Let's talk CD Players!

[Sal1950]

I'll always kick myself for selling my JVC XL-Z1050TN. A piece from the best days of the Japanese HiFi gear.
Built like a tank and heavy as one, transport was smooth as glass in open/close and dead silent when spinning.
A really beautiful piece that offered great sound too.

 

[restorer-john]

I'm not convinced...

A CDROM drive with C2 error detection will provide the full CIRC recovery that a dedicated CD player will. C2 capable CDROMs are common enough.

A CDROM drive has much more responsive servo tracking loops to allow operation at multiple times CD read speed (e.g my PC CDROM is x42). Sometimes a faster-spinning disc will read better than a slower dirve, sometimes the reverse. The faster servo loop is sometimes helpful, sometimes not... Due to the need to read at much higher rates, the data recovery circuits are much wider bandwidth. This must give better eye patterns and margins if the read rate is throttled.

I have discs that I can never play on a CD player, but I can get a perfect rip using EAC. It takes a while, but it bangs away retrying until it has managed to pull as much good data off the disc as possible. Likewise, I have discs that will play on a CD player, but give rip errors (and they're CDs. not Copy Control discs).

In my experience, with literally tons of CD players and god knows how many CD/DVD Rom drives over the decades, the TOTL standalone players absolutely obliterate any PC based playback/extraction on borderline or badly damaged media.

I still have a very early store demo disc we used in the 80s/90s which got to the point no machine we sold (Yamaha/Pioneer), regardless of price would read the TOC, let alone play it. I retrieved that disc from the bin, made a bet with the store owner my TOTL Sony would play it. I won the bet by bringing in a recording of the disc...No CD-rom has been able to touch it since, but I have several standalone CD players that play it perfectly.

Just for fun, it's in my drive right now and I'm giving EAC a go at extracting what it can. So far:

Progress after 4:27 on the first track...:

This is what the disc looks like- both sides heavily scratched and severe destruction to the label side Al layer and TOC area.

I'll make a quick video of the Disc playing in a CD player later.

PS, I aborted the EAC copy. 8:30 in and it hadn't got past the first few seconds. I could try 20 other CD roms in the house, but they simply cannot extract the data.

Even the poor drive locked up! I had to use a paper-clip to open it.

 

[digicidal]

Ouch that poor CD! I have a couple back when I was stupid and would loan CDs to people that still are better than that - however, there are a couple that I was unable to extract perfect rips from and had to be replaced (or just disposed of because I determined I didn't care enough).

One notable example (my ~27 year old copy of Steely Dan's The Royal Scam) does indeed play on all but one of my CD players without issue but can't get a perfect rip of one track - and since "Haitian Divorce" is definitely important enough IMO... I found a new copy (which was way more compressed, so then I found a new old copy that wasn't scratched and bought that too).

Luckily there were only a few in my collection that I wasn't able to keep in pristine condition over the years (or spend a few hours with a high quality plastic polisher to get that way). Now I just rip as soon as I get... problem solved on everything.

 

[restorer-john]

Ouch that poor CD!

I keep that disc exactly as it was and make sure it's not damaged anymore than it is now, as it serves as one of my reference discs for trackability when setting up or restoring CD players. It's quite illuminating to see a 1st generation CD player play right through the disc when high end modern machines can't even read the TOC.

 

[JoachimStrobel]

I picked up a Sony DVP-S7700. It's a DVD player from 1999 but I use it for CDs only. It's a heavy piece of kit, weighing a little over 15 lbs.

... I bought that Sony in 1999, it was one of the first DVD players. Came bundled with a couple of DVDs. I hooked it up in parallel to my CDP1000 CD transport feeding into my DAC. I could not hear a difference. I used a Laserdisc Player with CD slot as transport too and could hear a difference - so that Sony seems to be a good CD transport. The build in DAC was however no match to my outboard DAC. It performed like most other onboard DACs that compared it too.[/QUOTE]

 

[typericey]

High Density Linear Converter

Legato Link

SuperDigifine

I gotta say, I'm loving this trip to memory lane. At the same time have no clue if these jargon translate to any real technical topology or if they're just marketing BS.

We need Philips Bitstream and 18-bit 8x oversampling to represent!

Random old thread I stumbled upon: https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/old-cd-players.461509/

Philips made DAC chips back the the day! http://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/history_of_the_Philips_tda_d_a_converter/

 

[LTig]

Do they still make them?
I've got 2 transports in my desktop computer.
And 2 standalone BluRay players that will play any disc format.
Why would I need a stand alone CD?

