[ARSCLIST] early CD bashing

[phillip holmes <insuranceman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I've had recent experiences where 20 year old CDs, that originally 
sounded like glass being ground up in a blender, sound just fine.  I'm 
talking about CDs mastered in the mid '80s.  Many early CD players had 
resolution closer to 14 bits than 16.  That was coupled with brick wall 
filters that introduced phase shift in the audible spectrum (brick wall 
filters are dumb) and they had lots of jitter.  Also, most were built 
with the same awful op-amps and tantalum/electrolytic coupling caps that 
the cheapest consumer receivers used.  It's no wonder that folks damned 
the CD as an awful medium.  It was at the time.  They were auditioned 
against four figure vinyl front ends through ultra-fi preamps and amps 
that will show any shortcomings.  Many used ribbon tweeters (I have 
Magnapans that use a 3' long true ribbon tweeter and it reveals 
mistracking and distortio--ruthlessly).  But even cheap modern players 
can get decent sound out of those old CDs.  I have a friend who still 
has a modified Magnavox player from the late '80s.  The op-amp output 
was replaced with discrete FETs and the power supply was modded with 
lower ESR caps and bypassed with polypropylene caps.  It still plays 
fine and sounds nearly as good as my cheap combi-player. 
Phillip