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Denon DCD-3560 Review (CD Player)

NTTY

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Hello Everyone,

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Denon DCD-3560 stereo CD player.

Denon DCD-3560_001.jpg



I already mentioned multiple times that I’m into older CD players (like the Marantz CD-73), this is one more proof.


Denon DCD-3560 - Presentation

This CD player is a member of the "over-engineered" league, its weight alone is a statement (17kg - 37.4lbs). It was released in 1990 at a very high price.

Most of the functions are hidden behind a small hatch:

Denon DCD-3560_004.jpg


The elements of interest are:
  • R2R conversion using 4 BurrBrown PCM58 in their most linear version "K".
  • 8x oversampling filter via a Nippon Precision Circuits SM5803AP.
  • Pre-ALPHA filtering player :)
The back panel is relatively busy, with analog RCA (fix and variable), XLR, and 3 digital outputs (2 coax and 1 Optical) :

Denon DCD-3560_003.jpg


Headphones can be switch off and on from the back (what an idea!) and digital out can be deactivated from the front panel.

Let's go quickly inside:

Denon DCD-3560_005.jpg


This player is divided in 4 sections:
  • On the bottom left, a full metal drive with the famous magnetic Sony KSS-151A head (ultra fast) below it.
  • Top left, a double power supply for digital and analog sections (we'll see what it's worth too when measuring).
  • Right side hosts the servo and digital our card.
  • Below it, there is the D/A conversion card with the 4 BB PCM58K, and so they are hidden.
The PCM58K offered an MSB adjustment possibility (to reduce distorsion) and for that player, they were manually set before leaving the factory. We'll see what the measurements tell us about that.

I did not mention the copper chassis, but you see it :)

To me, at the time, these players were some kind of abnormal devices, as I was really unsure of what the Japanese wanted to demonstrate with these. Also, I wondered if, really, a big brand into consumer products could compete with other “true” the high-end players. Naive, I was.


Denon DCD-3560 - Measurements (Analog out)

From now on, I will be consistent with my measurements as I described them on the Onkyo C-733 review. So over time, this will help comparing the devices I reviewed.

The Denon DCD-3560 outputs a high 2.5Vrsm from its RCA outputs and 1.3dB less from XLR. There was a slight channel imbalance of less than 0.1dB. The balanced outputs are noninverting; the single-ended outputs invert absolute polarity.

RCA and XLR showed the same performances, RCA outputs doing a little better from time to time. For the rest of the presentation, I will show results from XLR outputs, so you get the worse of that player :)

Here you go with the standard 1kHz sine @0dBFS (dithered) from my test CD (XLR out):

Denon-DCD3560_1kHz_0dBFS_LR.jpg


Both channels are represented but only one gets evaluated in that window. Right channel is a little less performing (THD loses 2dB). That kind of difference happens especially when two different DACs (actually 2 per channel in that player) running in mono mode are used.
THD is at -103dB and so will clear CD Audio content. SINAD and ENOB are limited by the dithered noise of the test CD (roughly -93dB).

RCA does a little better (by 1dB only).

It is to note that distortion stays very low even when digital signal goes down, which was not always the case R2R DACs, because of their linearity issue. As seen below, THD is still at -100dB at -6dBFS which is excellent:

Denon-DCD3560_1kHz_-6dBFS_XLR_LR.jpg


That's the proof BurrBrown had a very precise manufacturing process to get there (laser trim). I simply have never seen such a good performance with old R2R architectures.

You probably already noticed, power supply is very quiet, and so the attention from Denon to that section paid off (1kHz @0dBFS, XLR out, left and right channels):

Denon-DCD3560_PS_XLR_LRL.jpg


Now, let's have a look at the bandwidth:

1729241775699.png


There is a small 0.1dB deviation at the top end between the two channels (RCA too), else they match by less than 0.1dB. The small bump at the end is due to the oversampling filter.

Let's have a look at the 8x oversampling filter, which was new at the time (Overlay of White Noise and 18k+20Hz dual tones):

Denon-DCD3560_Filter.jpg


This is not the ALPHA filtering, so there's no filter selection, as opposed to the Denon DCD-SA1 for instance.
The attenuation is good for the era with nearly 90dB. The filter is relatively sharp.

Let's continue with the multitone test (starting with this review it is now 1/10 decade):

Denon-DCD3560_MT.jpg


It is free from distorsion way below the CD Audio format.

Jitter was nailed 34 years ago:

Denon-DCD3560_JTest_Corrected.jpg


The red trace is what is recorded on the test CD (From the digital outputs), it can't be better. The blue trace is from the XLR ouput. We see nearly 0 jitter, perfect.

Let’s have a look at an undithered 1kHz sine at -90.31dBFS. With 16bits, the signal should appear (on a scope) as the 3DC levels of the sign magnitude smallest digital signal:

Denon-DCD3560_1kHz_-90.31dBFS_XLR.jpg


This is a relatively good trace, and it’s disturbed by the low-level noise. Seeing an R2R conversion achieving this level of precision is good.

