Do you guys notice distortion on a lot of cd's you listen to? It sounds like clipping, like they recorded the level too high, or sometimes just buzzing sound. I've noticed this on quite a few cd's, easily heard through my headphones. At first I thought maybe my headphones were to blame, but I tried others and it had the same result. Then I thought it might be the CD player but with different ones the same result again. It doesn't matter if it's soft or loud in volume either. So it's either my hearing, or it's the CD's.

Example - the first track in the new norah jones CD. At 1:10-1:25, she hits some high peaks with her voice, but it is accompanied by some buzzing sound. I hear it in quite a few other CD's too.

Also the Miles Davis album "bitches brew" which sounds to me like the whole thing is just a boatload of distortion. Especially every piano note, seems to be completely distorted.

Yes, the worst ones I know of are the Ryko release of Armed Forces (Elvis Costello) and Feeling Good (Nina Simone compilation). Plenty of CDs have distortion or other problems.

The majority of pop music has been produced with clipping and distortion, but it's pretty rare for jazz/classical.

Others have noted the same thing on the Norah album.

On a different note, has anyone noticed that Oscar Peterson recordings have background noises that seem to be the musicians talking to each other? Or maybe I'm just interpretting static/noise as voices? I've noticed the same type of sounds on Night Train and Canadiana Suite.

I notice some clipping/distortion on CDs of even famous jazz recordings, like Kind of Blue, a lot on Herbie Hancock's albums from the 60s... loud instruments like horns and drums really seem to have caused some overloading back then. A lot of popular music has it, though often it's intentional. It seems to be less of an issue with classical music.

depends on what type of music....... stuff like Jazz and classical should have NO distortion. if they do and you can notice it, that's bad.

but stuff like rock/industrial/.... heavier stuff thrives on distortion. heck, that's what a guitar amp does on purpose. even some dance music. all those types these days are recorded REALLY hot. if you got a CD player with meters, you can see that the signal hits "clip" all the time. and something like NIN, they do it on purpose.

so it really depends on if your genre is using clipping as a technique on purpose, or if it's by accident.

but that norah jones CD is pretty bad, as you pointed out.

on classical music especially strings there is a lot of raspy sound
not as noticeable on smaller groups like chamber orch or quartets but when the whole string section of an orch. plays loud there is to my ears a high end distotion.

I heard that violins have the most acoustic energy in the harmonic region and maybe the sampling rate cant handle it.

the cleanest cds are the telarc dsd . but even some of these have a grungy sound in the loud parts. i sure hope its not my ears that are producing these artifacts.but the better the headphones the more distortion I hear.

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How ironic... don't ya just hate that?

Why would anyone purposely want distortion? It doesn't add to the sound at all, and for someone like me, it makes an otherwise good song unlistenable because I cringe everytime I hear the distortion. Don't they monitor when they mix the CDs? It should be clear that the distortion is there and they should fix it by lowering the level or something.

I do feel most classical recordings don't have this same phenomenon, but I have noticed when I turn up a couple of my telarc recordings, I can hear some weird squeeks and noises, maybe just background noise picked up during a recording, but... It almost sounds like digital artifacts from audio compression algorithms even though it's from a CD. But at least they don't have the easily heard peak clipping type distortion.

that bjork cd produced by howie b, either homogenus or post, has a lot of distortion on her vocals. bad howie b, no cookie for you!

how such a thing could slip by the producer is beyond me.

"Why would anyone purposely want distortion? It doesn't add to the sound at all, and for someone like me, it makes an otherwise good song unlistenable because I cringe everytime I hear the distortion."

it's the style, man. ......for instance, in electronic music, and even rap and hip-hop (i hate rap and hip-hop.... only for illustration's sake) use a lot of samplers. now, the newest samplers are very high-fidelity--CD quality or better. .....but still, some of the best producers out there seek out the ghetto samplers that are ancient.... and ultra-low fidelity. we're talking 8-bit, 8-16khz sampling rates. why?--they like the crunch. some of those ghetto samplers go for quite a bit on ebay......... and you'd think they aren't even usable in these high-tech days.

even big studios sometimes downgrade equipment for a project on purpose. there are some very good tape recorders out there that have fast speeds (15-30ips) and are very wide (1-2inches). still, people like to use slower speeds and thinner tape just for some extra mellowness or perhaps "good" distortion. it's not uncommon to use cheaper recording equipment for an extra-special sound, even when superior equipment is available.

.......and even here... people insist on using turntables. now, we all know the specs on turntables are damn awful. yet, people insist they sound "better" than CDs...... and to their ears, that might be absolutely true, even though in reality a turntable is anything but "hi-fi." it's because there's something special about all that low-fi coming from a turntable.

....so, these days people have stacks of outboard gear for the sole purpose of adding distortion... whether it's vintage compressors/eqs, low-fidelity recording equipment, noisy sampling gear, or dedicated pure distortion-boxes.... err, um ... tube gear ( --Hirsch)................ it's all about the style.

so, BCWang...... that is why.

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That's hilarious! I found that too, and when listening on headphones, I had to take them off because I thought someone was talking to me. Then, when listening on speakers, I thought it was static, but it sounded too formal and organized. It was really weird. 'Night Train' has it all over the CD... it's really funny to hear someone else convey this discovery.

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This is a load of horsedung. What is your experience with turntables? A Mickey Mouse record player? Please refrain from posting nonsense such as this.

Orpheus:

And digital sound doesn't have its own handicaps--nor does the transistor? Wink, wink.

NGF

nothing is perfect, man. everything has weaknesses and strengths. i was merely explaining why people like distortion... or at least why distortion is being used purposely in music.

my mickey mouse turntable actually broke down long time ago.... i've since upgraded to a snoopy planar mounted on a shockmounted house.

It's settled, then, we all like distortion.

[If you believe a turntable can't achieve a reasonably high fidelity reproduction of a groove surface, you need to reexamine the technology and measure a good example of it if that will satisfy. Its inherent distortions, as low as they have ever been, are not half as gross, I would argue, as those of current formats, which suffer more from sins of omission than they do those of addition.]

NGF