When did you start getting Good sound from CDs?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Robin L, Oct 20, 2014.

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  1. DaleH

    DaleH Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southeast
    I guess I did get "good sound" at the beginning. i just looked at the last cd player I bought. Kenwood CDP-7010 from 1989. I had one ea;rly on and I think it was a phillips but don't remember what happened to it. I just gave up before I got great, non fatiguing sound or non headache inducing sound.:)
     
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  2. The FRiNgE

    The FRiNgE Forum Resident

    Yes, by 1989 the DAC's had improved, including conversion in the mastering stage. (from analog sources) The players and discs sounded good! Another milestone was 24 bit, and upsampling from 16 bit to 24 bit before DA conversion, 20 bit mastered discs also tended to sound very nice!
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2014
  3. GuildX700

    GuildX700 Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Currently I've got several CD players in various setups, all of them sound good to outstanding.

    Newest setup I put together a few months ago is a budget Onkyo C-7030 paired with a Teac UD-H01 DAC. I'm really warming up to this pairing, especially considering the price it cost me.

    I have 3 old players currently still in use, all from around the late 1980's.... Sansui CDX711, JVC XL-Z1010 & Pioneer Elite PD-91. I swap them around in various systems throughout the house.

    My main squeeze rig has an outstanding Pioneer Elite PD-S95 transport running into a Musical Fidelity late model M1 DAC, my best digital setup right now.

    I also have a Yamaha CD-C600BL 5-Disc player for the rec room that sounds reasonably decent.

    For now I'm set for digital. Unless something dies out on me.

    Off topic, I do need a turntable for a vintage rig I'm putting together to roughly copy what I had as a kid. I'm looking for a nice Miracord turntable to round out this small system, currently have a Realistic STA 90 receiver from 1976 along with Minimus 2 speakers, not sure if I even want to put a CD player in this rig as it's a bit early for digital for this setup, but...... If I do it would be the Pioneer Elite PD-91.
     
  4. GuildX700

    GuildX700 Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Yup, I think the late 1980's were a real turning point for great sounding CD players becoming more the norm, hence why I have 3 from that era.
     
  5. The Good Guy

    The Good Guy Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Oh really? Did you make one out of tin foil then?
     
  6. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    CD's sounded great to me when I got my first CD player in 1991. It was a portable Fisher CD player and I plugged it into my stereo with an AUX jack. However, at the time I was listening exclusively to classical music, early music, and Christian music like Iona. I didn't discover bad-sounding CD's until I started listening to rock music again.
     
  7. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore Thread Starter

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    Relative to off-topic—vintage rim-drive tables seem to be harder to find in good working condition than vintage belt drive or direct drive tables. You might have better luck with a Pioneer PL 12, common and good.

    I am intrigued by that Onkyo player.
     
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  8. fogalu

    fogalu There is only one Beethoven

    Location:
    Killarney, Ireland
    Around 1990 I bought the Philips CD850 which was their top model back then. It was a bit too good for my amplifier and speakers, but it sounded great.
    I still have it and it's still working perfectly. It has no problem at all with CD-Rs even though I don't think they were available when this machine went on sale.
     
  9. vinylman

    vinylman Senior Member

    Location:
    Leeds, U.K.

    My first good CD player, too. Bought mine secondhand from a workmate (he upgraded to a very expensive one) around the same time for £50.
     
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  10. triple

    triple Senior Member

    Location:
    Zagreb, Croatia
    I got a DX-2 in 1999, when I decided to get serious about stereo. I have been using it ever since, but I did not like it as a straight cd player. Only when it was converted to cd transport duty was that I started loving it.
     
  11. reb

    reb Money Beats Soul

    Location:
    Long Island
    1989
    1995
    2005
     
  12. audioguy3107

    audioguy3107 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Atlanta, Georgia
    As soon as I hooked up the Ayre C-5xeMP SACD/CD player.

    - Buck
     
  13. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Day 1. 1987.
    A top loader Philips CD player.
    Cold, clinical, precise.
    What's not to like. :)
    And .. Hey!
    Fits in your pocket.
     
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  14. dividebytube

    dividebytube Forum Resident

    Location:
    Grand Rapids, MI
    The first time I heard a CD player on my dad's stereo - I believe it was a Magnavox - I got a headache right away and found myself extremely irritated by the music coming out of the speakers. It just sounded BRIGHT and unnatural. I was 16 at the time and I imagine my high-frequency hearing was a lot better than it is now. That early experience colored my impressions of digital music for a long time.

