Mike Hanson
Trying to understand...
I don't mind the quiet ones at all, and very much prefer that to brick wall compression.I’m the opposite on that and actively hunt down early Japanese and West German CD pressings as they tend to be flat master transfers and most of my best sounding CDs are of this era. Some surprisingly big bands too, e.g. Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, David Bowie etc have never beaten their first CD masters, not even with SACD, DVD Audio, high-res streaming etc. If original vinyl is too spendy these are often the next best option IMO.
One thing that throws a lot of people is early CDs tend to be cut very quiet, and that throws people into thinking they are thin and gutless. The good ones really aren’t, they are cut quiet to leave room for real dynamic range and there is some degree of engineering laziness here too, i.e. cut quiet rather than risk clipping and having to redo. Just turn them right up and they kick! Not all are great, but a fair few are just stunning and have never been beaten digitally. Some labels just knock it out of the park time after time, e.g. ECM. Those are always superb sounding with real dynamics. Obviously a lot of the problem with digital is very deliberate bad decisions e.g. blanket ‘brick wall’ compression at the mastering stage. Vast numbers of albums are all but unlistenable due to that to my ears. Vinyl has the advantage that you just can’t cut that sort of ‘always on’ signal, so they have no option to allow some real dynamic range.
Btw, the very first CD I bought was from Steely Dan.