Are all CD players really equal?

[Messiah]

How long have CDP’s been with us now, 40+ years? One would have thought that given the claims by manufacturers of year on year improvements (or with each new model) that nirvana would have been reached years ago (maybe it has already been reached😉). My goodness, those early CDP’s must have been rubbish…

You make a great point.

However, manufactures advising they have squeezed another 0.1% performance does not sell new products or magazines….

 

[Freddy58]

You make a great point.

However, manufactures advising they have squeezed another 0.1% performance does not sell new products or magazines….

“However, manufactures advising they have squeezed another 0.1% performance”
As much as that?

 

[Messiah]

“However, manufactures advising they have squeezed another 0.1% performance”
As much as that?

I was just exaggerating to make a point. 😂

 

[davidf]

How long have CDP’s been with us now, 40+ years? One would have thought that given the claims by manufacturers of year on year improvements (or with each new model) that nirvana would have been reached years ago (maybe it has already been reached😉). My goodness, those early CDP’s must have been rubbish…

Technology moves on, as does our ability to measure what was previously unmeasurable. If we knew everything there was to know 50-100 years ago, nothing at all would have change.

 

[Jasonovich]

The original Marantz cd 73 player was built like a tank.

It has a proper solid metal transport mechanism, it was truly a work of art, maybe not suited for mass production, that is why they came up with these ubiquitous flimsy plastic loading trays to reduce costs.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/marantz-cd-73-cd-player

 

[manicm]

How long have CDP’s been with us now, 40+ years? One would have thought that given the claims by manufacturers of year on year improvements (or with each new model) that nirvana would have been reached years ago (maybe it has already been reached😉). My goodness, those early CDP’s must have been rubbish…

Your irony or not, I have both an explanation and opinion - of why the early players were not actually rubbish.

Audiophile snobs most likely just didn't have their ears attuned to the CD. Yes some early players did have a level of sharpness, but those audiophiles were not attuned to the levels of clarity and rhythmic solidity that CD offered, mistaking it for sterility. In 2002, I bought a Pioneer DVD player which had a state of the art 24/192 DAC, and at first found it too bright, but had imaging to die for, a palpable depth to the soundstage, after a few months I actually got used to its tonality.

My second point about early players being inferior, I opine that they had superior imaging than today's players, due to many using the mainstream ESS or AKM chips today.

 

[Messiah]

Technology moves on, as does our ability to measure what was previously unmeasurable. If we knew everything there was to know 50-100 years ago, nothing at all would have change.

Technology. Yes. Of course.

CD players specifically?

 

[plastic penguin]

I used to own the A85 and cd72t from the time, I remember getting the upgrade path for the cd player from cd72t to the cd82, both were fantastic players as was the amp, to this day, I think it's the longest time I've held on to a product, around 13 years I had them and now they reside with a friend and are still going strong.

Arcam definitely got it right with the DIVA range. Every amp and CDP had a lovely sonic balance, neither warm or bright. I had my A65+ for years with the CD73T, cracking combo. Still have fond memories of the A65+.

 

[jjbomber]

How long have CDP’s been with us now, 40+ years? One would have thought that given the claims by manufacturers of year on year improvements (or with each new model) that nirvana would have been reached years ago (maybe it has already been reached😉). My goodness, those early CDP’s must have been rubbish…

Mankind has been evolving for thousands of years and is nowhere near nirvana!

 

[Rodolfo]

Just wondering if we've reached an agreed view on the above? Does any transport do the job, it's just 1's and 0's, or are there improvements to be had? I ask because I find myself preferring Spotify to my Marantz CD 63 Se, both playing through the same Wiim Pro Plus..... Thoughts?

No we have not -still, and I don't expect it.

I have 3 excellent dissimilar CD players and no "transports". I also stopped preferring Spotify, by the way, because it stayed inferior to newer music-streaming options, including the HD and Ultra HD Amazon Music offerings to which I switched several years ago.

 

[davidf]

Technology. Yes. Of course.

CD players specifically?

Not specifically.

