Ancient CDP any good?

[tourmaline]

Originally Posted by 1UP

Nobody can make generalisations that technical improvements correlate to better sound. Look at vinyl.

People are still using vinyl. People are still playing early-gen CDPs. People are still using amps and speakers designed over 20 years ago.

Don't know your CDP so can't say if a $200 unit will beat it. However, most certainly audiophile soundcards will piss all over your Soundblaster.

if the design is right, then the component can be timeless....even some high end manufacturers tried to best their former top end amps and failed. Some design are so good, you cannot improve on them...

If you get a good older cdp, that was at least in the top segment, you can bet on it that it still can compete with most of the cdplayers out there.

Remember the NOS dacs and cdplayers, they are timeless.....no oversampling....

[facelvega]

dac chips have improved their technical precision considerably in the last twenty years, but output stages, which are at least as important to the sound of the source, haven't changed so much. There are a few well-regarded DACs still in production with relatively ancient dac chips.

[Bones13]

My Sony CDP-102 from the mid '80s continues service in one of my home systems. No digital out, but really smooth analog sound. I don't think its as good as the newer, better DACs =/- output stages, but its been a workhorse for 30 years.

It started having troubles with the machine some years back, some strange noises and some skipping. After I had replaced it, before throwing it out, I decided to pop the hood. I found a CD which had jumped out of the transport mechanism inside the box, jamming the down-weight for the CD spinning. I removed the CD (or 2?) and the thing worked perfectly again.

[Budgie]

Keep the player. New Phones will make the biggest differance.