Just for convenience. Old style CDPs (those which cannot play MP3) are very fast in playback mode:

• Both CPDs in here (Kenwood DP5010, Marantz CD4000) are ready to work instantly after power on and read the TOC within 1 to 2 seconds after closing the lid.
• My BDP (Pioneer LX52) starts booting about 5 seconds after getting power, needs 15 seconds to boot, and another 15 seconds to detect the CD after the lid has closed. All together amounts to more than half a minute.

 

[LTig]

Did a title search here and did not find much discussion.

- Do you still own a dedicated* CD Player (or players)? *plays CDs only Why or why not?
- If yes, what model(s)? Pics would be nice.
- anecdotes about CD playback most welcome
- links to measurements of CD players also welcome

Yep, several: Kenwood DP-5010, Marantz CD4000 (both via SPDIF only), and a Tascam CD-RW700 CD recorder. I prefer them for convenience reasons.

 

[Frank Dernie]

My main reservation for going back to CDs: players don't seem to last, they eventually break.

I bought the transport I use daily over 20 years ago.

 

[LTig]

Hi
I still have a few.
Let's make it clear: I only use one when I can't avoid it.
I ripped all my CDs a long time ago, and I can very well do without handling those fragile cases and that piece of round plastic, so prone to scratches and fingerprints.
But, anyway, nobody would purchase them 2nd hand, so...

Not in my experience. On a vacation in scotland in 1999 we spent two nights in a BB, and while sitting together with our hosts their kids complained about the CD player not playing a disc and refusing to eject it.
Well, I opened the CDP, took out a CD covered with jam and cleaned the mess inside. Afterwards the CD played well again.

BUT: this CD looked as if it had been grinded with sandpaper. There was not a single blank piece left. Still it played without any noticable flaws. WOW! Since then know that I don't have to worry about finger prints and scratches.

 

[LTig]

Oppo players (all of them AFAIK) have a problem that causes them to "miss" the first fraction of a second (maybe 0.1~0.2 s using analog outputs, up to 1 s or so using HDMI)[..]

Same here with SPDIF out to Classé SIgma SSP. But this is a problem of the AV processor, not of the player! The Marantz AV7701 did not show such behaviour.

 

[LTig]

[..] Out of curiosity I checked around and found that McIntosh was selling a CD transport for five thousand dollars. No DAC. Just a disc spinner. Mac used to make well thought out gear that had long term value. Who pays five thousand dollars for a 'transport'? According to the blurb, "...data is read at twice normal speed for better error correction and tracking." Has anyone ever experienced this sort of problem? Or is it something McIntosh invented simply in order to sell an expensive half a CD player to people with more money than sense? I just don't get that sort of thing. This sort of cynical marketing really lowers my opinion of McIntosh significantly.

Same with the new Project CD Box RS2 T.:

... Very good in quality, but not too crazy expensive.​

A list price of 2500 € is crazy expensive for a very simple drive without a DAC.

Actual Redbook CD players have gotten rare, real high-end mechanisms aren‘t even existing anymore. Today, we know that the drive is essential for accurately reading CDs. The mechanics in many drives struggle to correctly read CDs and rely on audio interpolation to make it work, that often has a negativ impacting on the sound quality. The CD medium might have gotten an unfavorable reputation as a result, which is why it is time to create a perfect, top-class CD transport again. ...​

Just a lot of FUD.

 

[LTig]

[..] After attempting to tell the difference (that actually was blind IIRC) between a "bad rip" (lowest accuracy FLAC) and a pristine CD (at the time only used for the aforementioned rip)... I gave up bothering.

What is a lowest accuracy flac? AFAIK flac files are never lossless compressed so it's no wonder you couldn't hear any difference.

 

[Wombat]

Not in my experience. On a vacation in scotland in 1999 we spent two nights in a BB, and while sitting together with our hosts their kids complained about the CD player not playing a disc and refusing to eject it.
Well, I opened the CDP, took out a CD covered with jam and cleaned the mess inside. Afterwards the CD played well again.

BUT: this CD looked as if it had been grinded with sandpaper. There was not a single blank piece left. Still it played without any noticable flaws. WOW! Since then know that I don't have to worry about finger prints and scratches.

The tray was truly JAMmed.