 

[abacus]

1st generation CD players were pushing the limits of the technology that was available at the time, however this meant that there were problems with both the chips and the filters used, which caused them to sound pretty rough.
Philips/Marantz took a slightly different route in that they used 14bit DACs (Which had lower distortion) and used over sampling so that the filters needed caused way less problems in the audio spectrum. (The difference in the sound quality was marked)
As technology moved on (The DAC chips and filters improved significantly) the players than began to show there full potential, with classic designs coming along in the late 80s early 90s.
Technology is always improving, however when you reach a certain point the differences to cost ratio become unviable for mass market, thus a replacement comes along, Sony was hoping the SACD was the next step, but cost and the advent of MP3 players (Which were more convenient for the masses) pretty much scuppered that. (As far as I am aware it is the only time in H-Fi that the replacement was worse in quality than what it replaced)
So yes, early players were most certainly rough.

Bill

 

[RJW232]

CD players have error correction built in to fill in gaps in the music (Fault on the disc/dodgy transport), and this can cause the data stream to be corrupted (IE: The error correction does not fill in the gap correctly),

Yes and no. Data on a CD is encoded using Cross-Interleaved Reed-Solomon Coding (CIRC). As long as the damage is within the limitations of CIRC, the data can be 100% correctly reconstructed.

If the gap is to big, missing samples will be interpolated, so in that case it's not exactly the same.

 

[Stuart83]

Yes and no. Data on a CD is encoded using Cross-Interleaved Reed-Solomon Coding (CIRC). As long as the damage is within the limitations of CIRC, the data can be 100% correctly reconstructed.

If the gap is to big, missing samples will be interpolated, so in that case it's not exactly the same.

👍
Or the momentary muting we have all heard from time to time (some CDP are better at this than others) sometimes accompanied by that ticking sound of the player's servo and error correction systems working hard to compensate for the damage on that disc you left play side down for weeks 😂 by silencing the audio for a fraction of a second to mask the error.

It's amazing some of the states I've found CDs in to have them play almost faultlessly, I would dig a few out suffice to say it's needless, I'm quite certain most of you will have a few that really shouldn't play yet do 🪄

 

[Jasonovich]

1st generation CD players were pushing the limits of the technology that was available at the time, however this meant that there were problems with both the chips and the filters used, which caused them to sound pretty rough.
Philips/Marantz took a slightly different route in that they used 14bit DACs (Which had lower distortion) and used over sampling so that the filters needed caused way less problems in the audio spectrum. (The difference in the sound quality was marked)
As technology moved on (The DAC chips and filters improved significantly) the players than began to show there full potential, with classic designs coming along in the late 80s early 90s.
Technology is always improving, however when you reach a certain point the differences to cost ratio become unviable for mass market, thus a replacement comes along, Sony was hoping the SACD was the next step, but cost and the advent of MP3 players (Which were more convenient for the masses) pretty much scuppered that. (As far as I am aware it is the only time in H-Fi that the replacement was worse in quality than what it replaced)
So yes, early players were most certainly rough.

Bill

Advancement in storage technology is possibly the reason, people are choosing FLAC lossless over MP3 as the preferred DAP medium. I'm not sure MP3s have much of a presence nowadays?

 

[Gray]

I'm not sure MP3s have much of a presence nowadays?

Probably not.
A brother of mine (who's never been bothered about sound quality) has just bought a cheap little DAP for £20.

I just assumed it would only handle mp3 - so was surprised when it took and played FLAC.
Its one of the new breed that comes with virtually non-existent instructions - makes me wonder how many people will never know (or even care) that it's good for uncompressed audio files.

The player sounds a bit bass heavy on my neutral Sennheisers - probably not an issue on the poor, supplied earbuds.
But a well recorded FLAC track sounded remarkably good off a 20 quid player - a player that includes FM radio, Bluetooth version 5 transmission.....and a 64GB micro SD card (now 93% full of FLAC - more than enough for the happy brother).

I believe Amazon when they quote having sold 500+ in the last month.
Some of today's technology really is good value.

 

[Stuart83]

Advancement in storage technology is possibly the reason, people are choosing FLAC lossless over MP3 as the preferred DAP medium. I'm not sure MP3s have much of a presence nowadays?

Agreed
I remember the days storage space was at such a premium and measured MB's.
So it was a plain choice to make, more songs in a highly compressed lossy format whilst trying to ignore your hearing and believe that MP3 really did only get rid of things that was imperceptible to your ears, or only a few songs in some cases not even an album in a better quality larger format.

Even then I was the one favouring only a few albums in good quality on my phone at a time wearing the SSD out pretty quickly on an old Sony M4 (8gb but only around 1gb free space after bloatware and the OS) by constantly deleting my old favourites for new favourites and repeating the store then delete cycle repeatedly until SSD death 😂

 

[Jasonovich]

Probably not.
A brother of mine (who's never been bothered about sound quality) has just bought a cheap little DAP for £20.

