Hello everyone,
Several of you have expressed their interests for a review of the Denon DVD-A1, so here you go with a partial review of its CD Audio capabilities.
This is a light review because I don’t have this player anymore, and I did not use my latest test CD for measurements. Fact is that I used this Denon, at the time, to learn how to perform measurements of CD players, and this one was practical because it had digital inputs too, preventing me from having to burn so many CDs for testing.
I used it to test some standard test CDs (in particular the Denon technical test CD) as I wanted to create mine but needed to learn from the others to cut development time.
Unfortunately, I kept only so few measurements and graphs from this adventure, that I won’t be able to go into the details you usually see from my reviews.
That said, what I have left is good enough to understand this is a decent CD player.
Denon DVD-A1 - Presentation
This DVD player is from 2002 and was crazy expensive (around 5’000€). Its sole weight was a statement of quality with 18.5kg (40.8lbs). It was named DVD-9000 in USA and Canada.
I will be talking about its quality when it comes to play the good old CD Audio. Here are the published specs:
The elements of interest, besides the build quality, and when it comes to play an audio CD where:
- Differential D/A conversion via 4 BurrBrown PCM1704 converters, 2 per channel. I’ll be talking more about that. Surround channels use only one PCM1704 per channel and a standard filter, not the Denon AL24.
- Digital filter Denon AL24 advanced of which function I tested in great details when reviewing the Denon DCD-SA1. It is likely to be the exact same here.
- Crazy built quality with an intention of excellence.
The back side of the Denon is very busy:
We get two analog outputs for the main stereo channels, probably to facilitate connection to a home cinema system and another classic stereo one.
And besides all video outputs, we see digital outputs and digital inputs too. I used a lot the latter for my test at the time, but again, I’ll be talking about this Denon when it comes to play a CD.
I forgot to mention that we also get HDCD decoding and the front face shows two "pure direct" modes to disconnect video functions ans theoretically get better results (it did not make any difference in my measurements, as far as I can remember).
The built quality was a surprise to me when i first opened the Denon. It starts with a massive and beautiful secondary top cover:
Then it continues inside with many boards dedicated to each function. The power supply on the right is impressive and the stereo D/A board on is the left:
The drive seems to have received some attention too, I don’t know its origin:
You can appreciate lots copper plated separations between main boards.
And this is the stereo conversion:
These PCM1704 are the last R2R converters from BurrBrown, succeeding to the legendary PCM63 and PCM1702, being compatible with 24bits PCM input. They reuse the co-linear conversion which I described in great details here.
In a nutshell, each PCM1704 contains two 23bits DACs. Each of these process independently the positive and negative sides of the signal thus preventing going through 0 which, in the PCM 2´s complementary code, implies all bits changing from 0 to 1, creating unwanted distorsion at very low levels. This was R2R state of the art conversion.
The specs of these converters where:
The Denon DVD-A1 uses the standard version of the PCM1704 said to offer 0.0025% THD+N (calculated with 5 harmonics) and -90 linearity. This, we will check.
The previous photo also shows the Denon filter DXP7001AF containing the alpha filter, as the service guide shows:
And like I said before, the other channels use a standard and very good BurrBrown DF1704 filter.
Denon DVD-A1 - Measurements (RCA out)
Like I said at the beginning, I did not keep much of the measurements and certainly not to level of details I go to now. So it will be a limited review for that reason. I’ll dig into some backups of my PC, though, there could be more hidden somewhere.
For all measurements, I used a Motu UltraLite Mk5.
The Denon outputs 2.2Vrms, and the two channels had a deviation of only 0.05dB. The RCA outputs are non-inverting.
Let’s start with the standard measurement, form the Denon technical test CD (1001Hz @0dBFS without dither):
We are in the specs of the DAC as published by BurrBrown, which is nice to see. The distorsion is at -96dB, which is very good for a non-selected PCM1704. There probably a little contribution from the Motu as I see in this trace that I obviously increased the input gain to reach near maximum input, and that means I increased a little the noise floor doing so. All that means these results are quite good.
I ran the same test, using the digital input (1kHz @0dBFS with dither):
Nearly the same results. And from the few measurements I have left, it seems the digital input was truncating at 16bits, but I’m not 100% sure.
Bandwidth is flat and the two channels appeared to have a very little deviation:
The below graph shows minimum power supply related disruption:
We see few spikes from mains (50Hz ie Europe) and harmonics, but below -110dBr, they will remain hidden into music.
And Multitone was perfect for CD:
The above graph is not in dBr scale, so you need to add 25dB to the bottom noise view to get the real one. But that means the Denon keeps more than 17bits of data free of distortion when playing complex tones.
The jitter test showed no issue, I don’t show the graph because it was made from a flawed test file, but the results were still good to show no issue on this particular test.
Few other measurements:
To be continued if I find more measurements
Unfortunately, you won’t get tests from the drive nor digital output tests as I did not perform them at the time.
Conclusion
This was one more crazy player from Denon, and I did not know they went that far with a DVD player.
It was sounding very well, and from my measurements I can’t see any obvious defaults, the performances where best in class for an R2R conversion. Enjoy it if you still have one, it’s a very good CD player!
Several of you have expressed their interests for a review of the Denon DVD-A1, so here you go with a partial review of its CD Audio capabilities.
