That leaves your player, computer, or speakers.

I'd agree, except for one thing...

I only notice it on certain songs from certain albums, always the same ones. Whereas another album with the same kinds of sounds (crash cymbals in a certain frequency range) will sound perfectly fine to me.

Perhaps I'm being overly critical of the recording. Maybe something that's subtle to everyone else is glaringly obvious to me. Maybe my stereos emphasize a certain frequency more than others...

Okay, here's another example. There's some moments on the Incubus album "Make Yourself" that have the same problem. I was riding in a friend's Volvo (with the factory sound system). This guy is a recording engineer, so he's got good ears, too. The Incubus album is his wife's favorite and it was in the CD changer. When one of those moments came up, I pointed it out to him, and he agreed, "yeah, those cymbals sound like crap". He didn't have an explanation, either.

So if it is a problem with the playback equipment, I know it's at least not specifically my equipment.

But I also notice it when I rip the albums and encode them to MP3 and play them in my car. In that case, the problem sounds like compression artifacts and it really gets on my nerves.

If the stuff is simply "supposed to sound like that", I guess I have to accept it. But if I hear it and some other folks don't hear it, then I have to narrow down whether it's me being too critical or if the other folks are playing it on a better system. And if so, what's different about that system.

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Tony Fabris