geoff@callan.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) (05/10/84)
Forgive me if this has already been pointed out; I have been short on time to read this group recently. Several people have claimed that CD's make their ears hurt. Those of us who are rabidly "anti-golden-ear" (like myself) would normally tend to reject any such suggestion out of hand; however, I think that this claim is true. It is appaently not very well-known that the range of human hearing is NOT simply 20-20K Hz. In fact, children start out with something more like 15-40K Hz; both ends deteriorate with age. Even when you are no longer able to HEAR some sounds, your ears can still be made sore by loud high-frequency tones. I believe this is a lot of the reason why your ears tend to get sore when listening to high-distortion (read many loud odd overtones above 20KHz) reproduction. Where this all relates to CD's is that some CD players apparently produce a parasitic 24KHZ tone at a fairly high level. Many high-quality amps and speakers will reproduce this tone, although possibly distorted. See the latest Audio (the special CD issue) for reviews of several culprit players. So...if CD's make your ears hurt, try listening again with a player that definitely doesn't produce the 24KHz noise. You may get a pleasant surprise! Geoff Kuenning Callan Data Systems ...!ihnp4!sdcrdcf!trwrb!wlbr!callan!geoff