I need someone who meets the following requirements:

- Is an audiophile with good ears.
- Owns a high-quality consumer CD player and sound system, preferably of audiophile-grade. System can be car or home, doesn't matter.
- Owns a copy of the 1989 Rush album "Presto".

Something about my MP3 collection has been nagging me for a long time, and I'd like your help:

Some of the songs in my collection have very irritating artifacts in the high frequencies. Specifically, certain cymbals such as ride cymbals seem to induce this problem. It is a random modulation of the sound of the cymbals, giving them a sort of distorted, crackly sound instead of a smooth sound.

In many cases, this problem seems to be present on the original recordings, and isn't necessarily a function of the rip or the MP3 encoder. But since I'm listening to the original CD on the same disk drive that I ripped the CD from, I can't be sure.

I have noticed that the problem is present only on certain songs, and only in certain moments in the songs, but I can hear the problem from all three sources: The original CD playing directly in my CD-ROM drive, the ripped WAV file, and the encoded MP3. Encoding at low bitrates tends to exacerbate the problem and accentuate it, but it's definitely present on the original CD, at least when I listen to it in the CD-ROM drive.

The thing is, until I got the MP3 player and started listening critically, I never noticed this problem. It might be because I just wasn't paying attention to the high frequencies. Or it might have been something about the way my car CD player handled the playback and the problem really wasn't there to begin with. I don't know if it's a jitter issue, or a high-frequency noise issue, an EQ issue, or what. I just don't have a high-quality consumer CD player hooked up anymore so I can't check.

So. If you've got "Presto", could you please listen closely to the ride cymbals at the beginning of Track 2: "Chain Lightning". Most notably, around 0:12, 1:03, and 1:32. Do you hear the same distortion that I do?

I'm only using this song as one specific, testable example. There are many others in my collection which sound this way. And what I find interesting is that it's only on certain moments of the recording that I hear it. Other areas of the recording, even the ride cymbals, don't have the problem.

I'd just chalk it up to bad recording, perhaps overdriven mics on the cymbals, except that it sounds like a digital artifact and it seems to happen to a lot of varied CD recordings.

Anyone?

___________
Tony Fabris