I wish that were the case, but its not always true. Sometimes you have the system set up properly, and the CD's still sound bad.
Zd542, i might have to disagree with you here - i've found that once you setup a system which has minimal distortions (for a particular budget i.e. $), then, well-recorded CDs sound good. The ones that continue to sound bad are the ones that were badly recorded, are compressed & have other maladies.
Are you sure that you're not confusing revealing with poor timbre? For example, if you have a system where a cymbal sounds like someone dropped a piece of metal on a concrete floor, that would be a problem because timbre is wrong. It has nothing to do with how revealing the system is.
yes, I'm not mixing up timbre & revealing.
In fact, what you wrote above in the quote is a distortion for sure. When you have distortion in your components (& the system in general) many things (& often even everything) is wrong including timbre, timing, soundstage & the ability to reveal the nuances of the music.
Another way to consider this issue, and I suspect this may be what you are referring to in your post, is that you can have a "mixed bag" of components. For example, maybe you have an amp that produces a high level of detail with little distortion, with a preamp that does not. You then have a situation where one well designed component, shows the flaws in another.
correct. that's what i'm saying. It's not wrong to have a "mixed bag" of components if what you mean by "mixed bag" is components from different manufacturers. Is that what you mean by "mixed bag" of components?
I've found that there are several manuf within each $ budget that make the lowest distortion, most accurate component. The trick is to find that manuf & that component. If one goes about selecting one's components this way one is bound to end up with diff manuf for the various components but if each component is minimal distortion & accurate sounding then the system as a whole will maintain that attribute.
I recently bought a very revealing and transparent CD player ....
what in the world does this sentence mean??
Obviously I interpreted it one way (in my mind it meant "low distortion, accurate sounding") & my earlier 04/01/15 response was based on that while Zd542 interpreted it another way (& I'm sure that other members have interpreted it in still other ways).