What to do with bad recorded CDs


When I upgraded to Mcintosh and Accuphase - Kef speaker system, I am in heaven for the first time I started this hobby a decade ago.

I found my-self not even breathing, to capture every bit of nuance of the music... It was a great moment for me - and I am a professional musician. Rarely do I encounter such moments in live music !

Good Hifi can equal if not better live performance - for me.

But alas, heaven turned into he-- when I put on badly recorded materials. It revealed bad CDs to the point of me wanting to throw them away.

What do audiophiles do about that ? Go back to a lesser system to play these ? Or should I throw away great portion of my collection ?
gonglee3
I usually have the artist rerecord the material:) I am assuming that by poor performance, you mean that the CD sound quality is bad and not that the artist himself/herself gave a bad performance. I usually apply some ultra vivid or other treatment to the CD and it does render the sound quality somewhat more acceptable. I find some of the earlier CDs were very lean and strident, it is very good with them. If it doesn't work, you can send them to Garebear!
Too bad my proposed machine to restore the dynamics on recordings might be difficult to achieve.

However it still is a shame to purchase music that you hear and like, and then bring it home to find it unlistenable because of the "recording choices". I've found this to be true with all recording formats and every type of music I purchase from ragtime to rock.

It doesn't seem to matter where I play such a title (in the car, home theater system, IPod, or the main rig) the performance (because of the recording) suck!

As a result, after being burned a few times, I never purchase another CD by that artist and I avoid the labels that typically produce such unlistenable horrors.

What happens next? The CD either is kept and never played, or traded at the local used CD shop. Sometimes the local CD shop doesn't even want them, because there is no demand.

I still consider recordings like this inferior products and believe the consumer should have the right to return and get a refund on such junk. Maybe then the artist, recording engineer, and label would get the message.
" I find some of the pop music recordings with syntheciser sound un-refined, as were the husky voices"

NEed to know what "un-refined" means to you?

Many pop synth recording suffer from compressed dynamics in teh recording process, which might be considered "un-refined", but other than that they should sound clear and undistorted at any reasonable volume you listen at.
Frisbees for little hands.

I'm teaching my grandson how to frisbee a Sheryl Crow cd.

Any of them work fine.