Review of 30 years old CD player - - are the antique CD-players still best?

[mkrzych]

Amazing article and conclusion for always running forward technology advances - but not always in the right directions I think :-/

 

 

Philips CD 304 and 304 MkII - are the antique CD-players still best?

[Allan F]

I can't comment on this particular player, but I had two expensive CD transports which employed Philips transport mechanisms, one manufactured by PS Audio and the other by Proceed, fail on three separate occasions. The mechanisms were discontinued and could not be replaced, reducing the transports to useless paperweights.

[One and a half]

The OP's countryman has a few pages dedicated to changing CD players, so they actually sounded like something.

 

The reference above has a link to lampization of a 304 worth looking at. Whether vintage players are worth keeping, a lot of them just had very basic transports of pressed steel, players like the early Denon had their own transport designs, with digital out, so they could be used with external DACs.

 

If you come across one, and it has a substantial mechanical design, it's worth keeping, but ultimately, if the spare parts aren't available, it's a paperweight.

[manisandher]

FWIW, the biggest mistake I've ever made in this hobby was going from my beloved Rotel RCD855 (16 bit R2R) to a Rotel RCD 965 (bitstream) CD player during the end of my student days in the early 1990s. The loss in SQ was obvious in the first few notes. Fortunately, I rectified things by buying a Rotel RHCD-10 (20 bit R2R) a few years later, once I was finally working and earning some cash. I sold the RHCD-10 only a few years ago as I simply had no use for a CD player anymore. But to this day, I still maintain that the RHCD-10 is the best CD player I've ever heard - better than the Esoteric P70/D70 combo I had for many years, and better than the top-of-the-line Linn and Naim CD players I demoed at various dealers' places.

 

I don't own a CD player nowadays. But if I wanted one, I would buy an RCD855 in a heartbeat... provided I could find one.

 

Mani.

[Jud]

I can't comment on this particular player, but I had two expensive CD transports which employed Philips transport mechanisms, one manufactured by PS Audio and the other by Proceed, fail on three separate occasions. The mechanisms were discontinued and could not be replaced, reducing the transports to useless paperweights.

 

Yeah, the Theta Data transports based on Philips laserdisc players also pretty uniformly fail, though it usually takes a good couple of decades so one can't complain too strenuously. Mine gave up the ghost right on time at 20 years - part of what got me into computer audio.

[Richard Dale]

Amazing article and conclusion for always running forward technology advances - but not always in the right directions I think :-/

 

 

Philips CD 304 and 304 MkII - are the antique CD-players still best?

 

I still use my 15 year old Marantz CD7 which uses ancient Philips TDA1541A DAC chips (they were old 15 years ago even), combined with Motorola 56000 signal processors as filters.

 

I don't use it to play CDs any more, and the CDM12 transport is currently broken. I use a Bel Canto uLink into the SPDI/F input of the CD player and it sounds better than it ever did when playing CDs. Or at least I think it sounds better, but until I get the CD transport fixed I can't do a direct comparison. I suspect that the feed from the Bel Canto is cleaner WRT to jitter and noise than anything available when the CD player was first released.

[Allan F]

Yeah, the Theta Data transports based on Philips laserdisc players also pretty uniformly fail, though it usually takes a good couple of decades so one can't complain too strenuously. Mine gave up the ghost right on time at 20 years - part of what got me into computer audio.

 

Unfortunately, the failures I described all took place in less than five years. The first one occurred during the warranty period and the whole unit was replaced. I wasn't as fortunate on the subsequent occasions.

[petaluma]

I've got a Musical Fidelity A3 CD player circa about 2000 that I bought new and it has been bulletproof. Although when I picked up my Meridian Director DAC I did some quick listening tests, using the digital out into the Director, and decided I would just use the player as a transport and rely on the Meridian DAC. Just sounded a bit better to me.

[gmgraves]

Amazing article and conclusion for always running forward technology advances - but not always in the right directions I think :-/

 

 

Philips CD 304 and 304 MkII - are the antique CD-players still best?

 

 

 

 

I had this one for years:

 

 

It was called the Philips CD-101/Magnavox FD-1010.

Until I got my Sony XA777ES SACD player, it was the best CD player I'd ever heard. No digital out (in fact it had captive RCA cables, IIRC), and no remote but it was built like a tank; very compact, only a 14-bit DAC, but it used a very simple filter on the output. It sounded so much better than any of the other first generation Japanese CD players like the Sony and the Kyocera that it wasn't even funny (ever heard Sony's first effort at a CD player, the CD-100? It's like taking course sandpaper to your auditory canal!). I wish I still had that little Magnavox, if, for no other reason, than just to marvel at it's build quality. I don't doubt the article one bit. Philips' early players were excellent.

[Allan F]

... (ever heard Sony's first effort at a CD player, the CD-100? It's like taking course sandpaper to your auditory canal!).

 

I disagree. It was more like sticking ice picks into your ear drums.

 

OTOH, Denon players of the early CD era were quite good.

[Jabs1542]

I still have my original Denon 1500 mkii sitting on a shelf. I could never get rid of it because it was built so well, just couldn't part ways. I guess I need to resurrect it... it sits next to the Nakamichi 680ZX, guess I need to resurrect both.

