Have you ever been pleasantly surprised by an old, not used component you own?

Recently my Oppo 83SE was in for service. (Gotta give Oppo great credit for exceptional customer service) I dug out an old Toshiba DVDA player. It’s a SD 4800 that I haven’t used for well over ten years. No HDMI. Not so great a picture. The DVDA playback was very good. What shocked me though was it’s performance with red book CDs. This old player sounds terrific. It’s not quite as good to my ears as the Oppo 83SE but’s it’s very, very close. No way is this Toshiba a high performance unit but it sounds great. Just a nice surprise. Decided to keep it in my system along side the Oppo. It doesn’t seem right to chuck it back up in the closet.

 

My Sony TC-WE475 cassette deck, which was carefully stored away a number of years ago. Took it out and set it up with the Yamaha RX-496 receiver I bought at Salvation Army for $18, and it sounded great, even on commercial tapes. I have about 50 of those from back in the 70s-90s, not to mention a couple hundred mix tapes we made back then.

 

I've been using Toshiba DVD players for years as rebook players as they do sound very nice. Better than any CD players I've had in the past

 

I recall that back in the early 2000’s reading on line that Toshiba DVD players got high marks for sound quality

 

My Nakamichi cassette deck still surprises me.

 

tu-717, but I use it.