Tuning CD's is a thing.
Many, many hours of experimentation with a variety of solutions gave us very positive results ranging from "notable improvement" to "jaw-dropping". We provided a complementary service to customers and allowed them to bring in a couple of CD's to "tune". This package included CD cleaning, treatments (we used the Ultrabit system) as well as trimming the CD's with a CD cutter.
We always performed "before" and "after" comparisons. An unsolicited nearly universal comment/question was: "Did you turn up the volume?" The answer". "No I didn't". Other accolades followed as well. What we didn't hear was: "I don't hear any difference". They may have been trying to be polite and didn't want to hurt our feelings, but we sit there with them, and heard what they heard.
We can agonize over the science related to making changes to physical media, but here are some observations after, literally, hundreds of cases:
- good CDs sound better
- unlistenable, poorly recorded, want to hit the eject button in 3 seconds CDs have some added siblance of detail, reduced harshness, and improved dynamic range
- BluRay soundtracks are improved. I kept "untreated" and "untreated" copies around for demo. Always better sound quality -- similar to CD improvements
- burned CD ROMS are improved
- "audiophile" versions of CDs sound better
- Improvements in virtually every CD transport/player we tried including car stereos, entry-level to "very good" players, and BluRay players.