If CDs are obsolete, why old CD players are still expensive?

[rdenney]

Has anyone seen measurements of old CD players? Including cheap consumer ones?

I'm curious, because back in the 80s I really hated the way CDs sounded. And now I have gigabytes of CD-quality recordings that sound great, including ones that were recorded back then. So my original assumption—that that they didn't know how to record digitally back then—is debunked.

Now I'm thinking that either 1) the players back then were lousy, or 2) things sounded fine and I was just brainwashed.

It's also possible that I made up my mind based on some not-great recordings. Some of my CDs from back then are indeed too bright and thin (The Police, Joni Mitchell, Blondie ...)

You last sentence could just as easily apply to vinyl LPs, many of which were recorded and mixed based on crappy studio monitors accepted as reference at the time. There is nothing to be done about that but adjust the tone controls.

I have one CD cheapie version of a Harry James album that has a terrible and audible intermodulation tone that was clearly an aliasing artifact from a careless digital conversion. But most CD's I own from the medium's early days sound great. Some sound simply superb, but those that were made from analog masters (and I have a lot of those) still have residual tape hiss. If they don't try too hard to get rid of that during remastering, then I don't mind it. Only occasionally were attempts to use automated clean-up tools a little too obvious and heavy-handed.

My first player was a Belgian-made (by Philips) Magnavox CDB-650, which was universally praised for its good sound, and it still sounds good. But, sure, there has always been crap that is available to the unwary. Here's an online reprint (with very poor graphics) of the March, '87 Audio review article, showing test results for that Maggotbox. (Those results show distortion in the -95 dB range--and generally the measured performance is as good as anything one might buy today for playing redbook CDs.)

https://www.gammaelectronics.xyz/audio_03-1987_mag.html

But the bleating about low-signal quantization errors, harsh sounds, etc., were no more credible than a lot of the current poetry from internet "experts".

Rick "going with Number 2" Denney

 

[Frank Dernie]

Has anyone seen measurements of old CD players? Including cheap consumer ones?

I'm curious, because back in the 80s I really hated the way CDs sounded. And now I have gigabytes of CD-quality recordings that sound great, including ones that were recorded back then. So my original assumption—that that they didn't know how to record digitally back then—is debunked.

Now I'm thinking that either 1) the players back then were lousy, or 2) things sounded fine and I was just brainwashed.

It's also possible that I made up my mind based on some not-great recordings. Some of my CDs from back then are indeed too bright and thin (The Police, Joni Mitchell, Blondie ...)

Early CD players were not as good as todays but were way better than record players from day 1.
My first digital recorder, a StellaDAT, was the first recorder I had used where I could not tell the recording from the microphone feed, even the best reel-to-reel recorders I had used (Revox B77) was not as good and this was one of the very first digital recorders and 48/16.
Some of my best sounding CDs are early ones but it is true to say, IME, the sound quality of recordings varies more than the sound quality of reasonable hifi so plenty of old ones are dire, as are plenty of new ones.

I have theories why some people didn't like them at first.
One is that if you had balanced your system by ear and chosen speakers which had a rising treble which compensated for the roll off of the cartridge you were using (many high end cartridges did and still do) something with a level treble response will sound bright.
Another is that pre-CD the standard line output for devices like tuners and tape decks was 200mV, that means there was a risk that preamps of the day may have had their inputs overloaded by the new 2 volt standard of CD (needed so the extra dynamic range could be exploited).

Then, of course, as you alluded, there was a lot of convincing BS from companies making record playing equipment who didn't have the technology to do CD...
The BS hasn't stopped either.

 

[paulraphael]

You last sentence could just as easily apply to vinyl LPs, many of which were recorded and mixed based on crappy studio monitors accepted as reference at the time. There is nothing to be done about that but adjust the tone controls.

That's a good point ... I think these recordings that bug me sound pretty similar on vinyl.

I'm still wondering about typical cheap CD players from the era. This was a long time before high-quality digital was cheap.

