and the volume difference was large to me. I had to take the volume dial down a notch or 2 in my system. It seemed like the sound mix from today's artists is made for headphones etc to be louder. Even with current compilations CDs of various pop artists I can hear volume differences between the tracks.

On my PAS Audio preamp, setting the volume @ 20 needs to be boosted to 40 for older CDs. Thanks for your response....maybe I will focus more on my LPs.