Many of the pros and enthusiasts I know find even
digital CD's painful to listen to.
Some CDs are painful. Others sound really good on
a good system, it's not necessarily the medium. The
most important considerations are related to how the
recording was engineered and mastered. All CDs are
NOT created equal.
The primary technical objections are that the dynamic
range possible with a 16 bit word length (Red Book CD)
is insufficient but with a well-engineered recording it's
not the primary objection. CDs were designed to be a
mid-fi consumer product that addressed the limitations
of the LP, namely surface noise and dynamic range. In
these respects they do what they were designed to do,
and potentially can sound VERY good if well engineered
and mastered. On good equipment.
But the resolution of the typical player demands that the
recording be compromised to fit into a set of parameters
as defined by the typical player. This is certainly true of
pop music just as it was for the LP. Normally that means
making the softer parts louder and the louder parts softer.
We aren't taking away bits like MP3, just limiting the
dynamic range so it sounds acceptable on a mass market
system. The mission here is mid-fi. Not always, a well
recorded CD can sound fantastic dynamically. But most
don't. Neither did most LPs.
The more serious technical objection to CD is the sampling
frequency. 44.1 kHz by the Nyquist-Shannon theorem should
be sufficient. But many say it isn't. The real world isn't a
theorem and there's a lot going on that isn't addressed by the
theorem, like clock jitter. And the theorem assumes a perfect
bitstream which NEVER happens, and perfect equipment,
etc.
So what happens when we crank up the word size to 24 bits,
increase the sampling frequency to 96 kHz, and send the PCM
signal to a high end DAC? Assuming an excellent recording
(and even with this technology it's possible to screw the pooch
on the engineering and mastering), we get a MUCH better
result. HD audio, in fact. Yes the file sizes are big, but not
that different from normal WAV files. And they work with
WMP and a decent DAC, so are more accessible than a
SACD device (and cheaper, too).
An HD audio album in WAV format can be had for about
$15 compared to $10 for a CD. That's reasonable. Some
are DRMed, some aren't. Poke around, it's out there.
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