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Tascam BD-MP1 Review (CD/Blu-ray Player)

musicforcities

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Sidebar to this review ... Word of caution for anyone thinking of getting into the vintage game; transports much older than this. Be careful buying old used Tascams (or any cd player for that matter). I bought a really old pro unit with a similar form factor (as it appears they have used for decades), as it was the most affordable way to get something with AES/EBU out (to stream to a better DAC), and with 19" rack ears. When the heart of the unit -- the transport -- failed, there was no replacement to be had. So it became a paperweight.
Worn belts and gunked up motors can often be fixed. However, the laser pick ups have a finite lifespan and many are no longer made and due to non standard i/o and mechanics. If you have a player you love pick up a spare NOS or used laser assembly if you can find it. Or just get a drive for your computer and rip.
 

sam_adams

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I bought a Magnavox CDB650 back in 1988.

cdb650.jpg


I still have it. It's been recapped twice, the last time was two years ago. I also replaced all of the old wiring with new teflon insulated wire on the last recap because the PVC was outgassing and coating the conductors on the Stocko connectors with green, greasy goo. It works just as good now as the day I bought it—and with the coax SPDIF out on it, it connects directly to my DAC. The only thing I couldn't replace was the pot for the headphone out because I couldn't find an NOS replacement.
 

tmtomh

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Remember the first SACD Sony players?

25kg battleship thing that took IIRC about 20 seconds to decide a CD was a CD and not an SACD? While it switched lasers on the head block. You didn't know what was going on- was it broken or just slow? It reminded me of one of those pizza tray CD changers, or an old jukebox. In fact jukeboxes could change records faster I reckon. :)

We'd been spoilt by the sub one second access times of linear motors and brushless BSL motors in top CD players. I often wonder if the slow transports were a factor in audiophiles being disinterested in the format.

One of the many reasons I love my Oppo UDP-205 is that it's the fastest-loading universal disc player I've ever encountered. It loads CDs as fast or faster than all the dedicated CD players I've ever owned.

Now, where universal and DVD players do sometimes have an issue, in my experience, is with mechanical noise from spinning certain CDs. The beginning of a CD spins the fastest, and so with a DVD or universal player that spins all discs fast and loads the data into a large memory buffer, the beginning of a CD is spinning super-fast, much faster than was ever contemplated when the format was created.

I have found that with some 1980s West German Polygram CDs - the ones with solid aluminum hubs and super-thin, tapered, almost sharp edges - they can sometimes make a vibrating sound that is audible from a few feet away in the silence between tracks, during about the first 3 tracks of a typical album (the beginning of the disc when it's spinning the fastest).

These particular CDs are noticeably lighter in the hand than other CDs. That light weight, perhaps combined with a very slightly off-enter spindle hole or maybe some other tiny imbalance in the weight distribution across the disc, can produce that noise. In my relatively small CD collection of about 500 discs, I probably have 20-30 of these old West German Polygram CDs, and about 4 or 5 of them exhibit this issue to one degree or another.

It goes away after a few tracks as the disc rotational speed slows down - and so this issue is not noticeable in dedicated CDs players because they spin the disc more slowly to begin with, never getting up to the speed where the vibration becomes noticeable.

Other than that type of CD, though, I find the Oppo faster and quieter than most CD players.
 
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restorer-john

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I have found that with some 1980s West German Polygram CDs - the ones with solid aluminum hubs and super-thin, tapered, almost sharp edges, they can sometimes make a vibrating sound that is audible from a few feet away in the silence between tracks, during about the first 3 tracks of a typical album (the beginning of the disc when it's spinning the fastest).

The early Polygrams were optically centred (on the data spiral) and the centre hole bored (and the edges trimmed) after initial manufacture. That's why they were/are susceptible to "disc rot". The aluminim is exposed both in the centre hole and the outer edges. They were never intended to be spun up more than 500rpm back then. So along came CD-ROM drives and DVD players and those discs vibrated like an orbital sander.

The Japanese process was precision moulding in the first place and outliers were simply disposed of. Benefit was of course, no "disc-rot". I agree, the early Philips/Polygram discs can give more trouble than they should, but that's some of the charm in having the world's earliest CDs.
 

