What is an audiophile CD player?

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#44
LOL
The difference between a normal competent CD player and an audiophile player is;
a load of seductive marketing prose involving some reference to quantum, a linear power supply because we all know SMPS's are the work of the devil, a sub femtosecond jitter clock remote from where it needs to be and connected by some long wires adding impedance mismatches.
Oh and a ridiculously inflated price and preferably some valves somewhere.....
 
#45
marce said:
The difference between a normal competent CD player and an audiophile player is;

a load of seductive marketing prose involving some reference to quantum, a linear power supply because we all know SMPS's are the work of the devil, a sub femtosecond jitter clock remote from where it needs to be and connected by some long wires adding impedance mismatches.
Oh and a ridiculously inflated price and preferably some valves somewhere.....
Click to expand...

For daring to write this, you will be tarred and feathered in a medieval act of retribution. May the Force be with you.
 
#46
marce said:
LOL
The difference between a normal competent CD player and an audiophile player is;
a load of seductive marketing prose involving some reference to quantum, a linear power supply because we all know SMPS's are the work of the devil, a sub femtosecond jitter clock remote from where it needs to be and connected by some long wires adding impedance mismatches.
Oh and a ridiculously inflated price and preferably some valves somewhere.....
Click to expand...

Obviously written by someone who is proud of his £100 high street junk hi-fi.
 
#47
KatieandDad said:
Obviously written by someone who is proud of his £100 high street junk hi-fi.
Click to expand...

LOL so patronizing. You don't know what I have use or listen to so you cant comment, but it is the usual response, along with cloth ears etc.

To be quite honest if they engineered the products properly for the price (and some do, multilayer PCB with multiple ground planes for the digital) instead of adding Audiophile drool items, such as Bybee slipstreems etc. then I may not be as cynical, oh and maybe a bit more reality in there marketing rubbish.

A competent CD player, is one that is engineered to do the job:
A drive mechanism that is both reliable and reads discs with the minimum of errors, a digital/analogue section that is on well laid out multi-layer PCBs to optimise the signal integrity. A power supply (linear or SMPS) that is up to the job.

LOL anyway back to listening to my £100 high street junk, ho ho ho, by the way is that cost to cover my whole system.......
 
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#48
Well, with a dac that bad, some spdif cable swapping (or transport tweaking) is bound to have a very large effect... totally not solving the right problem though.

Ah, Yes. I remember, the CD723... its buggy volume control corrupting the bits... its power supply so cheap that finger-tapping on the box would, via the laser pickup servos current draw, make all voltages inside wiggle, even the SPDIF output would dance on the scope...
 
#50
Yeah, but Jacco, I can only afford £10-20 that leaves me 80-90 for amp and speakers!!!

I like the look of some of the silly priced ones, but would I buy one, no, over priced.
I have ripped all my CD's to hard drive (using Windows Media Player MP3 96kbps, cos that's what us sub £100 system people use, nothing fancy like EAC) thus getting rid of one of biggest problems in CD playback, the mechanical based reading of the CD.
 
#52
marce said:
A competent CD player, is one that is engineered to do the job:
Click to expand...

This was a pretty good player

Sony CDP-XA7ES CD player | Stereophile.com

(1996, unbelievable)

Sony%20CDP-XA7ES-open-015-wk.jpg
 
#53
KatieandDad said:
Most of the time the better players will have far better DACs and better audio circuitry generally.
Click to expand...

That is most likely true.

I originally was using what I thought was a very good Teac CD deck

Then I tried a NAD (C-516BEE) deck and the difference /improvement is noticeable .

How can we say that audio circuits in all CD decks are the same?
 
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#54
I still have floating around my Audiolab 8000A, a kenwood Trio CD player, a Technics Tape deck, Marantz CD63SE, (lent my KEF 102/4s to someone) and a few other bits from the early to mid 90s, but then you could walk into most electrical outlets and they would have proper HI-Fi sections with separates, now you walk in curry's or similar and the 'Hi-Fi' section consists of speakers smaller than a shoe box, with a super woofer with a 6" driver, a main unit that weighs less than a hummingbird yet delivers 1000Ws!!!!!
I remember that Sony player, I was looking for a new CD around then 95/96, ended up with the Marantz CD63 Se.
Electronics companies would invest in this stuff then as there was a market, now so many are happy listening to heavily compressed MP3's on their phones, so we all loose out to an extent on affordable music fidelity.
 
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