I owned a Marantz CD94 heavily modified for many years, sold it when the Sony XA5400ES arrived back in 2009, now find Sony BDP-X1000ES sounds just as good .
Beautiful! Were those called 'swing arm' mechanisms? My Magnavox has one, thing is playing music before the tray is even closed
Funny, I was in a thrift shop over the weekend and spotted a Magnavox CDB 470. This was a TDA1543 chip, although rumor has it some of the early ones were in fact TDA1541. Both chips are similar, and each has its legion of adherents. IIRC, this player has no digital filtering. Apparently all 1988/89 Philps models go straight out of the 7210 into a 1541/1543, no digital filter - see link: https://www.audioasylum.com/audio/digital/messages/9/94180.html I got home and plugged it in. The swing arm mechanism is simply a marvel. Still works flawlessly and silently. The sound is so smooth and relaxed. Does it reveal like my thousands more costly Lampizator DSD DAC? Who cares. To me that's become a silly game I don't care to play anymore. We had a beautiful spring evening and I opened the windows and enjoyed music for hours.
Does anyone know if the Acoustic Research CD-04 has this revered chipset? "Acoustic Research (Teledyne) When AR introduced the "Black Line" in the mid 80's it had one CD player in the lineup in the form of the CD-04, it featured the Philips 14bit 4x oversampling converters rather than a 16 bit one since the engineers at the company thought they sounded better than the 16 bit ones available at the time (and they were probably right, but this was an unusual design choice). The unit also had a separate converter for each channel." Shameless plug, there's one for sale in the classifieds .
The 14 bit DAC was not an unusual choice for a first generation player. Pretty much all of the European-based players used the Phillips 4X oversampled 14 bit DACs until Phillips came out with their own 16 bit DAC chip. The first gen Japanese players were almost all based around a Sony 16 bit non-oversampled chip with sounded only slightly more pleasant than listening to a circular-saw they sounded so harsh. I think that Yamaha was the first to use a 2X oversampled 16 bit DAC which sounded significantly better as I recall.
Sony is known to be a chip producer for a long time though it is not clear if it makes its own DAC's. Which US company has been the traditional producer of these DAC's? Is it Texas Instruments or Analog Devices?
When I worked at a stereo shop in the late 80's, we had a Bang & Olufsen CDX that we used for deomo purposes. It was by far the best sounding CD player in the store at the time, even against other B&O players. Info at BeoWorld: "The electronics design largely follows the familiar Philips circuit with 4 times oversampling conversion using a separate 14-bit DAC for each channel."
I could be wrong that Sony made these original DACs. But for whatever reason all of the Japanese manufacturers used the exact same DACs in their first gen players.
Meridian did the exact same thing back then. IMO this approach was the first genuine advancement in digital playback, and one of these Meridian players was the first time that I ever heard a CD sound half-way decent. Although I'm not sure whether such players are considered to be first gen, or second gen.
The first and second gen CDP's had the best build quality. as the chassis and CD trays were both metal ...
I know it is unwise to use a heat element like a hair dryer or toaster rated at 100V from Japan in the USA with its 110-120V mains. BUT? Is it okay to use a Japan/Australia 100V CD player in a US 110-120V? My Sony CDP-337ESD reads "100V" on the back and NOT 100V-120V like some do. Somebody STOP me! I now have the following: Nakamichi CDP-2A Nakamichi CDC-3 Nakamichi CDC-3A Philips CD-960 Sony CDP-337ESD (the one with a 100V rating) and on the way Marantz CD94 (not a mkII, unfortunately) and I am STILL looking to get a Philips CD-880 when a good one pops up, and probably a Marantz CD94 mkII as well. Hey, when CDs become cool again like LPs are now, I will have a cool collection of top vintage players in my arsenal.
At some point, people would think streaming is uncool. Who would have thought 20 years ago vinyl would become cool again ...
I still use a Philips CD80...but these days only as a transport unit. I use the EAD 7000 Mk3 DAC with it...pretty good sound. So much so, that a fellow a'phile who visited a few weeks back was convinced that it would compete against some of the better digital gear, even today! The CD80 is built like a brick house.
