The Denon is a fabulous disc, but it has a greater spray of spikes on its digitally derived 1kHz tracks (track 18,19 & 49) than either the Philips CD3, Sony YEDs or the CBS CD-1 discs. The absolute numbers may not be much different (same focusrite interface, same CD player -Marantz PMD-325 professional), but the picture sure isn't pretty with the Denon test disc on the 1001Hz track... The other two standard test discs give identical results.
Philips No3 test disc, 997Hz 0dBFS:
View attachment 192582
CBS CD-1 997Hz 0dBFS:
View attachment 192586
Denon Test Disc, Track 49 1001Hz 0dBFS:
View attachment 192587
Considering the Denon track is a digitally derived sine, it has a wide skirt around the fundamental and a bunch of spurious junk. The other two (Philips and CBS) are clean.
What this also shows is the 20 year old Marantz 'Professional' player and the low cost Focusrite A/D front end are giving THD figures virtually the same as what the SA-10 achieved. Notice the THD only numbers are excellent.