 

[Robin L]

That's a good point ... I think these recordings that bug me sound pretty similar on vinyl.

I'm still wondering about typical cheap CD players from the era. This was a long time before high-quality digital was cheap.

My memories of early digital gear are mostly dire. The late 1980s was when I started, the CD players I worked with at the time were low cost models from Magnavox [mostly], all of which sounded 'blurry' compared to a good LP source. When I noticed the big change was with BluRay players, 24/192 capable, no blur, much better resolution of the spaces between notes, reverb tails and so on. While this could have all been self-hypnotism I'd bet the early, typical consumer grade CD player will probably have issues with jitter and low-level resolution.

One thing's for sure, my file based playback of music ripped from CDs is as good sounding digital as I've encountered so far.

 

[MattHooper]

I vividly remember (or seem to) hearing CD for the first time, playing some of my favorite artists.

My impressions were of being gobsmacked by the clarity and lack of noise artifacts. It truly felt like a new era

I also remember the sound as strangely "antiseptic" sounding, sort of canned and sterile, a teeny bit off-putting.

I dropped vinyl pretty fast for CD (cassettes later...had to wait for recordable CDs to replace those), and generally really liked CD. But I also understood why some remained attracted to the vinyl sound even back then. (I never bought any of the bogus technical arguments for analog over digital, though).

 

[rdenney]

I think our ears were so accustomed to the colorations of vinyl playback (read: cartridges of the day) that we interpreted the greater clarity of CD's as being "antiseptic". Of course, antiseptic means that it lacks rot, so there's that. I'm not saying there were no crappy players early on, and we must recall that the first players use R2R DACs with 14-bit resolution at most. But I think that within half a decade, the better of the cheaper players had become functionally about as good as anything we might by today. As I mentioned above, I also own a Naim CD5, which was a Stereophile A-lister in 2002 when CD's were at their peak, and my older players in the level just above cheapie are not embarrassed by it.

My Magnavox CD player from 1987 certainly did NOT sound "blurry" compared with either open reel or vinyl, and I had both. In fact, clarity improved with the significant reduction in base noise. Sometimes clarity reveals things, of course, including the decisions made by recording studio technicians. But classical stuff in those days was a divided camp--the big boys were recording using 24 mics into 24-track tape decks and the final recording is a mix product, not a performance product, versus the RCA-inspired three-mike setup used by, for example, Telarc. But that conflict applied equally to vinyl as to CD. In terms of tonality, the classical labels weren't taking the same drugs.

But the CDB-650, while not the cheapest Magnavox, was still a price-point brand. Let's face it, if I could afford it (new, no less), then it was not high-end by any standard measured in dollars. But it was good enough to earn the respect of the guys at the high-end audio store I frequented at the time (where I was coveting but couldn't hope to afford a Linn turntable). It was possible to buy crappy players in those days. But I'll bet that what made them crappy was poor analog electronics between the DAC and the RCA plugs. (Paul will understand this as a statement of my financial depth at the time--I bought the Magnavox at the same time as I upgraded to an old Calumet CC400 view camera, and my prize lens was a Rodenstock Geronar budget triplet. Three years later, the situation had improved substantially--that's when I bought the Cambo and a couple of Super Angulons, used, of course.)

Noting a paragraph in the above review (and recognizing that I'm using the CDB650 as an example of a good but not high-end CD player from within five years of CD's first market appearance):

"Once again, I couldn't refrain from digging back for some of my earliest acquired CDs--the ones that I and others had summarily dismissed as being overly strident and harsh-sounding--and replaying them on the CDB650. A few of the dozen or so discs that fall into this category still were not as musically accurate-sounding as I would have liked, but surprisingly, about three-quarters of them suddenly sounded significantly better. I know that this was not my imagination, since I also played them on an early-generation player that I keep around for just that purpose. The difference is real, and I must attribute the improvement to the digital filtering, the extremely linear 16-bit D/A converters, and the other circuit refinements that have been built into this unit."--Leonard Feldman

Rick "thinking Feldman captured what's important in this thread, way back in 1987" Denney

 

[paulraphael]

Rick "thinking Feldman captured what's important in this thread, way back in 1987" Denney

Very interesting. I'd love to get a couple of those ancient cd players into Amir's hands.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Very interesting. I'd love to get a couple of those ancient cd players into Amir's hands.

