Denon DCD-SA1 Review (CD/SACD Player)

[NTTY]

But of course, DoP cannot be send to the Denon, which don't have the receiving circuitry that is able to identify and handle it properly, because the Denon was designed and put on the market several years before the "invention" of DoP . If DoP were to be sent to the Denon, all that would come out of the analogue or digital outputs would be noise.

Obviously indeed

 

[NTTY]

Thanks NTTY! I love those vintage reviews.
I'm tempted to offer my Kenwood DP-7090 for measurement...

Thank you!

How could I resist to 8xPCM1702? That would be a very interesting review of one of the best R2R DAC, especially in that high-end configuration.

 

[Sokel]

But of course, DoP cannot be send to the Denon, which don't have the receiving circuitry that is able to identify and handle it properly, because the Denon was designed and put on the market several years before the "invention" of DoP . If DoP were to be sent to the Denon, all that would come out of the analogue or digital outputs would be noise.

It's already a miracle it can be sampled up to 192kHz for it's digital input for it's age.
Decades later most did 96kHz.
Nice machine,indeed.

 

[Jas0_0]

Great review.

Intrigued by the test of digital outputs. Very clean here but I’d assumed that always to be the case. Are all transports not equal?

I plan to add a transport to my system so useful to know if this is an important consideration.

Thanks,

James

 

[NTTY]

Intrigued by the test of digital outputs. Very clean here but I’d assumed that always to be the case. Are all transports not equal?

I tested a lot of different drive mechanisms and never saw a difference in those measurements. But Amir spotted a modified digital output on the Cayin Mini CD-MKII. So that's worth a test.

 

[Haskil]

I tested a lot of different drive mechanisms and never saw a difference in those measurements. But Amir spotted a modified digital output on the Cayin Mini CD-MKII. So that's worth a test.

The Philips CD 723 had an adjustable output level in the digital signal. Set to maximum, the digital output was not bit perfect: a DTS CD read in this player connected digitally to an AV integrated was thus not decoded and made a terrible noise in the tweeters...
A technician explained to me that it was a simple way to check the bit perfect character of the digital output of a CD player because the DTS core does not support bit error.

 

[NTTY]

Interesting. So reducing the output level was actually reducing the digital level on its coax output?

 

[Haskil]

Intéressant. Donc réduire le niveau de sortie réduisait en fait le niveau numérique sur sa sortie coaxiale ?

Without a doubt

 

[NTTY]

Cool, now I want/need one!

 

[krabapple]

I imagine it was in order to get traction in the music industry. At the time, Sony was a big player in town, both in software and hardware, in the pro audio as well as in the consumer market. To let anyone believe that Sony was so confident in his new system that it was ready to transfer all its vault to DSD was probably a trick to get the other players in town to think about doing the same or at least let appear that the deployment of DSD was already in an advanced stage or was promised a bright future (after all, Sony had been so successful with the CD Audio). But as Black Elk let us know, the suggestion that Sony Music systematically makes a DSD transfer of any rework or new work was actually never acted upon. So much for DSD as Sony's archiving format.

Well, I can imagine too, that the original idea was for its intended eventual use to be, after the system was vetted, as an archiving format.

Certainly as a recording or production format, it was rather not fit for purpose. That had to be known very early on. Your/BE's scenario would mean that mean Sony knew from the start that likely they'd have to use PCM somewhere in the production chain of SACDs (DXD or "DSD wide', as it later was known). Rather than that being a consequence of re-orienting DSD to commercial SACDs, as in my scenario.

tl;dr : That the possible original use case vision -- use as an archive medium -- didn't come to pass (though i don't know how up to date BE's knoweldge is) -- doesn't mean it never existed. Other, more lucrative ideas may well have overtaken it, perhaps very early on.

I looked for BEs detailed explananation for why the claim was 'PR puffery', but didn't find it. Just two separate one-line statements to that effect.

 

[krabapple]

But of course, DoP cannot be send to the Denon, which don't have the receiving circuitry that is able to identify and handle it properly, because the Denon was designed and put on the market several years before the "invention" of DoP . If DoP were to be sent to the Denon, all that would come out of the analogue or digital outputs would be noise.

Denon did (but not on this model) offer 'Denon link' for a time, that could pass DSD digitally from players so equipped to AVRs so equipped.

Pioneer's version was called was 'ilink'.

So glad that whole era is far behind us.