[jiminlogansquare]

FWIW, the biggest mistake I've ever made in this hobby was going from my beloved Rotel RCD855 (16 bit R2R) to a Rotel RCD 965 (bitstream) CD player ...

I don't own a CD player nowadays. But if I wanted one, I would buy an RCD855 in a heartbeat... provided I could find one.

 

Mani.

 

I had a Rotel RCD855 that I loved and enjoyed for 15 years. Sold it in a yard sale for $35 about nine years ago. It had a peculiar modification installed by the dealer: a round plate that you plopped down atop the CD before closing the drawer. They said it stabilized the rotation of the disc and improved the sound. I cannot say, because I never heard it without the plate to compare. But, yeah; that Rotel CD player provided years of enjoyment, and was a big step up from the late-1980s Philips model it replaced.

[gmgraves]

I disagree. It was more like sticking ice picks into your ear drums.

 

OTOH, Denon players of the early CD era were quite good.

 

 

OK. I'll go along with that; ice picks. it is! Never heard an early Denon, so I can't comment. But of all the early players i've heard the Philips-based units were by far the best.

[CatManDo]

The first Philips players (and their Marantz equivalents) were ahead of the other first generation players, with their 14bit + oversampling technology.

 

When I got my first CD player, a Philips CD100, in 1986 (I was 18 years old) it completely blew me away, as it sounded so much better than my turntable (a midrange Dual with Goldring cartridge). As the Philips was so limited in terms of comfort features (no remote, no time display), I "upgraded" it to a (non-ES) Sony player in 1990. I did not believe in sonic differences between CD players back then, and as a student living abroad, I didn't have a decent hifi setup or much time and patience to do comparisons between players.

 

In 1994 when I had settled down with a job and could afford to spend on better audio hardware, I got my old Philips CD100 out again for a shootout with the Sony, and was surprised at how harsh and thin the latter sounded. The Philips had a warm and full-bodied sound. Not very detailed though.

 

I was convinced that it was worth getting a really good CD player and soon later found a second hand Sony CDP-X777ES, which I still use as a CD transport today.

[One and a half]

I still have my original Denon 1500 mkii sitting on a shelf. I could never get rid of it because it was built so well, just couldn't part ways. I guess I need to resurrect it... it sits next to the Nakamichi 680ZX, guess I need to resurrect both.

 

Ah, the 1500Mk2, it came a few months after the DCD-1700 which I bought and gave up the ghost with a string of motor problems. The 1500Mk2 was a very popular item in its day.

[StephenJK]

Amazing article and conclusion for always running forward technology advances - but not always in the right directions I think :-/Philips CD 304 and 304 MkII]

That's an interesting thought, but certainly not my experience. My focus was always on LP's, but by the mid-eighties CD's became hard to ignore. I've changed CD players many times over the years, but have always had the same CD's and speakers, if that can establish any kind of a credible benchmark. The best CD player that I had was my last, a Bryston BCD-1. By that what I mean is the development of the analog chip set gave a musical presentation with a clarity and distributed soundstage that I had never heard before. My experience is there was a process of gradual improvement with the sound quality bu not necessarily with the transports. As with any other new product line, early transport mechanisms may have been overbuilt and then were engineered for a lower cost of manufacture at the expense of longevity - much the same as any other product. The reviewer in the article freely admits only a couple of the older Philips players were auditioned, but there is a critical point not mentioned, that being what CD players he had used before. He does state "NAD's, Pioneer and Marantz" but no model numbers. In other words, if comparing a very good older model to something that may have been a budget player, the comparison can hardly be valid.I would agree that earlier transports could be better, but nothing will stop the laser from failing over time. But I would challenge that an earlier analog output design from the early days could rival a later development where that was a specific focus.

[Bear]

I used an EAD T-1000 transport that is also based on the solid Philips mechnism before I got into computer audio. What a great piece of equipment. Never missed a beat and the original remote even worked flawlessly. Sold it two years ago after keeping it around in the rack because it just looked very cool and was a little bit of a conversation piece. They just don't make stuff of this quality any more - at least not in reasonable price range. Hope it is still being used!

[jtm]

My first CD-player was one of those "washing machines", a Sanyo, with the CD being loaded vertically and visible through an acrylic/plastic window on the front.

 

Hitachi, Kyocera, Dual, Fisher, they all shared the same platform.

 

The first CD-player, and we were proud to own one and insert the Friday Night in San Francisco Philips-CD, the Dire Straits, or Berlin Phil. Orchestra Beethoven as this were the ones you MUST have.

 

Very soon this player went off my shelf to be replaced with a Marantz CD-74, and yes, I still have it down there somewhere in these boxes. This one was solid mechanical built, like a tank, sounded much better through his analog outpt(no digital, that was the CD-84), and when I uograded to a Pioneer PD-91 later on it went into the box.

 

Time to get it back onto the rack and give it a spin.

 

I am curious how it will sound, if it still works after all these years.

 

Thanks so much for this thread, I have just been beamed back into the 80's ...

[semente]

I have a PD-91.

It had it's laser mechanism replaced once but is still going strong.

[jtm]

I have a PD-91.

It had it's laser mechanism replaced once but is still going strong.

 

:-))

 

Mine is sold since many years, but it has been on duty without flaws for many many years.