Audio Systems: Murky sound from CD player, high quality sound, mechanical reason

Question
Kevin,
I have a quite old RCA 5-disc CD player that has always served me well.  It has not been used for about a six-month period and recently I started listening again.  Some, maybe 20% of my CD's are not as clear as I remember. I have cleaned many of them but the quality of sound did not improve in any of those cleaned.  Some CD's are quite old and I understand that they may degrade over time.  But I am not convinced that the CD's are bad and wonder if the CD player itself is the culprit.  Is there is a way to clean the internal workings of the CD player and do you think this cleaning might solve my problem?  Is this something a reasonably handy person can do or should it be given to a shop to have it checked out?  How is this done, if at all? I have not priced a new CD player but it may be so cheap that I should just buy a new one?!I thank you in advance for your help.  John

Answer
Hello, John...

Nice to hear from you again.

There is no electronic or mechanical reason a CD player should poop out on 20% of your CDs just because it sat on the shelf for six months. However, what you can and should do is clean the lens with a CD lens cleaner kit (a few bucks at Best Buy or Circuit City). Anything's that been sitting around for six months is bound to have accumulated some dust. I use a Maxell cleaner I got at Best Buy. But I don't think that's what's going on here.

This may sound harsh, and I don't mean to be mean, BUT...

There's a well-known disease in the audio community called "audiophilia nervosa" ("AN"), the uncontrollable urge to fiddle with everything endlessly. Symptoms include: "my amplifier doesn't deliver as much power as it used to"; "my speakers don't respond to the mid-bass frequency the way they used to"; and "my CD player won't play 20% of my CDs they way I remember them sounding". Causes of this disease are usually (a) a general lack of confidence in one's ears, brought about by inexperience with high quality sound reproduction; and (b) reading "Stereophile" magazine. The cures are (a) refocusing attention on music rather than sound quality; and (b) cancelling one's subscripton to "Stereophile".

Okay. That was harsh.

Let's do some fact checking. First, CDs, if properly handled (i.e., you're not using them as frisbees or cocktail coasters), will last as long as you want them to. There are sporadic reports of degradation, but most that I've looked into are clearly associated with mishandling. (Another T$S writer and I pay close attention to this and periodically compare notes--he's got a classic case of AN, but is otherwise a normal, engaging human being and a nice guy to boot.)

Second, when CD players poop out, they usually (a) start skipping (loose motor drive belt) or (b) refuse to read any discs at all (misaligned laser). John, I've never heard (not once, ever) of a CD player selectively playing 1/5 of anybody's CDs "less clearly".

My guess is that you've changed something else in your rig, probably speakers, and the CDs in question sound different because their recorded sound responds differently to the speakers. All CDs, all recordings for that matter, are engineered with a specific sound in mind. Some speakers can handle the recording engineer's intent better than others. Have you changed either your main speakers or their positioning lately?

Don't get a new CD player. If you must, get a DVD player. The electronics are better, and they play all sorts of stuff that a CD player can't, including MP3, SACD, and DVD-A. And, PLEASE, stop taking everything you read in "Stereophile" as gospel. "Stereophile" has a point of view just like every other magazine published. It's POV revolves around subjective evaluations of component performance, and generally asserts that the more you pay, the more you get. I write for a magazine, "The $ensible Sound", which has a different POV: CD players all perform pretty much the same regardless of cost; power is power, and expensive power amplifiers seldom provide "better sound" than inexpensive amplifiers--in fact, amplifiers (except for tube jobs) do not have a "sound"; and invest in the best possible speakers--they make up 99% of what you're going to hear. And of course you've read my allexperts bio: wire is wire; don't buy exotic, expensive wire. You and I have already had that conversation.

Bottom line? I don't think your CD player is malfunctioning. I think you and your audio expectations have changed. This is a good thing, but something that you'll get carried away with if you're not careful. My prescription? Relax and enjoy. Your CD player is okay. Your CDs are okay. And you're okay.

I'm going to stop short of suggesting that the 20% of lacking clarity is your imagination, but it's your imagination. Relax. Enjoy what you're listening to, not how it sounds. If you've been following my advice (ahem), you've gotten some fairly good, flat response speakers (not Bose or DCM or Cerwin-Vega or JBL or anything Japanese). It stands to reason that some stuff will sound different with a better loudspeaker. So what did you get? How happy are you with it overall?

Hang in there. This is a rocky road at the beginning, but in the end you'll enjoy your music a whole lot more.

Kindest regards,

Kevin