 

[krabapple]

The Philips CD 723 had an adjustable output level in the digital signal. Set to maximum, the digital output was not bit perfect: a DTS CD read in this player connected digitally to an AV integrated was thus not decoded and made a terrible noise in the tweeters...
A technician explained to me that it was a simple way to check the bit perfect character of the digital output of a CD player because the DTS core does not support bit error.

Hmm, IME during playback with a digital output level slider (like Foobar2000), correct DTS or AC3 bitream decoding (i.e. bit-perfect delivery) by an AVR *requires* the that output level slider be set to maximum. (because such sliders can't actually boost, they can only lower). Of course all DSP has to be OFF in the playback device as well. No replaygain, no EQ etc.

Otherwise you get: white noise. Bit-imperfection is not tolerated. Once it's decoded in the AVR though, you can do what you want with DSP.

 

[Haskil]

Hmm, IME during playback with a digital output level slider (like Foobar2000), correct DTS or AC3 bitream decoding (i.e. bit-perfect delivery) by an AVR *requires* the that output level slider be set to maximum. (because such sliders can't actually boost, they can only lower). Of course all DSP has to be OFF in the playback device as well. No replaygain, no EQ etc.

Otherwise you get: white noise. Bit-imperfection is not tolerated. Once it's decoded in the AVR though, you can do what you want with DSP.

Correct !

 

[krabapple]

But in your case, with the Philips CD723, maximum was not bit-perfect. Do you know why?

 

[rynberg]

Gorgeous piece of kit...this is one of those pieces of gear where, if you had the fungible money, there is satisfaction in ownership with such build quality coupled to very good audio performance.

 

[Haskil]

But in your case, with the Philips CD723, maximum was not bit-perfect. Do you know why?

It seems that it was an intrinsic fault of the component used: the level set to maximum was therefore not...

 

[NTTY]

Well, I can imagine too, that the original idea was for its intended eventual use to be, after the system was vetted, as an archiving format.

Certainly as a recording or production format, it was rather not fit for purpose. That had to be known very early on. Your/BE's scenario would mean that mean Sony knew from the start that likely they'd have to use PCM somewhere in the production chain of SACDs (DXD or "DSD wide', as it later was known). Rather than that being a consequence of re-orienting DSD to commercial SACDs, as in my scenario.

tl;dr : That the possible original use case vision -- use as an archive medium -- didn't come to pass (though i don't know how up to date BE's knoweldge is) -- doesn't mean it never existed. Other, more lucrative ideas may well have overtaken it, perhaps very early on.

I looked for BEs detailed explananation for why the claim was 'PR puffery', but didn't find it. Just two separate one-line statements to that effect.

Indeed, they probably knew from the beginning that editing is DSD would be too complex because of its deviation from 2’s complement representation. I work very close to Merging (geographically speaking) who developed DxD with Philips (which, as you suggest, is PCM), and I always wanted to say hi and thanks to them but I don’t have a good reason to bother them

 

[NTTY]

It seems that it was an intrinsic fault of the component used: the level set to maximum was therefore not...

Could it be an effect of intersample over? Like if they where going through internal SRC or ASRC prior to output the digital signal? I suppose it could be an explanation, especially if the problem was seen only at 0dBFS?
If distortion could also be seen added elsewhere, that would indicate a possible truncation from the ASRC from 24 bits to 16 bits (depending on internal resolution). Measurement should tell us that, and we’d probably have the culprit (SRC).

 

[Timmy]

A bit OT ... What I still don’t understand, up to this very day:

When it comes to the playing/»reading« of an Audio-CD, as a basic process – why would the result of it, coming from a 22-kg-monster like the Denon DCD-SA1, be better than when it comes from any optical drive of a PC?

I am asking this because my complete Audio-CD library went, while being ripped, through a 30-Euros LG optical drive built into my PC more than 10 years ago. Could all the resulting FLACs possibly be any better if I was using the big fat Denon DCD-SA1 instead?

 

[Haskil]

A bit OT ... What I still don’t understand, up to this very day:

When it comes to the playing/»reading« of an Audio-CD, as a basic process – why would the result of it, coming from a 22-kg-monster like the Denon DCD-SA1, be better than when it comes from any optical drive of a PC?

I am asking this because my complete Audio-CD library went, while being ripped, through a 30-Euros LG optical drive built into my PC more than 10 years ago. Could all the resulting FLACs possibly be any better if I was using the big fat Denon DCD-SA1 instead?

No, because if you used good ripping software, every bit was extracted perfectly because the computer CD player went over the same place several times to extract everything without error...