Listening to syllables

Am repeatedly listening to the first few lessons of Colloquial Chinese just to get used to the rhythm of the language and the sounds of the initials, finals and tones.  Interesting that I can sort-of get the tones (which I expected to be the hardest part) with fair accuracy, but am having problems distinguishing several of the initials from one another.  But it's early days, and I hope I'll improve.  Or maybe it's just that the audio is sounding very muddy and I need to get my tape heads cleaned!