SegaCD

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My flagship CD players from the early 1990s are so quiet, you need cannot hear them whilst the disc is spinning. The 17kg Sonys have acoustically shielded material around the drawer mechanism door.

I've had very expensive SACD/DVD players and they were all moved on to new owners due to noise from the transports or the ridiculously slow loading times. For CD, nothing beats a dedicated CD only mechanism and circuitry.

Exactly, they were flagship players.

Let's say your 17kg behemoth Sony was the 17kg Sony CDP-557ESD. The MSRP of the player in the UK was £1000 in 1987. With inflation, that player would cost ~£2,886.

Are you properly comparing these old CD decks to BR/DVD/SACD players that cost ~£2,886/$3,880 USD/$5,394 AUS today? If not, it's not a fair comparison. Even considering process and material improvements slicing costs in half, that would still be 50% more than the MSRP of the Oppo UDP-205 (RIP). Did you sell a Marantz SACD 30N for being too loud or slow?

This sort of hand-wave-y nostalgia is clouding to the average ASR reader looking for a new transport. I'm 100% with you that buying a vintage, depreciated high-end dedicated CD transport is a great option if you don't mind a lil maintenance, but build quality has not decreased, BOM costs have increased. I made a thread on here looking at weighing my options with recent & vintage optical transports, and there are some great modern combo transports out there...if you have the money. There are/were duds and winners at all price tiers too of course.

Compare this $499 USD MSRP Tascam to a $210 USD MSRP CD player in 1987 (Soundesign/Fisher BPC?) and then I assure you that you will find most modern players will provide a much, much quieter & more reliable listening experience. (Boot speed aside)
 
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musicforcities

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One of the many reasons I love my Oppo UDP-205 is that it's the fastest-loading universal disc player I've ever encountered. It loads CDs as fast or faster than all the dedicated CD players I've ever owned.

Now, where universal and DVD players do sometimes have an issue, in my experience, is with mechanical noise from spinning certain CDs. The beginning of a CD spins the fastest, and so with a DVD or universal player that spins all discs fast and loads the data into a large memory buffer, the beginning of a CD is spinning super-fast, much faster than was ever contemplated when the format was created.

I have found that with some 1980s West German Polygram CDs - the ones with solid aluminum hubs and super-thin, tapered, almost sharp edges, they can sometimes make a vibrating sound that is audible from a few feet away in the silence between tracks, during about the first 3 tracks of a typical album (the beginning of the disc when it's spinning the fastest).

These particular CDs are noticeably lighter in the hand than other CDs. That light weight, perhaps combined with a very slightly off-enter spindle hole or maybe some other tiny imbalance in the weight distribution across the disc, can produce that noise. In my relatively small CD collection of about 500 discs, I probably have 20-30 of these old West German Polygram CDs, and about 4 or 5 of them exhibit this issue to one degree or another.

It goes away after a few tracks as the disc rotational speed slows down - and so this issue is not noticeable in dedicated CDs players because they spin the disc more slowly to begin with, never getting up to the speed where the vibration becomes noticeable.

Other than that type of CD, though, I find the Oppo faster and quieter than most CD players.
When lasers are out of alignment or getting weak some transports start to spin the disc super fast trying to find the start or recenter the disc. I had a nice old Cambridge audio that started doing that. First on burned discs with blue tints, then silver and gold cd-r, and finally commercial discs. I Realigned every couple months for a couple years until the laser diode more or less went kaput. You can up the power to the diode as it fades, but too much. power can shorten what life it has left.
 
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tmtomh

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The early Polygrams were optically centred (on the data spiral) and the centre hole bored (and the edges trimmed) after initial manufacture. That's why they were/are susceptible to "disc rot". The aluminim is exposed both in the centre hole and the outer edges. They were never intended to be spun up more than 500rpm back then. So along came CD-ROM drives and DVD players and those discs vibrated like an orbital sander.

The Japanese process was precision moulding in the first place and outliers were simply disposed of. Benefit was of course, no "disc-rot". I agree, the early Philips/Polygram discs can give more trouble than they should, but that's some of the charm in having the world's earliest CDs.
"Vibrated like an orbital sander" - love it! :)

I didn't know those fine details about the manufacturing process, but that all makes a lot of sense given the frequency of disc rot with those Polygram discs. Like many folks I have a soft spot for them, mostly because so many "target" CDs are West German Polygram discs - not to mention because the West German Polygram plant was the largest in the world in the early days of CD and so a lot of the LP titles we early adopters were eagerly awaiting to come out on CD when supplies were constrained up until about late 1985 ended up coming from that Polygram plant when they finally showed up in the US bins.

