Quality of rips from older CDs

I think its simply that some older CDs were not mastered as well. The same can be said for CDs mastered for those crappy iPod headphones today.

I suspect there was a 'Golden Age of CD' somewhere between 1985 when recording engineers begun to understand the new media and 2000 when the loudness wars really started to drive up compression.

There's no absolute rule, but typically I find newer 'popular' CDs have poorer mastering.

I agree wit the above responses. I have a cheap rem reissue of Fables Of The Reconstruction and that sounds wonderful (considering what a slating the release received with regards it's production). Some remasters have worked wonders, some straight reissues from original master tapes sound amazing (Klaus Schulze on Revisited Records for instance) some modern recordings are great but too many are awful. High quality hifi lays bare the recording engineer choices that lead to a poor overall sound balance. Good stereo balance seems to be a dying art.

Ps: with regards ripping I'd definitely choose a ripping software that compares your rip to others on a database and can fix frame errors, like dBpoweramp. If a ripper reads the wrong info 7x then it must have the right info, non? I rip to WAV personally.

Same here, generally speaking. My stuff from the 80s and 90s tends to be better mastered.  Notwithstanding the fact that original quality is the deciding factor and you can't polish a turd. Nowadays you are more likely to get something that's brick walled. And while a good system may get enough music and emotion out of a challenging recording to allow the musicians to communicate with you, if it's been mixed hot all you're going to hear is more compression and distortion.

Big thing to worry about with old CDs is preemphasis - more than a few early CDs were recorded with a significant treble lift which was then reversed in the cd player. The original Japanese pressings of Dark side of the Moon had preemphasis for example. If you rip such a cd straight - as most rippers do - then they will be very trebly when you play them back. dBpoweramp will show whether a cd has preemphasis, but will not correct for it,  so you need to use sox or some such to apply the deemphasis. I believe Tunes does correct for any preemphasis. Don't know how naim rips handle such CDs. 

Original CD issues from the 80s tend to sound quite good (rock).  The remasters of 80s material is almost always a step down - often rather dramatic where all nuance in tonal info disappears.  90s issues (rock) are generally lousy recordings - "grunge" through and through.  And the 00s are yet another drop off in quality.  I can't speak to niche recordings but I believe that on average things have been going downhill. 

Received the new release of The Yes Album today (CD + DVD) which has been remixed by Steven Wilson from the original multitracks. Much more dynamic than my 1994 remaster version (DR13 compared to DR9 for the 1994 remaster). DVD includes Hi-Res (MLP and LPCM) 24/96 stereo and 5.1 surround versions of the remix together with a flat transfer of the original stereo mix ( LPCM 24/96) and bonus material in 24/48KHz LPCM. There is still hope that the tide may be turning towards better and more sensitive (re)mastering restoring dynamic range. 

Mine is in the post. 

Are you happy with what Steve Wilson has achieved with this?

Only had a chance to listen to the 5.1 surround and a rip of the hi-res stereo remix so far. I like what SW has done. Chris Squire's bass doesn't dominate too much and he's brought out Tony Kaye's keyboards well I feel. Overall I think he's done a pretty sympathetic job and of course there's always new things to hear for the first time in a new mix especially in the surround mix.

I think I forgot to mention that there's a 5.1 DTS mix as well.

Thank you. Much appreciated. 

A quick update. The hires stereo remix is a bit quieter than the CD by about -2dB. The HR versions with the exception of "Clap" have been normalised to -2.20dB (peak) whereas the same tracks on the CD vary between -0.10dB and -0.22dB. "Clap" peaks at -6.71dB (HR) and -4.87dB (CD).

I do certainly hear the difference in mastering in CDs.

I often find masters from the 70s transferred to CD can sound a little restrained and flat. Some of the masters from the late 80s can sound a little digital and artificial especially in the upper mids and treble. (Remember the debates about AAD and DDD?) This was when digital mixing and mastering got a big foothold and there was a lot of development. From the late 90s compression techniques  arguably improved and the so called 'loudness wars' started. From the mid 2000s you could hear all sorts of digital processing appearing sometimes creating quite a soup!

Despite this luckily I have good masters from all these eras, and the worse mastering excesses seemed to apply to very commercial/ disposable music in my experience.

Finally I don't think this has anything to do with CD per se. Up until late 90s I have LPs that show similar traits. Remember the 12" single? They were always great as they were mastered to be more wide band and dynamic and often sounded superb compared to the album LP or CD track.

Simon

Below is a link to a list of some of the CDs that were issued with preemphasis. As you can see there are a fair number of "classics" and early CDs from Pink Floyd, The Blue Nile, Miles Davis, Mark Knopfler, The Beatles, Bruno Walter etc.. If you have used dBpoweramp or EAC to rip any of these CDs they will play back wrongly - ie with an excessive treble emphasis. afaik only iTunes corrects for such pressings.

http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?13900-Pre-emphasized-CDs&p=99398&viewfull=1#post99398

If you have any rips you suspect of having excessive brightness, you may want to check the preemphasis flag using EAC or dBpoweramp. re ripping in iTunes is probably the easiest way to fix them.

A CD with preemphasis is one case where you do not want bit perfect ripping! (unless you are making a physical copy of it).

Sounds very much like another reason to use iTunes to me.

Not every ripping engine I have heard does as good a job as the standard [completely un-augmented] iTunes that I use, and this may be the explanation for why some other ripping engines sound shrill on certain recordings. And I never this before!

ATB from George

George - as far as classical is concerned,  I believe a lot of earlier BIS CDS were issued with preemphasis, and a few/some hyperion, DG, Delos and Telarc. If you google "Classical CDs preemphasis" you'll find lots of relevant links. But if you have used iTunes, it looks like you're ok anyway!

Gosh, I'd forgotten about the pre-emphasis thing with early CDs. If memory serves, pre-emphasised CDs had an inaudible flag on the disc which the player would account for in the D>A process. Can someone put my mind at rest and confirm that my beloved Naim CD player is still doing this when I play my (fairly numerous) CDs from the relevant period?

Mark