[Colin B.]

In rec.audio.tech wrote:
On Jun 22, 6:18 pm, Dave wrote:
I have been disappointed with the audio quality of some CDs I have
bought recently. Is there a free program I can use to get an accepted
measurement of fidelity? (like a signal to noise ratio)

I have my suspicious that some may have been stored an MP3s and then
"unripped" in the factory. So how can I tell for certain if my CD has
been an MP3, or other lossy format? I'd hope mp3 storage would leave
different markers than the original tape, for example.

There's no particularly good reason why the "factory"
would want to do such a things.

There's a far more mundane explanation. Recent
music distribution, including CDs, have suffered
from an industry-wide of sever over compression,
limiting and clipping, as an endemic result of the
mastering process.

I'd suggest that this isn't a recent phenomenon. I've got plenty of pop
vinyl from the 1970s and 1980s that has roughly no dynamics. Making crap
sound louder on the radio at the complete expense of quality is decades old.

Colin