This is a light review because I don’t have this player anymore, and I did not use my latest test CD for measurements. Fact is that I used this Denon, at the time, to learn how to perform measurements of CD players, and this one was practical because it had digital inputs too, preventing me from having to burn so many CDs for testing.
I used it to test some standard test CDs (in particular the Denon technical test CD) as I wanted to create mine but needed to learn from the others to cut development time.
Unfortunately, I kept only so few measurements and graphs from this adventure, that I won’t be able to go into the details you usually see from my reviews.
That said, what I have left is good enough to understand this is a decent CD player.
Denon DVD-A1 - Presentation
This DVD player is from 2002 and was crazy expensive (around 5’000€). Its sole weight was a statement of quality with 18.5kg (40.8lbs). It was named DVD-9000 in USA and Canada.
I will be talking about its quality when it comes to play the good old CD Audio. Here are the published specs:
The elements of interest, besides the build quality, and when it comes to play an audio CD where:
- Differential D/A conversion via 4 BurrBrown PCM1704 converters, 2 per channel. I’ll be talking more about that. Surround channels use only one PCM1704 per channel and a standard filter, not the Denon AL24.
- Digital filter Denon AL24 advanced of which function I tested in great details when reviewing the Denon DCD-SA1. It is likely to be the exact same here.
- Crazy built quality with an intention of excellence.
The back side of the Denon is very busy:
We get two analog outputs for the main stereo channels, probably to facilitate connection to a home cinema system and another classic stereo one.
And besides all video outputs, we see digital outputs and digital inputs too. I used a lot the latter for my test at the time, but again, I’ll be talking about this Denon when it comes to play a CD.
I forgot to mention that we also get HDCD decoding and the front face shows two "pure direct" modes to disconnect video functions ans theoretically get better results (it did not make any difference in my measurements, as far as I can remember).
The built quality was a surprise to me when i first opened the Denon. It starts with a massive and beautiful secondary top cover:
Then it continues inside with many boards dedicated to each function. The power supply on the right is impressive and the stereo D/A board on is the left:
The drive seems to have received some attention too, I don’t know its origin:
You can appreciate lots copper plated separations between main boards.
And this is the stereo conversion:
These PCM1704 are the last R2R converters from BurrBrown, succeeding to the legendary PCM63 and PCM1702, being compatible with 24bits PCM input. They reuse the co-linear conversion which I described in great details here.
In a nutshell, each PCM1704 contains two 23bits DACs. Each of these process independently the positive and negative sides of the signal thus preventing going through 0 which, in the PCM 2´s complementary code, implies all bits changing from 0 to 1, creating unwanted distorsion at very low levels. This was R2R state of the art conversion.
The specs of these converters where:
The Denon DVD-A1 uses the standard version of the PCM1704 said to offer 0.0025% THD+N (calculated with 5 harmonics) and -90 linearity. This, we will check.
The previous photo also shows the Denon filter DXP7001AF containing the alpha filter, as the service guide shows:
And like I said before, the other channels use a standard and very good BurrBrown DF1704 filter.
Denon DVD-A1 - Measurements (RCA out)
Like I said at the beginning, I did not keep much of the measurements and certainly not to level of details I go to now. So it will be a limited review for that reason. I’ll dig into some backups of my PC, though, there could be more hidden somewhere.
For all measurements, I used a Motu UltraLite Mk5.
The Denon outputs 2.2Vrms, and the two channels had a deviation of only 0.05dB. The RCA outputs are non-inverting.
Let’s start with the standard measurement, form the Denon technical test CD (1001Hz @0dBFS without dither):
We are in the specs of the DAC as published by BurrBrown, which is nice to see. The distorsion is at -96dB, which is very good for a non-selected PCM1704. There probably a little contribution from the Motu as I see in this trace that I obviously increased the input gain to reach near maximum input, and that means I increased a little the noise floor doing so. All that means these results are quite good.
I ran the same test, using the digital input (1kHz @0dBFS with dither):
Nearly the same results. And from the few measurements I have left, it seems the digital input was truncating at 16bits, but I’m not 100% sure.
Bandwidth is flat and the two channels appeared to have a very little deviation:
The below graph shows minimum power supply related disruption:
We see few spikes from mains (50Hz ie Europe) and harmonics, but below -110dBr, they will remain hidden into music.
And Multitone was perfect for CD:
The above graph is not in dBr scale, so you need to add 25dB to the bottom noise view to get the real one. But that means the Denon keeps more than 17bits of data free of distortion when playing complex tones.
The jitter test showed no issue, I don’t show the graph because it was made from a flawed test file, but the results were still good to show no issue on this particular test.
Few other measurements:
- IMD AES MD : -100dB (41Hz & 7993Hz 4:1 @-1.68dBFS)
- Dynamic Range: 98dB
- Clock precision : 12ppm
To be continued if I find more measurements
Unfortunately, you won’t get tests from the drive nor digital output tests as I did not perform them at the time.
Conclusion
This was one more crazy player from Denon, and I did not know they went that far with a DVD player.
It was sounding very well, and from my measurements I can’t see any obvious defaults, the performances where best in class for an R2R conversion. Enjoy it if you still have one, it’s a very good CD player!
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