    I didn't buy my own player until the early 90s - a Nakimichi CD Player 4 - that was better, but not great. I eventually got a used Theta D/A Basic convertor that - to my surprise - didn't make much of an impression. Perhaps the rest of my system wasn't good enough at the time. Needless to say I gave up on the format, only owning a few dozen CDs, until the late 90s/early aughts when my interest in digital started to grow. I was drawn to the re-issues coming out and the fact that vinyl was getting harder and harder to find.

    It was a cheap little DAC - the no oversampling DIY Paradise Monica - that I found bearable. Yes, it wasn't very accurate, but it sure was warm and forgiving. After that I built another DIY project from K&K - the RAKK DAC - that uses line transformers in place of the IV converter. ie, the signal output comes directly from the DAC chip with no op-amps or any other device in the way, just a pair of Lundahl transformers. It was. at the time, the best digital sound that I've ever heard. At that stage of the game my record collection was dwindling and I wasn't buying vinyl anymore. Instead it was CD only.

    But then my friend came over with a Rotel RP-900 turntable with an Ortofon 2M Red and a Bottlehead Seduction phono preamp. Plugged into my Threshold FET-10/HL linestage and S/500 amplifier, I wasn't expecting much. Sure the Rotel had a higher noise floor, but listening to an original pressing of Frank Sinatra - Live at the Sands, I was blown away by how real it sounded. It was more emotional and I found myself drawn into the music in a different way than the CD player. With digital I would skip around a lot, listen to a few tracks, and then turn the system off. With the turntable I ended up listening to more music.
     
  15. Brother_Rael

    Brother_Rael Senior Member

    Vice versa for me. Happily gave up vinyl when CD met and far surpassed its capabilities. Both are enjoyable but CD has less distortion, better accuracy and substantially less operational faffing around.

    Great masterings exist aplenty for my music too; rock, classical and so on. If you'll pardon the cliche, it's not even close.
     
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  16. Jonno

    Jonno Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    I will not. :D
     
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  17. Joe P.

    Joe P. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Amsterdam
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  18. apesfan

    apesfan "Going Ape"

    Correct me about this cause im alittle ignorant. I thought that any CD player used as a trasnport would sound the same. It is the DAC that gives it its great sound. John M.
     
  19. rbbert

    rbbert Forum Resident

    Location:
    Reno, NV, USA
    I not only can't relate to this point of view, I don't really even understand it. Anyway, it just goes to show that we all listen for and prioritize different qualities of recorded music.
     
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  20. Before I got back into vinyl.
     
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  21. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore Thread Starter

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    Nope, it's the same as with LP reproduction—everything counts.
     
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  22. Mortsnets

    Mortsnets Forum Resident

    I first started getting reasonably good sound from cds when when I got a Rega Planet. Next a Ah! Tjoeb '99 player with a tube, then a Don Allen modified Magnavox CDC-745, and last by not least a butt ugly grey plastic modified Sony Playstation 1 SCPH-1001!
     
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  23. MrTim

    MrTim Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pacific North West
    [​IMG] 1989 Realistic cd1600
     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2014
  24. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    I've yada yadad about this here before, but the first time I heard the first disc ("Genesis") that my brother bought for his new CDP-101, I thought: Cool! Sounded good to me!
     
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  25. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    First CD player I ever heard was in the electronics department on the second floor of Diamond's department store at Park Central Mall in downtown Phoenix. I think they might have had some sampler CD to demo it with - I recall listening to Billy Joel on the thing, hooked up to a fairly high-end Sony rack system - and being absolutely blown away by the sound. Certainly better than any turntable I'd ever heard, and no fiddling about with cleaning or big fragile discs and whatnot.

    Crisp. Clear. Transparent. No harmonic distortion. No inharmonics for that matter. No rumble. No wow and flutter. Very little to no hiss.

    I was sold. But the player cost about as much as my entire system had, and there weren't many discs available yet. I bided my time.

    Second player I ever got to spend any time with was a Technics at my friend Tegan's, over in Scottsdale. Her parents got it, mostly to play classical - which CD excelled at right from the start. She played some Mozart and Bach on it. They had a nice component system - sounded incredible.
     
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