I just assumed it would only handle mp3 - so was surprised when it took and played FLAC.
Its one of the new breed that comes with virtually non-existent instructions - makes me wonder how many people will never know (or even care) that it's good for uncompressed audio files.

The player sounds a bit bass heavy on my neutral Sennheisers - probably not an issue on the poor, supplied earbuds.
But a well recorded FLAC track sounded remarkably good off a 20 quid player - a player that includes FM radio, Bluetooth version 5 transmission.....and a 64GB micro SD card (now 93% full of FLAC - more than enough for the happy brother).

I believe Amazon when they quote having sold 500+ in the last month.
Some of today's technology really is good value.

In China it costs pennies to manufacture. I have seen on Aliexpress iPods lookealike for about the same price as Amazon. I recall purchasing one of those, I think it last me 6 months. Then I decided I should invest in something proper.

So I got myself TempoTech and FiiO DAP for the missus, these are amazing quality in terms of sound and construction. And the Android OS is intuitive.
Chinese goods are a bit Jeckle and Hyde, at the very low end it's trash and top end, they make some of the finest HiFi components.

Yeah FLAC is pretty much de'facto. I think Amazon Music are still doing MP3 downloads for the price Tidal FLAC download which is outrageous!

Why do they still insist on calling them MP3 players? FLAC players has a better ring to it. I guess it's the same analogy with vacuumn cleaners, people still calling them, Hoover. 🙂

 

[Jasonovich]

It's fair to say, streaming has become the choice for many but I'm still amazed by the continual development of CD players.
I came across Jay's Shangling R2R portable tube CD player review. Shame it doesn't play SACD. The tube replacements seem bit of a bother.

View: https://youtu.be/SLhmC1nu8FU?si=niCt9d9_jsVHj7Qh

 

[manicm]

Some issue has been made of gapless playback, or the lack thereof in the SMSL PL100 CD player, well it only stops when you're seeking/ff withing a track.

In the 34 years of using disc players, I have never felt the need to do that, so it's a total non-issue really. Skipping tracks does not affect the gapless playback.

 

[Rui]

You make a great point.

However, manufactures advising they have squeezed another 0.1% performance does not sell new products or magazines….

my opinion is that starting in late 80´s great cd players were released from a lot of diferent brands , my PD-7300 from Pioneer still shows a great sound quality allthough i have a lot better bough ´till late 90´s ,tried a DSD dac and it really seemed to increase the quality but not to a level i would say that are indespensable, my father left me a CEC or chuodenki that he bought in late 90´s ,belt driven, only in 2018 went to the site and noticed that it was the top cd player from the brand, at the time sold by 36.000€ ,when starting to use it in late 90´s i never thought it could have such a price but no doubt that is good at first notice a big improvement in separation of channels, it sure sounds quite good, still can´t believe when i refer the price. forget to refer that later had two new Pioneer cd players a PD-75 and a PD-S801, this last was a improvement that i notice imediatelly, and was a 1990 or 91, maybe cause of it´s called link legatto something or similar, the PD-75 was a Urushi pioneer cd player, also it still releases a great sound, in late 90´s i bought before i knew i would have the CEC cd player , i went for a Rega cd player as in the specifications had all to be a good cd player , it still sells with a upgrade in output sound quality

 

[record_spot]

How long have CDP’s been with us now, 40+ years? One would have thought that given the claims by manufacturers of year on year improvements (or with each new model) that nirvana would have been reached years ago (maybe it has already been reached😉). My goodness, those early CDP’s must have been rubbish…

As someone who's picked up more than a few early CDPs I'd say those tend to be disarmingly good. The Kenwood DP-990SG I have is arguably the best I've owned. It needs a bit of TLC work now, which I need to plan in, but a fantastic machine. See also Sony and Pioneer of the late 80s and early 90s.

 

[matthewpianist]

The Rotel RCD-965BX is still the most enjoyable CD player I have owned, so much so that I'm expecting a boxed one tomorrow.

 

[matthewpianist]

As it happens, it has arrived a day early and is now playing 'Clouds' by Joni Mitchell, whilst I enjoy my lunch break.

 

[Winter]

As it happens, it has arrived a day early and is now playing 'Clouds' by Joni Mitchell, whilst I enjoy my lunch break.

Ha . bonus a day early ! Enjoy ok.