Worst sounding Cd's ever

CDs are cheap, disposable junk; easy to replace. Every copy of a CD release sounds the same. The sound of each copy (of the same recording) on vinyl develops it's own charisma after a while. CDs just get unplayable scratches that hurt your ears, none of that sweet mojo you get from a well-maintained LP.
 
I think there are many records that can be difficult to listen to for one sonic reason or another. A recent one that comes to mind is Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy. I adore the album but it can be very hard to listen to sometimes because it is just too...full. Every little sonic piece of space is occupied and the guitars are literally a wall of sound. I understand it took many years to make and many things were rerecorded, remixed, etc. with several different producers and whatnot but jeez...talk about overdoing it. Somehow the music just doesn't have any room to breathe any more. I'll bet if you work on any album or song for too long that at some point you can't really hear it any more for what it actually is.

Someone mentioned a similar experience with the new Green Day album a while back, that's it's too full sounding. I haven't heard it but since ol' Butch Vig produced it I'm surprised to hear that. He produced some good stuff.
 
Check out the Carcass "Reek of Putrefaction" album. I dare you. There are some interviews with Bill Steer (the guitarist I think) around on the internets regarding the recording of this abortion.
 
Milnoque said:
Counting Crows "August And Everything After"

Some good songs killed by a snare drum
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Wow Milnoque! Great album and I just don`t hear the problem with the snare.
Have you listened to it on different systems with the same result? In fact, this whole thread is kind of dependent on what people are using for playback. Different systems will color music differently, for better or for worst. No?
Rich
 
Villain S Deeds said:
CDs are cheap, disposable junk; easy to replace. Every copy of a CD release sounds the same. The sound of each copy (of the same recording) on vinyl develops it's own charisma after a while. CDs just get unplayable scratches that hurt your ears, none of that sweet mojo you get from a well-maintained LP.
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Wtf?? Every copy of a cd release sounds the same, this is a good thing.

"Young Guns" debut album springs to mind, they're getting bigger and bigger and the cd sounds shit.
 
chamelious said:
Wtf?? Every copy of a cd release sounds the same, this is a good thing.
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Yes, it's a very good thing in terms of product consistency, but that wasn't my point. Considering how stoned I was when I made it, I guess it's okay if anyone missed it.

Anyway, I'm sober now. I've been thinking that whether a CD sounds good or bad doesn't even matter to the average listener, who plays it back on a $30 boombox (or portable with $10 earbuds) while tinkering around the house or getting some excerise, etc. It's really only going to matter to those of us who are actively listening to it. As for those masters, that are "too loud", I'm sure the engineers who are doing this are aware of the fact that we can turn up the volume all by ourselves, but on the aforementioned boombox it's not going to get very loud anyway. It seems to me that the shitty CD sounds better on the shitty boombox than anything else.
 
Villain S Deeds said:
CDs are cheap, disposable junk; easy to replace. Every copy of a CD release sounds the same. The sound of each copy (of the same recording) on vinyl develops it's own charisma after a while. CDs just get unplayable scratches that hurt your ears, none of that sweet mojo you get from a well-maintained LP.
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:laughings: :laughings: :laughings: :laughings: :laughings: :laughings:

What a crock of shit.
 
I like me a good CD. Cheap, versatile, sounds good (most of the time).

Back to the thread, I have the Californication CD and I agree. It's a darn shame that they would make it sound so bad when the album is awesome all the way through.
 
Nine Inch Nails - Broken

People tell me there are good tracks somewhere on that CD, but I can't sit through the long, grating, nothing-but-noise tracks long enough to find them. If it had showed at least as much vision as Kevin Shields had on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, it might be excusable.
 
I want to throw Curve's Doppelganger album in there too. I like every song on that record, but the only thing on it that has any presence or definition is Toni's vocals. It's a shame because Curve fans like to rave about Dean's "pulsing" bass lines. The record is terribly bass-shy on every system I've listened to it on. I can make out snatches of interesting guitar and glitch stuff going on in the mixes if I listen closely, but it's so overly compressed into a homogenous hash that nothing stands out as a separate part.
 
While reading this thread I saw Rick Rubin's name pop up quite a few times with one user going as far as saying he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a mixing table.