Nowadays, though, when thrift stores, Discogs, and eBay provide a lot of options for various physical pressings of many 1980s CD titles, I have been struck at just how cheap and flimsy those old Polygram discs are. Later Polygram discs, while still all aluminum, dispensed with the tapered edges and are of consistent thickness and more normal weight - and not coincidentally, they don't vibrate in players. Still, though, whenever I am looking to acquire an album on CD and the CD exists in both solid-aluminum and plastic-hub pressing versions (with the identical musical data on both), I will buy the plastic hub version every time.
 

musicforcities

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Confession time: who has cds with green felt top marker on the edges?

I think I have a dozen or do from the 80s or whenever that craze hit. Then, half way around a disc something in my brain snapped and I realized I might as well be throwing chicken livers into a tea pot to see what patterns they make.
 

tmtomh

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I have so many commercial cds with zero scratches but dozens of pin holes visible when held up to light…

Yes, if someone is a CD collector and is even a little OCD, I recommend never holding your discs up to a strong light. The number of pinholes you discover will give you quite a shock. Given the size of some of the pinholes on some of my old CDs, I'm amazed they play, and astounded that they secure-rip and match the AccurateRIp database. It shows how robust the error-correction and interleaving of the data are in the CD format.
 

musicforcities

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Image of Amir opening front door to a pile of boxes with cd players like a snow drift of cardboard and dead tech.
 

radix

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Yes, if someone is a CD collector and is even a little OCD, I recommend never holding your discs up to a strong light. The number of pinholes you discover will give you quite a shock. Given the size of some of the pinholes on some of my old CDs, I'm amazed they play, and astounded that they secure-rip and match the AccurateRIp database. It shows how robust the error-correction and interleaving of the data are in the CD format.
If I remember right, the reed-solomon codes can correct burst errors that measure about 2mm on a disc. Maybe it was a little more. There's also an error compensation technique due to fancy interleaving of stereo channels that can mask scratches about 8mm long.

For me, having a physical CD player hooked up to a stereo is for the social interaction of being able to handle it with one's own two paws and play material in the moment without needing to have anyone stare at a screen. For my normal listening, it's mostly all streamed. Using a computer to rip a cd is way better error correction (due to retries) than a real-time cd player can manage.
 

Herbert

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I didn't know those fine details about the manufacturing process, but that all makes a lot of sense given the frequency of disc rot with those Polygram discs. Like many folks I have a soft spot for them, mostly because so many "target" CDs are West German Polygram discs - not to mention because the West German Polygram plant was the largest in the world in the early days of CD and so a lot of the LP titles we early adopters were eagerly awaiting to come out on CD when supplies were constrained up until about late 1985 ended up coming from that Polygram plant when they finally showed up in the US bins.

Nowadays, though, when thrift stores, Discogs, and eBay provide a lot of options for various physical pressings of many 1980s CD titles, I have been struck at just how cheap and flimsy those old Polygram discs are. Later Polygram discs, while still all aluminum, dispensed with the tapered edges and are of consistent thickness and more normal weight - and not coincidentally, they don't vibrate in players. Still, though, whenever I am looking to acquire an album on CD and the CD exists in both solid-aluminum and plastic-hub pressing versions (with the identical musical data on both), I will buy the plastic hub version every time.

I took a micrometer screw gauge:

1-„YEDS-18“, made by Sony for service technicians for adjustments on CD-players, produced with tight tolerances, birefringence below 50nm, variation in DC-level and HF-envelope below 3%, the mothership of all compact discs made in Sony‘s plant, around 1983:
Thickness: 1.23 mm

2-„The Köln Concert“, my second compact disc, made by Polygram, bought in 1984, still impacts my life in 2021 as a plotpoint in a documentary feature screened on Berlin International Film Festival -
thickness:1.24mm
But one can see that the clear enamel
on the label side builds up on the outer
rim. This adds 1/10th
One of the first UV - hardening enamels in industrial use btw.