HiFi News re-test certain old bits of equipment as part of Tim Jarman's vintage equipment column.
This is one of them.
I enjoy Tim's column

 

[Kal Rubinson]

As I have been ripping my CD's, I have not been tempted to skip more than a couple of them as being redundant. Yes, that includes all five versions that I have of the Shostakovich 5th Symphony, or the four versions I have of the startling Vaughan Williams 4th Symphony.

Amen. When I started ripping my discs (of all formats), I realized that making a decision to cull any particular disc would be based on my feelings at that moment or two and would not necessarily reflect my feelings at some time in the future. So, I ripped them all. That includes multiple Shostakovich 5s and VW 4s. In fact, I just downloaded a new MCH recording of the VW4 yesterday.

Even if I never buy another CD, I have a well-curated sampling of all kinds of music that has already stood the test of time with me. Nevertheless, I am still buying CD's of recordings made within the last year, and those will be part of my well-curated collection 20 years from now.

Yup. I am hoping for 20!

 

[Robin L]

I think our ears were so accustomed to the colorations of vinyl playback (read: cartridges of the day) that we interpreted the greater clarity of CD's as being "antiseptic". Of course, antiseptic means that it lacks rot, so there's that. I'm not saying there were no crappy players early on, and we must recall that the first players use R2R DACs with 14-bit resolution at most. But I think that within half a decade, the better of the cheaper players had become functionally about as good as anything we might by today. As I mentioned above, I also own a Naim CD5, which was a Stereophile A-lister in 2002 when CD's were at their peak, and my older players in the level just above cheapie are not embarrassed by it.

My Magnavox CD player from 1987 certainly did NOT sound "blurry" compared with either open reel or vinyl, and I had both. In fact, clarity improved with the significant reduction in base noise. Sometimes clarity reveals things, of course, including the decisions made by recording studio technicians. But classical stuff in those days was a divided camp--the big boys were recording using 24 mics into 24-track tape decks and the final recording is a mix product, not a performance product, versus the RCA-inspired three-mike setup used by, for example, Telarc. But that conflict applied equally to vinyl as to CD. In terms of tonality, the classical labels weren't taking the same drugs.

But the CDB-650, while not the cheapest Magnavox, was still a price-point brand. Let's face it, if I could afford it (new, no less), then it was not high-end by any standard measured in dollars. But it was good enough to earn the respect of the guys at the high-end audio store I frequented at the time (where I was coveting but couldn't hope to afford a Linn turntable). It was possible to buy crappy players in those days. But I'll bet that what made them crappy was poor analog electronics between the DAC and the RCA plugs. (Paul will understand this as a statement of my financial depth at the time--I bought the Magnavox at the same time as I upgraded to an old Calumet CC400 view camera, and my prize lens was a Rodenstock Geronar budget triplet. Three years later, the situation had improved substantially--that's when I bought the Cambo and a couple of Super Angulons, used, of course.)

Noting a paragraph in the above review (and recognizing that I'm using the CDB650 as an example of a good but not high-end CD player from within five years of CD's first market appearance):

"Once again, I couldn't refrain from digging back for some of my earliest acquired CDs--the ones that I and others had summarily dismissed as being overly strident and harsh-sounding--and replaying them on the CDB650. A few of the dozen or so discs that fall into this category still were not as musically accurate-sounding as I would have liked, but surprisingly, about three-quarters of them suddenly sounded significantly better. I know that this was not my imagination, since I also played them on an early-generation player that I keep around for just that purpose. The difference is real, and I must attribute the improvement to the digital filtering, the extremely linear 16-bit D/A converters, and the other circuit refinements that have been built into this unit."--Leonard Feldman

Rick "thinking Feldman captured what's important in this thread, way back in 1987" Denney

I was talking about low-end Magnavox players monitored via Stax Lambda Pro earspeakers. I heard the model you mention at a stereo shop, it didn't move the needle very far for me. I think I encountered better CD players by the mid-90's, had the Optimus 3400 used as a transport hooked up to a t.c. electronics M2000 around 1995, but didn't hear the quantum leap until about 2010.

