I've found a few things that outright bother me:
1) Cheap/older CD players have a digital brittleness to them.
2) Mass market solid state electronics played through powerful systems. I find that cheap little boomboxes are not as annoying by comparison.
3) High definition systems with a weak link. For example my audio physic system sounds wonderful, but if I put in a low quality component, you really hear it.
4) Gigantic, cheap mass market speakers. Hate them. I think those are the biggest ripoff in the world. You can buy a great sounding set of $200-300 monitor speakers and get much better sound.
5) CD's that are overprocessed. An example is the emmylou harris 'red dirt girl'. I think the performance would have been better if it had been left in a little more natural form. It sounds like it's been put through a digital blender then poured into an empty spam can (with a little extra gelatin).
6) Pop recordings from the 80's. Those were the days of big-@ solid state guitar amps played through fuzzed out, toneless plasti-kote guitars with a few infantile synthesizer backbeats for good measure. Go into a guitar store, and listen to a $400 ibanez with a line 6 processing amp against to a fender relic guitar played through a fender hot-rod tube amp, and you'll get the idea. What were they thinking? Ugghh.
1) Cheap/older CD players have a digital brittleness to them.
2) Mass market solid state electronics played through powerful systems. I find that cheap little boomboxes are not as annoying by comparison.
3) High definition systems with a weak link. For example my audio physic system sounds wonderful, but if I put in a low quality component, you really hear it.
4) Gigantic, cheap mass market speakers. Hate them. I think those are the biggest ripoff in the world. You can buy a great sounding set of $200-300 monitor speakers and get much better sound.
5) CD's that are overprocessed. An example is the emmylou harris 'red dirt girl'. I think the performance would have been better if it had been left in a little more natural form. It sounds like it's been put through a digital blender then poured into an empty spam can (with a little extra gelatin).
6) Pop recordings from the 80's. Those were the days of big-@ solid state guitar amps played through fuzzed out, toneless plasti-kote guitars with a few infantile synthesizer backbeats for good measure. Go into a guitar store, and listen to a $400 ibanez with a line 6 processing amp against to a fender relic guitar played through a fender hot-rod tube amp, and you'll get the idea. What were they thinking? Ugghh.