3- Köln Concert reissue from 1990 by Polygram. The issue from 1984 misses
three notes, this is why I bought the reissue.
No typical Polygram look anymore, no galvanised center hub, shiny edges,
enamel very even, no buildup:
1.14 (!) I measured twice.

4- My very first one, Lou Reed, „Transformer“ issued 1983, Polygram-
1.26mm

5-Keith Jarrett „Solo Concerts Bremen/Lausanne“, typical early Polygram look:
1.18mm

6- Sting , „Nothing like the Sun“,
this time I measured more
to the center, Polygram, 1987-
1.29mm

7–„Halla Morgana“, I even worked for some weeks in this long defunct CD-plant, CDP in West Berlin, looks very thick and heavy, polished edges-
dissappointing 1.19mm.
It was not in production when I was there, so…

8- McCoy Tyner, „Echoes of a Friend“
manufactured by JVC, 1986-
1.24mm

9- Geinoh Yamashirogumi „Yamato Genjoh“, JVC 1994-
1.24mm

10-the latest, Markus Stockhausen
„Wild Life“, he dared a three CD-box in 2020, I wonder where he found a plant,
but close to the TOC, in letters not higher
than 0.3mm, it reads „Sony Music“- but in
times of globalization, the plant could be in Lithuania-
1.18mm

So, the Polygrams vary, but not all are thinner.
The thinnest is 1.14mm, the thickest 1.29mm.
No CD rot btw, not one. I once had a portable where the magnetic clamper was
weak- it grinded the aluminium off the inner
hub when the CD sped up. But these „holes“ never expanded over the decades.
 
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GWolfman

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Bummer the coax & unbalanced outs weren't test. But considering this (player) really isn't the norm, I understand the decision to perform a limited test.
 

LTig

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When lasers are out of alignment or getting weak some transports start to spin the disc super fast trying to find the start or recenter the disc. I had a nice old Cambridge audio that started doing that. First on burned discs with blue tints, then silver and gold cd-r, and finally commercial discs. I Realigned every couple months for a couple years until the laser diode more or less went kaput. You can up the power to the diode as it fades, but too much. power can shorten what life it has left.
That's the reason why I recommend to buy only CD players where the specs guarantee to support playback of CDRW discs even if you don't intend to use those. They reflect only about 22% of the light a commercial pressed Redbook CD reflects. If the laser wears out it may not longer be able to play CDRWs but it will play Redbook CDs for a long time.
 

LTig

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If I remember right, the reed-solomon codes can correct burst errors that measure about 2mm on a disc. Maybe it was a little more. There's also an error compensation technique due to fancy interleaving of stereo channels that can mask scratches about 8mm long.
Yep. I once tried to fix a CD player in a B&B where we spent 2 nights. After taking out the CD and cleaning it from the jam sticking to its reading side (the kids:D) it played fine, despite looking like being treated by sand paper :eek:. There was not a single spot where visibility was clear. Imaging treating vinyl like this ...
 

Herbert

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That's the reason why I recommend to buy only CD players where the specs guarantee to support playback of CDRW discs even if you don't intend to use those. They reflect only about 22% of the light a commercial pressed Redbook CD reflects. If the laser wears out it may not longer be able to play CDRWs but it will play Redbook CDs for a long time.
Not easy for about 12 years. After Philips
left the OEM market, there is about 3 drives
left for standalone CD/SACD/DVD players worldwide: One from Sony, KHM-313, CD only, probably defunct in the meantime; Sanyo DV-34/SF-HD860, works with CD and DVD/SACD, can be found in many CD-only players.
Toshiba HOP-1200, CD and DVD/SACD as well.
I.e. the KHM-313 can be found in
cheap players as well as in Accuphase.
The Sanyo SF-HD860 in Marantz Flagship S-11 as well as the Yamaha CD S3000 and Accuphase DP560 (HD870)
 
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LTig

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Not easy for about 12 years. After Philips
left the OEM market, there is about 3 drives
left for standalone CD/SACD/DVD players worldwide: One from Sony, KHM-313, CD only, probably defunct in the meantime; Sanyo DV-34/SF-HD860, works with CD and DVD/SACD, can be found in many CD-only players.
Toshiba HOP-1200, CD and DVD/SACD as well.
I think all current drives are able to play CDRW discs.
 
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