 

[snowsurfer]

I have a Panasonic BD player but it's not even connected permanently to my AVR. Do not have CDs at home any more. I ripped everything to FLAC years ago and put them in storage. I live in downtown Madrid in a 68 square meter apartment, there is no space for CDs, BDs, vinyl, or most of my books. I've gone fully digital, basically, and I am very happy with it. If I ever move out of the city to a bigger house, some of it will be coming back, but as it stands now, I need every centimeter of living space for, you know...living. I've also had to sell my floorstanding home theater setup and get a KEF satellite/sub system since there is just no space for that. Until 5 years ago I lived in a big semi-detached house in a residential area outside of the city, but the 1.5 hours to get to work in the morning every day and the hour or so to get back home was just not worth it for me. Now I walk to work and have lunch at home every day. I only miss my BBQ.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I'm not convinced...

A CDROM drive with C2 error detection will provide the full CIRC recovery that a dedicated CD player will. C2 capable CDROMs are common enough.

A CDROM drive has much more responsive servo tracking loops to allow operation at multiple times CD read speed (e.g my PC CDROM is x42). Sometimes a faster-spinning disc will read better than a slower dirve, sometimes the reverse. The faster servo loop is sometimes helpful, sometimes not... Due to the need to read at much higher rates, the data recovery circuits are much wider bandwidth. This must give better eye patterns and margins if the read rate is throttled.

I have discs that I can never play on a CD player, but I can get a perfect rip using EAC. It takes a while, but it bangs away retrying until it has managed to pull as much good data off the disc as possible. Likewise, I have discs that will play on a CD player, but give rip errors (and they're CDs. not Copy Control discs).

[edit] but if those four machines are what you are comparing to my £15 CDROM drive, then maybe...]

I have 2 players which use computer type drives, a Meridian and a Resolution Audio. Neither play the damaged disc which I used to use to check that sort of thing. Most of my old CD players did. I complained about this to Resolution Audio who said they would fit a new drive. I sent the damaged disc with the machine but they returned the machine with a new copy of the disc, leading me to surmise the new mechanism couldn't read the damaged one either. They made a big thing of how much better high speed computer drives with RAM were than the old drives. It isn't so, I think the drives are just crap so no amount of buffering is enough.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Did a title search here and did not find much discussion.

- Do you still own a dedicated* CD Player (or players)? *plays CDs only Why or why not?
- If yes, what model(s)? Pics would be nice.
- anecdotes about CD playback most welcome
- links to measurements of CD players also welcome

CD is my principle source of music. I mainly use a transport into my amp which has a built in DAC, but I do have lots of CD players too.

 

[Eirikur]

BUT: this CD looked as if it had been grinded with sandpaper. There was not a single blank piece left. Still it played without any noticeable flaws. WOW! Since then know that I don't have to worry about finger prints and scratches.

It's actually the label side you should worry about more, that's where the reflective layer can be damaged.
The laser penetrates the top surface OK as long as nothing too diffractive is present like e.g. many (deep) cuts.

 

[Eirikur]

I have 2 players which use computer type drives, a Meridian and a Resolution Audio. Neither play the damaged disc which I used to use to check that sort of thing. Most of my old CD players did. I complained about this to Resolution Audio who said they would fit a new drive. I sent the damaged disc with the machine but they returned the machine with a new copy of the disc, leading me to surmise the new mechanism couldn't read the damaged one either. They made a big thing of how much better high speed computer drives with RAM were than the old drives. It isn't so, I think the drives are just crap so no amount of buffering is enough.

I think this is a field-of-use issue: for data use (computer) any error is a hard stop as it could be an executable program. This is clearly different from audio use where it is more important to keep going, and best effort real-time recovery is the only "solution" within the confines of the closed silver/black box.
Using a PC-drive for audio purposes could therefore be risky, precisely as you described, unless the CD player manufacturer has some sort of control over the firmware.

 

[DonH56]

Same here with SPDIF out to Classé SIgma SSP. But this is a problem of the AV processor, not of the player! The Marantz AV7701 did not show such behaviour.

Can't speak to the AVR, but the latency with Oppo is on every output. It is less on the analog outputs, not sure about S/PDIF (it is there but I do not know how long). This per my experience (and that of many others) and Oppo tech support (several times over the years). It is built into the MediaTek chip set and nothing Oppo can do about it. How much you (anyone) notice the chopped-of start very much depends upon the CD; many have a bit of a lead-in so it is not noticeable.