A 20 year old CD player against the new ones - Page 2

The difference between old CD players and new ones are the drives.

When CDs first came out in the 1980's, there were 2 kinds of drives: CD-ROM drives and CD-audio drives.  CD-ROM drives were for computers and CD-audio drives were for music players.  In the late 1990's, CD-ROM drives became cheaper than CD-audio drives.  Electronics companies began to use CD-ROM drives instead of the CD-audio drives to save money and to add features to their players.  Manufacturers such as Toshiba and Sony quickly stopped making CD-audio drives due to lack of demand.  Modern CD players (also DVD and Blu-ray players) are simple computers programmed to perform specifics tasks.

I became aware of this almost a decade ago when the major music labels began releasing CDs with copy-protection.  Some players with CD-ROM drives can't play these CDs.  Players with CD-audio don't have this problem because they "ignore" any non-audio data on a CD.  They're designed to play music and nothing else.  I've found that players with CD-audio drives have far superior audio quality to players with CD-ROM drives.  Hang on to that Denon for as long as you can.

X2!

I'm never ever selling my 1990-91 rig

My Arcam cd-73 sounds far better than my vintage sony cdp x229es (I think they are in the same price-range  500 euro vs 1000 DM).

I now use my sony for Transport purpose.

I still have the first CD player I ever owned, a Pioneer PD-5700.  It's a nondescript single disc player that I bought in 1990 or 1991 for between $100 and $200, IIRC.  I used it regularly for the first 10 years or so, then boxed it for a couple of years while I was moving back and forth and living in smaller quarters.  I brought it back into service when I had need of a second CD player. After a couple months it started having trouble reading discs, so I had it serviced.  It's run like a top ever since, and I use it more than the Sony CE-595 in my home theater system because the Pioneer is connected to my Heed CanAmp.  It sounds good to me, but I've neither noticed much difference between digital sources nor put much effort into comparing them.

I've never A/B'd the Pioneer and the Sony because removing the Sony from my main rig and then reinstalling it later would be a hassle, but it was pretty easy to A/B the Sony and the Xbox/Onkyo DAC.  I didn't notice any differences between those two.  I've considered breaking the Sony out for a test not so much because of the age difference but because the Pioneer uses something called 1 Bit DLC (Direct Linear Conversion), which seems like a different approach than 'traditional' DACs.  Does anyone know anything about this?

my early '90s vintage pioneer elite pd-93 is a wonderful player that held it's own against far more expensive players and transport/dac combos for quite a while, sometimes shaming some 'prestigious' brands (eg. more expensive gear that stereophile rated as class A). it's boxed away at the moment and i'm not sure how it compares to current designs but it's not something that disappoints and it's build quality is really something else!

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles 

The nature of human memory (puts on "Psychologist" hat) being what it is, long term listening is *more* likely to be *less* sensitive than quick switching, Tom Nousaine's article "Flying Blind" for instance outlines how long term listeners were unable to detect 2.5% distortion in a black box, whereas in rapid switching tests the difference was reliably detected, to date there really is no verifiable strong evidence for the idea that long term listening is a sensitive method of detecting small differences, nobody (afaik) has ever done any serious long term tests...

 

Ironically, one could test this quite simply. Give a listener two sources and run level matched DBTs when one or both sources is new/unknown to the listener, get a baseline measure of detection, then allow the listener to live with both for an extended period; days, weeks or months and the rerun the DBTs. 

 

If the long term listening is effective then the differences would be detected. Anecdotally my kit sounds different from day to day, it always sounds better for instance when I have finished teaching for the day  and it (hopefully) is not changing in between much. With so much variability caused by human perception I would hesitate to rely on long term memory.

 

 

Realy nice and funny post. Our memory is realy contructed on the run. We can have solid memories of things that did not happen. We know from test we can plant memory on peoples mind.

Well you post makes me wonder if one test could simple be to measure over a long run how long time the equipment was used?