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My surprising test results: high end 80s CD player vs modern low end DVD player

From my view the Denon DCD 3560, a 20bit Player, is just one underated CD-Player from 1990!
I use it since early 90th, and must say I take no care of another
CD- or any other DVD/SACD Player cause its sound is very satisfiying!
Some mods in the early 2000th: build in a low jitter clock and got a compl. re-capping and new Laser.
After that I had a normal secondhand DCD3560 for comparission, and the mods of my 3560 seems very obvious and serious, it opend up space in both ways and had became deeper stronger bass and some sweeter highs.
 
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Whoever bumped this thread, I thank you.

Interesting.

Well, I have a lot of CD and DVD players laying around. I'm not much into CD's any more.

After reading this, I tested my 1988 Sony CD player with my Zenith High Def DVD/CD player that I bought a few years ago. I was surprised the Sony still worked, since I had not had a CD in it in probably over 15 years.

Yes, the Zenith sounds better to me.

Also compared the Sony to a few APEX DVD/CD players I bought about 10 years ago for all the TV's. They also outperform the Sony, IMO.

Interesting. I pulled the manual and receipt from the Sony purchase. I paid $279, in 1988 dollars.

I paid about $79 for the Zenith High Def DVD/CD and $49 for the Apex players, many years later.
Go figure.
 
I have a Realistic (Radio Shack) 6-Disc CD Changer Model CD-6000 from 1988 that I bought for $10 at the thrift store and I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the way it sounds, and to be honest I don't think I've ever heard anything come from my CD like what the OP says he's heard come from his "test subjects".

I've only heard pleasant true to life audio come out of mine.
Although I wouldn't use 3 consecutive discs worth of "head banger" music as the test subject music though either like the OP did because you're just asking for trouble and also there's no variety.
So of course a CD Player is gonna sound bad if you run 3 CDs from the same genre back to back on all three CD players without a break in between for "cool down time" for your ears.

Think about it this way, "sampling" CD Players or other audio equipment is just like sampling different types of Chili, if you don't cleanse your palete in between chili samples, then it all starts tasting the same.
The same can be said with audio equipment, if you don't take a break from listening to music on one piece of audio equipment, then when you go to listen to the next piece of audio equipment your sense of hearing is going to be numb to the subtle differences and nuances in the next piece of equipment.

So really I think this "experiment" is bust because the OP didn't even follow the proper rules set out for conducting experiments, and secondly he made the mistake of not using more variety in his music selection which if he would of done that I'm sure he would of gotten much different results than he did.

Because if you ask me how does one expect to be able to determine one way or the other if one CD Player sounded better than the other when your hearing has been blasted for 30-60 minutes straight with headbanger music turned up to half volume?
You don't, that's the problem your ears would be ringing and more than likely your hearing would be "numb" and because of that one would think that 3 CD players played back to back 3 hours straight with "head banger" music would "all sound the same" and at that they would probably sound pretty bad because your hearing wouldn't be at its best each time.

I'll admit that probably the reason why my CD Player (and stereo at that) sounds as good as it does is because I'm not cranking it up practically full blast and listening to "head banger" music on it all the time like some of you people on here do.
But then again, I don't wanna be wearing hearing aids when I'm in my 40s and 50s though either, or in the extreme case a Cochlear Implant.

Hmm, so how many of you on here are actually using your original ears that God gave you? :scratch2:
 
People will hear things differently, but that is to be expected. I think it might be worthwhile if someone had high and low end DVD or CD players made within the past 10 years to post results of head to head compairisons of just those units to see in part if there is any appreciable difference.

on thing I do know after poring over many application notes and data sheets for other IC's on things as mundane as some of the function IC's on the logic board of LCD monitors and TV's, and it is not any surprise that many of the IC's made 2 to 5 years ago are superceded at least once in that time span. I am sure the same is true and has been true on the DVD players.

While I do have Sony 5 disc changer and some psare parts for it, I have found that even a lowly 30 dollar Apex DVD player from Wallmart and other retailers has at least as good sound reproduction (thanks to economies of scale and just better choices by manufacturers) but also has the added benefit it can play MP3 formatted audio files. Plus- you can dump the MP3's on the disk as you would data, and you end up with 6 to 8 hours of music play time. More with a DVD disk loaded as data files.

Though not all inexpensive DVD players will do this.Those made after about 2007 should.

While it would be cruel to a kid to load a DVD with 10 hours of one song with a video on it: There is a video on Youtube that is 10 hours in length (the person who edited it together did a good job, but they had to be on somethng recreational at the time. if you load in the Youtube search "Girls und Panzers" (or was it "Girls mit Panzers"...?) There is a 10 hour version up there, a little over a gig in size, and it may be small enough to format to a DVD, but I only mention this for those looking for a way to keep kids occupied.

But with all that said, it is no surprise that low end DVD players have comparable or better sound than most of the first or second generation of CD players. This is more the result of economies of scale and just improved manufacturing methods.
 
I hooked up a very cheap dvd player from 2005 to a adcom 5400 and it sounded bad. My 1989 SonyES Single tray cd player had a tray issue til last night. Now it seems to be working. So I was thinking about buying a new cd player, like a Marantz. $300 to$ 500. I have a MB2 nakamichi that works great from probably 1994? But that's on my upstairs system. So would you guys buy a new cd player ? or DVD.
 
It is hard to imagine anything sounding better than my Yamaha CDHD-1000 that I am using. I have a Phillips DVD around somewhere...Guess I know what I will be doing this evening.:yes:
 
So if we are going high end used , dvd rather than cd. or in that case a new blu ray player is cheap. Yes , No?
 
70GTO said:
So if we are going high end used , dvd rather than cd. or in that case a new blu ray player is cheap. Yes , No?
Click to expand...

I got hold of a 5 years old Sony Blu-Ray player from my local thrift store last week, i have since given it to my daughter as we dont have a HD capable TV, but i tried it out with a few CD's and was not impressed, don't get me wrong it was OK but rather sterile, a look inside and i discovered the audio was taken care of by 3 Burr Brown (TI Now ) DAC's.

I updated the firmware and gave it to my daughter.
 
captainclock said:
I wouldn't use 3 consecutive discs worth of "head banger" music as the test subject music
Click to expand...

I would wonder if Jean-Luc Ponty has ever heard his music described as "head banger" music!

Although I've seen those young hoodlums hanging about with their leather and black Motorhead and Jean-Luc Ponty Tshirts.

Kidding aside, I agree, I thought the test recordings were not so well chosen.
 
My digital rig isn't so bad, consisting of a PS Audio Lambda transport and a Sony DAS-702es DAC. Both are big and heavy, and were expensive back in the day. The other day, I acquired a Sansui Blu-Ray player, and the CD playback is almost beyond excellent. The transport and DAC may show up for sale at the next Twangfest...
 
One must remember that usually the DVD player, or Blu ray player actually have a seperate laser for the CD disks. So there is likely going to be some differences in CD playback sound quality, even among just Blu Ray players.

But the question may be where the date cutoff or where differences in audio quality become notable. After all some, of the manufacturers may have given backward compatibility just token attention to try cater to a small percentage of potential owners. After all, when the CD players began to take off after introduction, I came into a lot of vinyl as a result. Most of it is gone, but some people dive in and leave the "old tech" behind and never look back.
 
My experience was my Sony ES 79cdp sounded better than my Sony PS3 when playing CDs, but my newer Rotel 1072 cdp sounds better than both of them.
 
Good to know, I am getting ready to run my accuphase with the sony es cd player, both have been down for a while. Redoing sound room.
 
My experiences have been at variance with the general run of opinion in this thread. I've tried running a number of DVD (Panasonic, two Sonys, a Pioneer and a Philips) players in my system and was pretty disgusted by the results across the board. I recently picked up a Pioneer Elite Dv-C36 so we shall see if once I get it to play CDs it sounds any better. My Sony 608ESD, Denon DCD 1550 and Nak OMS-7 all sound much better by far. The DVD players all had varying degrees of unreality in their presentation, some iffy tonal balance in a couple (especially the Pioneer, it was here a day and returned) and extremely flat presentation. All but the Pioneer sound fine with movies, but none are listenable for any length of time playing music (especially classical) except at background music levels.
 
Alkeys said:
To those of you trying to decide which is better to use as a budget CD player- a cheap modern DVD player or a high end CD player from the 80s, I hope this helps you.


Now this all started because I got rid of my Sony DVD player I was using as a CD player, and exchanged it for a used older high end CD player thinking I'd get better results- boy was I wrong.

So we all know that if you've got $100 to spend on a amplifier/receiver you're better off spending the $100 on a used old discrete solid state amplifier/receiver from the 70s and 80s than a brand new cheap one for that same $100. So what about CD players? I have often asked myself this question.

So would you be better off buying a used CD player that is heavy, has awesome build quality, perhaps it was TOTL back in the 80s sometime, or are you better off taking that money to a box store and buying the $88 DVD player that also plays CDs and using that?

Well my results surprised even me. I asked a few people who I know and they said that you'd be better off with the old player. This is what I expected too. Before I did this test I was expecting my CDs to sound way better on the older high end CD players.

To my surprise, I found all this to be wrong.

Amplifier in my test: (2 systems)
Kenwood Receiver KR4140
Kenwood basic M1 power amp with NAD 1155 Preamp

Speakers:
Energy C2 Speakers.

3 high end CD Players from back in the day I used as a test:
Sony CDP-302 from mid 80s.
NEC CD-810 from late 80s.
Denon DCM-1300 from late 80s.

1 humble modern DVD/VCR combo player that costs about 50 bucks from Panasonic.


My test material were 3 CDs- 80s heavy metal CD by a german band called Accept, instrumental Jean Luc Ponty CD and 1 more modern electro-pop CD by a band called Empire of the Sun.
I got the same results on all 3 CDs.

Well I hooked up the high end CD players, one after the other from the 80s and they were loud, gritty, digital and harsh, with a forward-in your face with digital artifacts and aliasing noticeable. The sound of kick drums felt like they were poking my eardrums. To be honest, they hurt my ears and were not pleasant to listen to. Then I was so frustrated that I went into the bedroom, yanked the Panasonic DVD/VCR combo unit that I have, hooked it up to my receiver and the sound was to my surprise, much more round. Gone was the harsh highs, there was more bass and I was treated to a less fatiguing sound.

Before I did this test, I was expecting that the older high end players would sound better, warmer, less harsh etc... The only thing the older players did was sound a tad louder. Other than that in every way, the old high end players were way worse than the modern crappy little VCR/DVD combo unit I tried.

In conclusion, My guess is that DACs have come a long way since 1985 and my tests prove to myself that even the crappiest modern DACs on a $50 DVD/VCR combo player sound better than the high end 80s DACs of yesteryear in these players. I was really disappointed in my findings and found the exact opposite of what I thought I'd find.

I really admire the design and construction of the 80s Japanese players and normally I'll gladly throw money at 70s and 80s Japanese electronics all day long but not in this case. Now I'm sure if you spend a lot of money and buy a NEW/MODERN high end CD player, that will sound better yet, but for those on a budget like me who can't spend $500+ dollars on a CD Player and have to settle for spending $100 on either a high end used player from the 80s or a cheap modern DVD player, I’ll from now on go the DVD player route.
Click to expand...

Here's my own experience: I found the sound of my old $200 Technics CD player (early 90s) to sound better than my $1,200 Denon CD player (mid 80s).
The Technics (Mash) weighs about 6 pounds, and the Denon (1500 MKII) weighs about 18 pounds.

And I prefer even more the sound of my $100 Sony DVD player (late 2000s) over both of the above, even over the Technics one.
The Sony (775) weighs about 3 pounds.

EDIT: Wow, I replied to an older post (2009).
 
For me, cheap and flimsy DVD players have beaten my old (now gone) 80's/90's CD players from the past - very easily. I got into the Toshiba SD3950 and 4000 threads and found some truth there. Did a few mods even. Nowadays I use an early 2000's that in it's day was a high dollar/high resolution DVD player as transport combined with outboard DAC. It's better sounding than the cheapie Toshiba's that weight about 2 lbs but not by a lot.
 
I have to say I am surprised at some of the responses in favour of new cheap DVD/CD out performing classic cd players of the 80's.

When I got back into to audio in June 2011 and from lurking in AK I discovered separate DAC's existed. Not a lover of digital sound but a lover of its convenience. I thought what a great and cheap option to up-grade my 4 Sony 400cd and 300cd carousel players. A sound I had always found harsh and fatiguing.

I promptly went out and bought a Cambridge DAC Magic new for about $400. Seeing how the cd players cost about $700 I thought by spending more than half on the primary sound reproduction component (link in the chain) I should hear an improvement.

Yes it was better but no OMG moment. Rest of the system Denon PMA1500 and Jamo D590's and Infinity Kappa 7 with quality cabling.

Again, reading the appreciation of vintage cd players on AK I decided to find out for myself what the fuss was all about so I bought in very good condition a Sony CDP-101. The difference was night and day. The Sony 101 was warm and most of all musical. No harsh brittle fatiguing noise. Yes I could hear some of its limitations at the extreams of the top end and bottom end roll-off, some slight processing problems on really complex music but the sound was so engaging.

I am still to re-tackle the issue of the DAC for the Sony stackers which I will get around to at some stage. However, I think I will go and buy a cd DVD player and hear for myself. But I would have thought the DAC Magic was new modern DAC that more than exceed the quality in a $39 DVD player.

A different experience to many of you. :thmbsp:
 
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