 

[rdenney]

...Another is that pre-CD the standard line output for devices like tuners and tape decks was 200mV, that means there was a risk that preamps of the day may have had their inputs overloaded by the new 2 volt standard of CD (needed so the extra dynamic range could be exploited)...

Frank, I saw this in another thread and started thinking about it. My old Onkyo Integra preamp had a rated output of 1.5 volts, and an input sensitivity of 150 mV, and that Magnavox player fed that preamp for some years. My Kenwood KA-3500, also with 150 mV input sensitivity, is serving a Tascam CD player from 1991 right now. I recall that the input sensitivity of my Adcom GFP-565 is 200 mV, and it was certainly made in the CD era, after the 2-volt line level became the norm.

The current Rotel RC-1590 has an unbalanced line-level input sensitivity of 150 mV.

I think we are misunderstanding that specification. Correct me if I'm wrong: 150 mV is higher sensitivity than, say, 400 mV. It's not the point at which the preamp clips, as I understand it, but the lowest input voltage at which it will drive the rated output of the preamp. So, it's necessary that source devices have a higher output than the preamp's input sensitivity. The volume control on the preamp attenuates the incoming signal. So, a 2-volt CD player on a 150-mV preamp just means that the volume control won't go as high before reaching the preamp's maximum output.

For the same reason, a preamp must have a higher output than the input sensitivity of the power amplifier, else the preamp will run out of "knob" before the amp reaches full power.

Rick "who has never heard any input clipping distortion even at the limits of the amps and speakers" Denney

 

[restorer-john]

Has anyone seen measurements of old CD players? Including cheap consumer ones?

I'm curious, because back in the 80s I really hated the way CDs sounded. And now I have gigabytes of CD-quality recordings that sound great, including ones that were recorded back then. So my original assumption—that that they didn't know how to record digitally back then—is debunked.

Now I'm thinking that either 1) the players back then were lousy, or 2) things sounded fine and I was just brainwashed.

It's also possible that I made up my mind based on some not-great recordings. Some of my CDs from back then are indeed too bright and thin (The Police, Joni Mitchell, Blondie ...)

I have plenty of historical reviews, right from the very first machines released to market in 1982/3.

In many cases, particularly as the format matured, the performance on key parameters not only hit all the theoretical limits, it still hasn't been bettered. I have machines with separation figures of 126.5dB, S/N of 117dB, THD of less than 0.0015% at 0dBFS (not a few dB down) and ruler flat from DC.

Consider all the D/A converter reviews on ASR are using 24 bit/44.1 data, not 16/44.1 , so the numbers are not only not representative of the music most people are using, but also not comparable to standalone CD players. You cannot compare a 24bit SINAD with a 16 bit THD+N. We also know there are plenty of D/As that perform worse with 16/44 than 24 bits, but that is never tested unfortunately.

 

[restorer-john]

Frank, I saw this in another thread and started thinking about it. My old Onkyo Integra preamp had a rated output of 1.5 volts, and an input sensitivity of 150 mV, and that Magnavox player fed that preamp for some years. My Kenwood KA-3500, also with 150 mV input sensitivity, is serving a Tascam CD player from 1991 right now. I recall that the input sensitivity of my Adcom GFP-565 is 200 mV, and it was certainly made in the CD era, after the 2-volt line level became the norm.

The current Rotel RC-1590 has an unbalanced line-level input sensitivity of 150 mV.