Now, me being the noob, I thought Rick Rubin was one of those top-notch super-duper producers and I was wondering if you all think the same about the American Man records by Johnny Cash?
 
oceanflame said:
Actually I like 70's music production better than today's stuff,

The Beatles sounded really great for their time, even today. I looked at the wav. file of their latest remastered cds, no brickwall, no peaking.
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I agree.
What I like in this era are that bands and musicians liked to use 'dynamics' to gradually build the music up....'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' Pink Floyd, 'Entangled' by Genesis as 2 examples.
You seldom hear this nowadays...everything is always full tilt now !.
 
grimtraveller said:
When I first bought CDs that I had had on vinyl, back in the 90s, I have to say that I thought the sound was, what I used to call "brittle".
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You know why, right? First-run CDs of old albums were made from original masters, and they forgot about the RIAA equalization being on them. Turntables perform the reverse equalization, CD players don't.
 
StevenJacksonMu said:
I agree.
What I like in this era are that bands and musicians liked to use 'dynamics' to gradually build the music up....'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' Pink Floyd, 'Entangled' by Genesis as 2 examples.
You seldom hear this nowadays...everything is always full tilt now !.
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Wow, these are 2 of my favorites songs of all time. Genesis and Pink Floyd records were also fantastic production-wise.

I know what you mean by "full tilt". Music has no feelings anymore, or should I say the music you hear on radio. There are some exceptions still today...
 
diggy_dude said:
You know why, right? First-run CDs of old albums were made from original masters, and they forgot about the RIAA equalization being on them. Turntables perform the reverse equalization, CD players don't.
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I think it's more due to the first wave of 16 bit converters, not being all that great sounding.
 
Comparing a CD on a mainstream CD player to an LP on a high end system is not a reasonable comparison. Regular CD's players cost what? I don't know, haven't looked at them recently, had my HK for 10 years. DVD players without up conversion are less than 50 bucks, I'm guessing a CD player is less. Can you even get a turntable in this price range?

I heard an Eagles CD (not an Eagles fan, but it was audition quality) in a high end audio store in Houston. CD kiddies. CD player was a 3000 dollar Sony, through a Levinson preamp, Levinson EQ, Levinson power amp, Martin Logan monoliths. All up price for that system was close to 40G, in 2000. Best sound I have ever heard from ANY source. Vinyl, Tape, or CD.
 
buzzard bass said:
Comparing a CD on a mainstream CD player to an LP on a high end system is not a reasonable comparison.
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I don't think anybody was making that comparison. With both players connected to the same system, a high end record player sounds better than any CD player (provided the source sound for mastering the record was not 16 bit digital audio itself).
Regular CD's players cost what? I don't know, haven't looked at them recently, had my HK for 10 years. DVD players without up conversion are less than 50 bucks, I'm guessing a CD player is less. Can you even get a turntable in this price range?
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What can one CD player possibly do differently than another CD player aside from the D/A conversion? The cheapest $5 CD player in the world still reads every last bit of data exactly perfectly off of the disc. D/A conversion isn't that tricky and the cheap stuff isn't that bad.

Record players cost money because the bad ones not only neglect to pick sound up off of the record in the first place, but distort what they do pick up on the way to the amplifier. The whole contraption is mechanical vibration. There is like, 100,000 places along the way where things can go foul.

I heard an Eagles CD (not an Eagles fan, but it was audition quality) in a high end audio store in Houston. CD kiddies. CD player was a 3000 dollar Sony, through a Levinson preamp, Levinson EQ, Levinson power amp, Martin Logan monoliths. All up price for that system was close to 40G, in 2000. Best sound I have ever heard from ANY source. Vinyl, Tape, or CD.
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Obviously a CD going through 40G's of high end amplification and speakers in a great room will be the best sound most people have ever heard. What's that proove? CD's aren't incompetent and 40G's of the best gear makes great sound. None of that is a surprise.

Remove the CD and replace it with a record and it would have sounded even better.
 
If you can stomach it, have a real good listen to " I was made for loving you" on the Kiss Dynasty album. Once you get past the cracking snapping and hissing, the whole song speeds up and slows down to the point you can hear the pitch changes. It sounds worse than the Budgie cassette I wore out in my 76 Volare.
 
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