On your request and support (more information here), I am adding an "intersample-overs" test. It intends to identify if the oversampling filter has sufficient headroom to process near clipping signals. Indeed, and because of the oversampling, there might be interpolated data that go above 0dBFS and would saturate (clip) the DAC and therefore the output. This effect is highlighted with the measurements below, and revealed through THD+N measurements up to 96kHz:


Intersample-overs tests
Bandwidth of the THD+N measurements is 20Hz - 96kHz
5512.5 Hz sine,
Peak = +0.69dBFS
7350 Hz sine,
Peak = +1.25dBFS
11025 Hz sine,
Peak = +3.0dBFS
Teac VRDS-20NANA-17.6dB
Yamaha CD-1-84.6dB-84.9dB-78.1dB
Denon DCD-900NENANA-19.1dB
Denon DCD-SA1NANA-18.3dB
Onkyo C-733-88.3dB-40.4dB-21.2dB
Denon DCD-3560NANA-17.4dB

I left several other references for you to compare with. The oversampling filter to the Denon DCD-3560 does not have headroom to process near clipling data.

And here are some other measurements:
  • Crosstalk : -118dB (@1kHz)
  • IMD AES : -79.7dB (18kHz+20kHz 1:1 @-5dBFS)
These are extremely good results for the time and again for an R2R conversion!

Last but not least, one of my favorite measurements, the THD vs Frequency at -12dBFS (THD only, over the first 5 harmonics). I already commented that I use it especially to test older R2R architectures as it shows their difficulty to be linear below full scale. Below are measurements of the right channel, overlaid with the previously tested (and near best-in-class) Onkyo C-733 CD Player:

Denon-DCD3560_THDvsFreq.jpg


To be honest, this is an incredibly good trace for the tech and the time. I was impressed.


Denon DCD-3560 - Measurements (Digital out)

Are you surprised if I tell you that I did not find any flaws in its digital output? I’ll keep it simple, with what I believe to be the most representative measurement of the digital output quality, and that is a 1kHz sine at -90.31dBFS which shows the 3DC levels of the smallest digital signal in 16bits sign magnitude representation:

Denon-DCD3560_1kHz_-90.31dBFS_Scope_DigitalOut.jpg


Because this signal forces a regular change of all bits (due to 2’s complement representation around 0), any deviation from the binary content would immediately show here, with such a “fragile” signal. But if you think there are better ways to check the digital output, let me know.


Conclusion

This CD player was absolutely incredible. This is R2R conversion at its top, amazing! It’d be good to see if someone achieved better results from the BurrBrown R2R PCM family.

I wanted to know if these "crazy" players delivered, well, now I know :eek:
I might give it an additional challenge later on, just to see where we can push grandad :p

I hope you enjoyed the review as much as I enjoyed writing it. Let me know how to improve and if you have questions. I have recorded all the 46 measurements for both XLR and RCA outputs. If you want me to publish others or run one of your choice, feel free to ask.

Thank you.

————
Flo
 
Last edited:
Great review, which confirms that R2R can be excellent and can be built with proper reconstruction filters. The intersample overs is a bit disappointing, but probably very common for the era.
 
Very nice review of this beautiful vintage CD player. It seems that it was worth 1000 pounds sterling in 1991 (source Hifiengine), which is about 2525 € today. Tests show that this player is perfectly capable of reproducing the content of CDs, and that its performance remains current. Note the headphone output which was common at the time on almost all models regardless of the brand.
The perfect exploitation of the CD format was therefore a thing solved at the end of the 80s... In fact, there is no longer any excuse for a brand to release a CD player with performance below 16-bit resolution, unless it does so on purpose to justify the existence of more expensive products.
 
Great review, which confirms that R2R can be excellent and can be built with proper reconstruction filters. The intersample overs is a bit disappointing, but probably very common for the era.
This was (and probably still is) one of the most desirable CD players of it's time, unfortunately out of reach prize-wise for me back then:confused:
Now of course surpassed by the latest DAC's, but as a superior transport only, yes please:D, built Q alone justifies it i think.
 
Thank you for this excellent write up. I cherish my DCD-3520. It's a joy to use and sounds fantastic. I used it direct out from XLR to a set of Neumann KH310s for a quite a while and was very happy with it. Detail improved when I added the Eversolo dmp-a8 as a DAC and pre - but not by a whole lot.
 
Thank you for sharing your intensive review on DENON DCD-3560!

I still keep my beautiful and excellent DCD-3500RG in perfect shape (received overhaul maintenance at DENON twice), but I seldom power-on it since nowadays I rip all the CDs into 44.1 kHz 16 bit aiff format on my Windows 11 PC using dBpoweramp CD ripper to be added in my SSD music library. I also rip SACDs into native dsf files; I dare not describe the method here.

If I were living in Europe (near Switzerland), I could have brought my DCD-3500RG to your place for intensive review and measurements...
Unfortunately, it is too heavy (22.0 kg!) to put into carry bag/case acceptable for aircraft cabin.

Now, together with nice ACCUPHASE E-460 (24.4 kg), DCD-3500RG (22.0 kg) is serving as very stable heavy rigid "base" for my TT DENON DP-57L+MC DL-301MkII in my PC-DSP-based multichannel multi-SP-driver multi-amplifier fully active audio rig (ref. here #931 for the details on my project thread).:D
Fig23_WS00007513 (3).JPG
 
If I were living in Europe (near Switzerland), I could have brought my DCD-3500RG to your place for intensive review and measurements...
Unfortunately, it is too heavy (22.0 kg!) to put into carry bag/case acceptable for aircraft cabin.
I’d love to test it! This is one of these ancient crazy over-engineered players.
And yes, not only it would be of unreasonable cost to send to Switzerland, but way too risky for that beautiful player.
 
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