I think we are misunderstanding that specification. Correct me if I'm wrong: 150 mV is higher sensitivity than, say, 400 mV. It's not the point at which the preamp clips, as I understand it, but the lowest input voltage at which it will drive the rated output of the preamp. So, it's necessary that source devices have a higher output than the preamp's input sensitivity. The volume control on the preamp attenuates the incoming signal. So, a 2-volt CD player on a 150-mV preamp just means that the volume control won't go as high before reaching the preamp's maximum output.

For the same reason, a preamp must have a higher output than the input sensitivity of the power amplifier, else the preamp will run out of "knob" before the amp reaches full power.

Rick "who has never heard any input clipping distortion even at the limits of the amps and speakers" Denney

The issues are (and it did happen a lot in the early days of CD), that 150mV for full rated power/output was a pretty 'standard' line level sensitivity on preamps and integrateds. With integrateds particularly, and ones left over for the 1970s, the preamp stage overloads were often not much above that. Go feed in 2.0V and you'd overload the low level (gain/tone) stages.

Attenuators were sold in the early days of digital for such situations.

 

[Lambda]

You cannot compare a 24bit SINAD with a 16 bit THD+N.

Why not?

at perform worse with 16/44 than 24 bits,

Just add some zeros then?!

 

[rdenney]

The issues are (and it did happen a lot in the early days of CD), that 150mV for full rated power/output was a pretty 'standard' line level sensitivity on preamps and integrateds. With integrateds particularly, and ones left over for the 1970s, the preamp stage overloads were often not much above that. Go feed in 2.0V and you'd overload the low level (gain/tone) stages.

Attenuators were sold in the early days of digital for such situations.

It's never happened that I can detect feeding 2-volt CD players into my 1977 Kenwood KA-3500. But if that's the issue, I'm not sure input sensitivity is the measure of it. The current top-of-the-line Rotel stereo preamp has the same input sensitivity as that mid-70's Kenwood. And the early-80's Onkyo, and the early 90's Adcom.

Where is the volume control in the circuit layout?

Rick "missing something, apparently" Denney

 

[Frank Dernie]

Correct me if I'm wrong: 150 mV is higher sensitivity than, say, 400 mV. It's not the point at which the preamp clips, as I understand it, but the lowest input voltage at which it will drive the rated output of the preamp. So, it's necessary that source devices have a higher output than the preamp's input sensitivity. The volume control on the preamp attenuates the incoming signal. So, a 2-volt CD player on a 150-mV preamp just means that the volume control won't go as high before reaching the preamp's maximum output.

Yes that is correct, my only concern is that any preamp designed for this sensitivity may have a lower clipping limit if the designer didn't expect, or design for, units with 10dB higher output than normal.
The max output of my tuner was 200mV, it was very noticeable how much lower my volume control had to be set with my CD player.
I am not saying it would be expected, merely that it is a possibility on some preamps.

 

[jsrtheta]

He mentioned each format has a 25 year lifecycle.. we will have to endure MQA for at least 20 more years.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. We threw off the chains of HDCD fairly expeditiously.

 

[solderdude]

I remember the EL cassette and 8-track also didn't make it for 25 years. Nor did the Kodak disc and APS formats in photography. And think about V2000 and Laser Disc they also didn't last long.

 

[concorde1]

I don't think CD's are obsolete in any way.

 

[Mart68]

From technical point of view they are not obsolete. But people are buying fewer and fewer new ones. I can see a point in the future where they will stop making them, as happened in the 1990s when a lot of record pressing plants closed down. The mass-market for music determines these things, not us enthusiasts who are only a tiny subset of music purchasers.

But there will still be billions of CDs out there. I have bought a few recently. I wanted early issues not re-masters with the dynamics squashed. No trouble finding what I wanted and they were very cheap. Cheaper than the inferior re-masters by 50%.

On the other hand if you like to buy a lot of new music on CD (I don't) then you are going to run into problems at some point in the future.