CD Players

Thrift-a-holic

Thrift-a-holic

Hooked for life
So I am migrating over from the Vintage Side of things for some help on digital format. I have a Technics 5 Disc Changer hooked to my vintage set-up, and it dawned on me that all CD players probably aren't built to the same quality standards. Would I see any benefit un moving up to an "Audiophile" grade CD player? Keeping in mind that my receive is Vintage Analog.
 
Register to hide this ad
My personal opinion about CD changers is that they should be avoided in terms of performance. My impression is that you can do much better with a single CDP, which does not to be audiophile grade. I´ve got 5 CDPs (excluding 2 Laser disc players): out of these, the best are a contemporary Cambridge Audio Azur 640 C v2 and a 1991 Denon DCD-1650G, closely followed by a 1993 Cambridge Audio CD 4 SE. All of these players deliver, to my ears, outstanding music reproduction. The moral for me is that you can find very good sounding CDPs that are either modern or vintage, with a wide spread pricing. There is a lot of data in AK of good CDPs. I´ve followed them and got excellent results.

All the best
 
There is a difference between quality of construction and quality of sound. The two do not always go hand in hand. Basically, it is not expensive to make a good sounding CD player, and in fact, the Sensible Sound ran an article some years ago in which people could not hear the difference between a cheap $100 RCA changer and a $1k CD player, when they listened to them level matched and blind (i.e., without knowing what they were hearing). This is not to say that there are never any differences in sound between CD players, but it is generally something where there is far less audible difference than many people imagine. Basically, if the manufacturer puts the player in a heavy metal box with a slab of aluminum for the front panel, people will often believe it sounds better than if they put it in a black plastic box.

Also, the prejudice against CD changers is just that: prejudice. There is absolutely no reason why a CD changer cannot perform equally well as a single disc player. They can use the same transport (when playing) and the same electronics afterwards. Most likely, this prejudice against changers is due to the fact that people have bad associations with changers from the days of record players, in which changers were worse, because stacking another record on top changes the angle of the needle to the record, and there is also slippage between the records, so for them, it was not a good idea. But with CD changers, there is no "stacking" on top of each other, so there is no reason whatsoever for it to perform any worse than a single disc player.
 
Pyrrho said:
Also, the prejudice against CD changers is just that: prejudice.
Click to expand...

There is also a reasoning behind that behavior: a CD changer used to cost the same a single CDP, the manufacturer is not expected to loose money by adding more features to a given model, and one concludes that there has been an effort to minimize costs by reducing the quality of componts, design, etc. It is the same reasoning against double cassette decks when compared with simple ones: very few people state that the first have the same level of performance than the latter. On the other hand, all the CD changers I´ve heard produce a sound similar to CDPs with cheap DACs (Sonys, Pioneers, Denon and Technics are the models I remember). People do hear differences among Dacs, and I´m including myself on that set. It would be pointless to give evidence for this, but it is my personal experience, and, as far as I can tell (e.g. read the opinion of many AKers) of many other people. A typical example involves the tone of strings instruments or some woodwind like oboes or clarinets. My advice is still the same: get rid off those CD changers, and get a single CDP that has been reported favorably my fellow AKers, and you´ll hear better sound quality. Of course, all opinions count the same and this is just my two cents on this!

All the best
 
The most noticeable difference I hear between DACs is how well they handle sibilant consonants - especially those annoying "esss" sounds. The Entech Number Cruncher handles them very well and it was not particularly expensive.

I also like to listen to how well cymbals decay on various DACs and how well it reproduces the attack and decay of each piano note is reproduced assuming it's a good recording.

Very dense choral music, again well recorded, is another good test for your DAC. Can you pick out individual voices or does it just sound like mush.
 
guiller said:
There is also a reasoning behind that behavior: a CD changer used to cost the same a single CDP, the manufacturer is not expected to loose money by adding more features to a given model, and one concludes that there has been an effort to minimize costs by reducing the quality of componts, design, etc. It is the same reasoning against double cassette decks when compared with simple ones: very few people state that the first have the same level of performance than the latter. On the other hand, all the CD changers I´ve heard produce a sound similar to CDPs with cheap DACs (Sonys, Pioneers, Denon and Technics are the models I remember). People do hear differences among Dacs, and I´m including myself on that set. It would be pointless to give evidence for this, but it is my personal experience, and, as far as I can tell (e.g. read the opinion of many AKers) of many other people. A typical example involves the tone of strings instruments or some woodwind like oboes or clarinets. My advice is still the same: get rid off those CD changers, and get a single CDP that has been reported favorably my fellow AKers, and you´ll hear better sound quality. Of course, all opinions count the same and this is just my two cents on this!

All the best
Click to expand...

Setting aside the issue of DACs (if you want, you can always use an outboard one with either a single disc player or a changer, as long as you buy a player with a digital output), it is very, very cheap to put a carousel in a unit to make it into a changer. Very few extra parts are needed for that, and the simplicity of it makes them about as reliable as single disc players. We are not talking about massive amounts of materials or complicated mechanisms that have to be added. So the price difference between a single disc player and a 5 or 6 disc carousel changer, of equal quality, would be very tiny. And if enough more of them are sold, then the price drop due to quantity produced could result in the same actual cost to manufacture.

With double cassette decks, there is twice the mechanism involved, so it is not a good analogy. Double cassette decks must cost significantly more than single cassette decks of equal quality. The mechanism portion would cost twice as much, though, of course, there would be savings in only having to pay for one box, one power cord, etc.

But with a CD changer, there is still only one laser, one transport for playing the disc, etc. With a carousel changer, the only added part is the rotating "wheel" in the door that moves each disc to the transport.
 
Well I bought a Decware tube buffer for my CD player. One of the best moves I ever made. It stopped about 70% of the harshness I had and added much needed space around instruments and vocals. My cd's now have depth. I'm kinda looking for a tube cd player now to see what it can do for the other 30%.
 
My opinion on changers. Not one of them is audiophile quality. They are not built for that purpose and that includes the transport. They also have a nack of suffering from external vibrations. In other words, they tend to skip when the volume goes up. The Sony's are infamous for that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom