Vintage CD players

[Dr. Music]

I'm not sure, but doesn't that require an external DAC? Or does the DII designation mean it has a DAC inboard?

Hey Damage - Lorne seems to have the info. Heres the info I'm getting from online sources:

The CDP-552ESD was sold in the US as a CDP-650ESD. The upgraded version (CDP-650ESDII, aka CDP-552-ESDII in Europe) had an encapsulated PT, added headphones socket but the same DACs. I believe this revised version to be named CDP-553ESD in Japan (without the back switch, "accessory" connector or play mode switch).

So I'm taking this to say that there is an inboard DAC unit.

 

[lorne]

From what I'm seeing in pictures of the innards of this grand old beast it does indeed seem to boast two outboard transformers. Having just taken a college class in electricity, that should make for a formidable amount of lines of flux creation! In regards to the mods that can be preformed on the board, I'm not at a level where I'm confident to make all of the improvements possible yet but my best friend is a career electronics whiz and I figure for a case of Bud those changes can be had.

(1) Slip us an URL where we can see the innards. I gotta see!

(2) Flux? If, like the CDP-555ESD, the X-formers are in metal boxes and are bolted to the metal bulkhead, it is one way to shield the transport from RF. I dunno about flux. Generally, twin X-formers were/are a way to dedicate supply — (a) to the transport, and (b) to the signal board. This was done in an effort to reduce jitter. The voltage coming off the secondary windings would be a lot different from each other. Whatever they are doing back there has to be better than sticking them nude inside the chassis — or rather it simplifies things and is one solution. Yamaha put theirs inside and made a very neat job of "canning" them in aluminum in the CDX series. My Sony 333ES cassette deck has an outboard mounted and "canned" X-former, albeit in steel.

(3) Changing out caps is NOT a modification. It is a refreshment of the original circuit if you retain the original values. In most cases, retaining those values should not be very difficult if you access the online supply houses among whom are some of our sponsors. There are hundreds of pages in AK on the subject of electrolytic capacitors and their life spans. You can look them up. What is important here concerns the effectiveness of the power supply section of your CDP. Sure, I could say change all of 'em throughout the player. But, I am trying to be modest here. I believe that changing out just a few caps in the power supply will ensure the optimum performance for the least effort and expense. And I believe that if your friend is proficient with the process of desoldering and soldering, then he/she can do an excellent deed in a couple of hours. Get the shop manual!

 

[TAGO MAGO]

I have had a Denon from the 80's and used it until I wore it out. I currently have a Magnavox CDB-465 in the bedroom from the mid-80's which still fighting the good fight and a Pioneer PD-X88 in my office which is nothing special, but built like a tank.

 

[TAGO MAGO]

I've searched around for a CD repair thread and this is the closest I could find, so please redirect me if there is a better place...
I just got an NAD 5325 CD player by UPS - not well packed, and without the three transport screws. I was told it was shipped in working order, but now it will not find the CD. It shows '1' briefly on display, then 'dIsc'. (It was an Xmas gift to myself do it was a bit of a blow).What might have happened? Is it likely to be :
1. adjustment?
2. broken part?
3. forget it ?

thanks!

I have a NAD changer and it is a bit of a dog. It sounds great on the rare occasion that it works properly. It looks cool, it's nice when it works, but I am convinced that British Leyland must have gotten into the audio business.

 

[BrocLuno]

I did OK at the local Cancer Thrift on Christmas eve when out doing some last minute pick-ups for the company - snagged a Sony CDP 550 for $5. Listening to it right now - :scratch2:

Then I decide why not do some A-B-C testing? I have been running an older Magnavox CDB S60 compact disk player on my vinyl preview system It was an $8 thrift store pick-up. Always sounded pretty good to me. Not up to that standards of the Sony DVP NS725P down stairs in the HT system, but good enough to have displaced a Kyocera CX-310 long ago.

To make it all fair, I put on my Alesandro MS-1 phones and did (and am doing) the listening. I want to hear details and tonal values. Sort of a real critical test. By the way, this is being all fed through an HH Scott 355R receiver that was overhauled last year and is running better than factory spec.

So I hook the Sony up and drop in the CD sound track from "The Departed". It has a good mix of music and starts with Pink Floyd/Van Morrison/the Band doing "Comfortably Numb". It goes on through the Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, Roy Buchanon, Allman Bros, etc. Has OK production values and not too over-compressed. I'm listening away and it sounds a bit harsh :nono: I go through four of five tracks and decide I'm not happy

OK, back goes the Magnavox. Better, not great, but the same old "it's OK for as seldom as I play CDs on this system" sort of sound. The harshness and slightly bright sound is gone, but it ain't very involving.

Anyway, last year I bought an Onkyo SP404s all disk DVD Player as an addition to my (future) R2R system. It has a Burr-Brown DAC and it is 192 KHz with oversampling & upsampling. I had never heard it, but it had good reviews and was cheap enough at around $150 shipped. So I hook it up as the third piece in the test. By the time we get to Allman Bros, I'm hooked. Is it a killer sound? It is MUCH better. Smoother and more involving with noticeably better detail. Sort of make CDs actually listenable

OK, so what does this prove? Well to me it says that old just can't keep up. The technologies have come a long way and that's all there is to that. Vintage CDPs are relegated to the garage systems. Sorry, but there is a reason these are in the thrifts even though they still play fine

 

[guiller]

Sorry, but there is a reason these are in the thrifts even though they still play fine

My opnion is that this cannot be a general conclusion. It could be applied, at most, to the models you tried. I recently bought a new Cambridge Audio 640 C v2, much praised here and elsewere, and it sounds great, but cannot match the sound of my Denon DCD-1650G of 1991. That Denon was a top unit in its day, and the 4 d/a processors are the same featured in Accuphase models. No external DAC I´ve ever tried (in the less than 600 USD range) could ever displaced the quality of sound of those venerable dacs. I bought the Cambridge Audio (with dual Wolfson dacs) with the idea of finally replacing the Denon, but things didn´t came up that way. The bottom of the line of my observation is that some top vintage models still deliver quality above more average, but updated gear. At least, these are my two cents on this.

 

[Dr. Music]

(1) Slip us an URL where we can see the innards. I gotta see!

I believe that if your friend is proficient with the process of desoldering and soldering, then he/she can do an excellent deed in a couple of hours. Get the shop manual!

Heres a URL with a small pic......

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=180315647880


Will be able to take my own pics when the sucker gets here but with holiday hours and mail, that might be anywhere from a week to two weeks. I figure tis best to be conservative in my expectations at the moment so if it shows early I'll be pleasantly surprised! No affiliation the the 'bay, of course.

I've been hunting about for a shop manual but have come up short so far. My pal is in Rio for the next few weeks.... lucky dog that he is!...... so I will have to woo him with beer on his return!

There is a local college area shop that sells CDs here locally, and the owner has turned half of the store into a vintage audio sales store as well, where he sells some beautiful old pieces for exorbitant prices. Not to say they aren't worth what he sells for, but good deals are far and few between. Anyway, I spied a lovely Sony XA7ES CDP without a price tag and asked him for a price; it wasn't for sale as he told me one channel was out and he was keeping it for repair. He also had a Denon 910 I was interested in, but it was going home with him as most of his stock was changers and he wanted a single disc players at home. Talk about being taunted... a store where the components aren't for sale!

 

[Tinman]

Heres a URL with a small pic......

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=180315647880


Will be able to take my own pics when the sucker gets here but with holiday hours and mail, that might be anywhere from a week to two weeks. I figure tis best to be conservative in my expectations at the moment so if it shows early I'll be pleasantly surprised! No affiliation the the 'bay, of course.

I've been hunting about for a shop manual but have come up short so far. My pal is in Rio for the next few weeks.... lucky dog that he is!...... so I will have to woo him with beer on his return!

Hey! I have one of these! It's a great player. Mine was dead when I got it. It turned out that after much troubleshooting ( I have the SM in PDF, btw.) that the whole problem was a drop of goop they used to hold down a wire. Said goop becomes conductive over the years and stopped the master clock. Removing said goop restored the player. Linear motor for the pickup, cable drive, I believe for the tray... great unit. Although it won't displace my Studer A727 anytime soon.
But hey, the price was right.... Yep... free. Sorry.

 

[treserious]

I have an old Marantz CD-45 which I find to be a very nice player, with a Digital out.
I also had a Mission PCM-7000 with a digital out that was a very competent player.

both of these players, used with a decent DAC will sound better than most players made today.


I do however agree that new players are far superior to the old, just in the fact that the DACs and OPamp technologies have come a long way in the last 24 years.

you are going to pay through the nose for a new player with similar build quality as the old players.

 

[Dr. Music]

Hey! I have one of these! It's a great player. Mine was dead when I got it. It turned out that after much troubleshooting ( I have the SM in PDF, btw.) that the whole problem was a drop of goop they used to hold down a wire. Said goop becomes conductive over the years and stopped the master clock. Removing said goop restored the player. Linear motor for the pickup, cable drive, I believe for the tray... great unit. Although it won't displace my Studer A727 anytime soon.
But hey, the price was right.... Yep... free. Sorry.

Yo Tinman! Lets be pals my friend . Would greatly appreciate that SM!

Hey, if you got a dead unit for free and took the time to give it the care it needed rather than see it die an ignominious death, how can I be (too) jealous of the price you (didn't) pay?

 

[darko]

Philips 303

thats a Winner!

Replaced all Lytics and a Few Poly^s.
Also new Cables and better Output Interference Ceramics.

Sound very nice with Marantz 2285, Tannoy Little Red Monitors.
( ok, the Tannoys are a bit "straight" )

Cheers,
:yes:

 

[Tinman]

Yo Tinman! Lets be pals my friend . Would greatly appreciate that SM!

Hey, if you got a dead unit for free and took the time to give it the care it needed rather than see it die an ignominious death, how can I be (too) jealous of the price you (didn't) pay?

That's funny! I'm pals with a lot of people because I have a truck, too!

But sure, PM me your email.

BTW, when you receive the player, remove the bottom and post a pic. I want to see if they put the same wire and goo in yours. If so, you should delete the goo.

 

[lorne]

Hi Troubleshoot: Thanks. I went to eBay and looked at the pics. Very nice. Reminds me a bit of my Kenwood 990SG. (I wanted to use it as a transport, but it needs a pickup that goes for $150 -$200.) But the Sony is nicer in some ways. Copper plated chassis! Gotta love that. On the upper right, there is the big but nude transformer. But let's not forget that it is shielded from the signal board by copper plated bulkheads! The sled has at least a metal sub-frame. The processing and servo sections on the lower left and the analog board on the upper right seem to have their own filter caps and voltage regulation. Very cool! And the heat sinks for the regulators look to be copper like in my Sansui alpha607i. (Copper prices at that time were through the roof.) And curiously — unless it is a choke? — there seems to be another transformer on the upper right. And if that is what it is, then it is supplying low voltage for the processor and analog sections. As soon as you get yours at the door, you'll know it the instant you pull the hood. The big black caps are proabably Elna for Audio caps and the red ones are probably Elna Cerafines.

Now for the mystifying part: The hump on the back has the SPDIF transmission on an RCA plug. What all else is in that hump I can't imagine. I can barely make it out due to the resolution, but there may be a switch in the right side of the hump. This switch would be used to short a signal to ground with an impedance of 75 Ohms. This load would be switched 'ON' in the event that the internal DAC is being used. In budget machines, we fabricate a shorting plug by using male RCA plug and a 75 Ohm resistor. (Something to remember when A/B testing CDP's).

So why is this port it on the LEFT? Usually it's on the right. Data is read off the disk on the transport section, bussed over to the processor and then off to the DAC for analog conversion. Usually you can expect to find op-amps, muting transistors and coupling caps along the way out to analog OUT.

So what is happening here? Is there cable routing under the boards and through the bulkheads that we can't see? Or was this earliest provision for digital signal OUT expecting an entire signal processor at the other end — not the combination of receiver and DAC that we have today. And the processor must be on the underside of the board right?

I'm fumbling here. I hope that an expert will jump in. I may have interpreted some things incorrectly, and there are things I don't understand about this machine. Nice machine no matter what it's doing!

 

[Tinman]

On the picture, the top right board is the audio board with the 2 dacs and it's own power regulators, etc. The bottom right is the CPU/Servo board. Also with it's own regulators etc.

The master clock that runs the whole player is actually generated on the Audio/Dac board and distributed via a coax to the CPU/Servo.

Yes, there are some cables running underneath as well. At least on mine there are.

It's a well built player, excellent caps and a ton of copper. I think this one has the digital board in the can in the back. Mine has the digital board on top of the CPU/servo and cables running to the back to a smaller can housing the on/off switch to the digital out port.

 

[Dr. Music]

That's funny! I'm pals with a lot of people because I have a truck, too!

But sure, PM me your email.

BTW, when you receive the player, remove the bottom and post a pic. I want to see if they put the same wire and goo in yours. If so, you should delete the goo.

Don't feel like the lone ranger on the truck friends.... I have my own truck buddies since I drive an F-150:scratch2:

Will PM with addy and post a pic when the sucker arrives

 

[Dr. Music]

I'm fumbling here. I hope that an expert will jump in. I may have interpreted some things incorrectly, and there are things I don't understand about this machine. Nice machine no matter what it's doing!

Lorne- once this baby shows up I'll pull out the screwdrivers and camera..... we will investigate with bigger and better resolution as well as more angles! My Google efforts have been pretty pathetic in regards to this wee beast.....

 

[guiller]

Here there is the High Fidelity magazine test report on the Onkyo DX-G10 of March 1988:

http://depositfiles.com/files/sl2utlas1
or
http://www.megaupload.com/es/?d=WJ7ZYQXE


All the best

 

[guiller]

Here there is a scanned High Fidelity magazine test report (from May 1989) on the Denon DCD-3520 CDP:

http://depositfiles.com/files/edygjihjk
or
http://www.megaupload.com/es/?d=56UMOYTK


All the best

 

[BrocLuno]

My opnion is that this cannot be a general conclusion. It could be applied, at most, to the models you tried. I recently bought a new Cambridge Audio 640 C v2, much praised here and elsewhere, and it sounds great, but cannot match the sound of my Denon DCD-1650G of 1991. That Denon was a top unit in its day, and the 4 d/a processors are the same featured in Accuphase models. No external DAC I´ve ever tried (in the less than 600 USD range) could ever displaced the quality of sound of those venerable dacs. I bought the Cambridge Audio (with dual Wolfson dacs) with the idea of finally replacing the Denon, but things didn´t came up that way. The bottom of the line of my observation is that some top vintage models still deliver quality above more average, but updated gear. At least, these are my two cents on this.

I quite agree that SOME top of the line older units may be able to hold their own. Glad you have yours

But those units are not being sold at the thrifts or on CL as far as I can see? Too scarce I guess. My comments are about average units found at garage sales, CL and the thrifts

 

[guiller]

But those units are not being sold at the thrifts or on CL as far as I can see? Too scarce I guess. My comments are about average units found at garage sales, CL and the thrifts

Hi BrocLuno:

We completely agree on this! I just wanted to make room for the exceptional cases, not covered in a general statement. As a matter of fact, I´m still surprised about the way my Denon holds up against the weight of aiging.

All the best