Ode to the portable CD player

[HiWire]

Techmoan does it best (he didn't mention that the high-end PCDPs had line-out and mini-Toslink optical outputs for outboard DACs, but it's not an audiophile channel):

 

Edited December 27, 2021 by HiWire

[recstar24]

Shout out to my old Sony d25

[HiWire]

Listening to a set of Beyerdynamic Amiron -> Chord Mojo -> Panasonic SL-CT820 was the best "portable" listening I've ever heard... I think some of the high-end Sony Walkman and Astell&Kern players are in that territory, but they've never appealed to me.

They would be less cumbersome, though. It might take a while for wireless audio to reach the same heights.

Edited December 28, 2021 by HiWire

[blessingx]

💽 MiniDiscs are the future 

[HiWire]

I've noticed AI-colorized and AI-upsampled video and photos appearing on the internet.

Perhaps AI-upsampled or AI-mixed multichannel audio (i.e., you can move around virtually in the music venue) will be the successor to high-res audio. In its current state, I don't think most people would say high-res (in any form) has been a commercial success.

Edited December 28, 2021 by HiWire

[Grahame]

8 hours ago, blessingx said:

💽 MiniDiscs are the future 

Not "The Children"?

 

 

[HiWire]

Thank you, George Benson. The sentiments from "The Greatest Love of All" also remind me of Marvin Gaye's "Save the Children" and Cat Stevens' "Where Do the Children Play"... must have been something in the water.

I guess Vietnam, Nixon, the oil crises, stagflation, and a bunch of other stuff was making people give up on the adult generation.

Edited December 28, 2021 by HiWire

[robm321]

Necro bump.

headphones carry CD player, remote and jewel case above user’s head for on-the-go music

[HiWire]

Celebrate the 43rd anniversary of Compact Disc!

Abba's eighth and last album (until their 2021 comeback), The Visitors, was the first commercially released CD (by Polygram in Germany) today in 1982:

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/the-first-commercial-compact-disc-was-created-43-years-ago-today-nearly-one-billion-cds-were-shipped-per-year-in-early-2000s

No, I don't own any Abba albums.

I went down the optical rabbit hole again this weekend and concluded that anyone investing in SACD is going to spend a lot of money unless they buy used equipment. Your best bet is buying a used Sony or Marantz player. Yes, you can get DSD output from some Sony players' coax and Toslink to a compatible outboard DAC.

Doing a little more digging - TEAC is your friend in old audio formats. There are lots of weird Chinese grey-market products and TEAC still makes several CD and cassette recorder decks - in particular, the TEAC W-1200 Dual Cassette Deck and the PD-301-X CD Player and FM Tuner. They're not audiophile products, but they serve a growing demand for vintage physical media. The cassette deck also has an ADC converter to output digital to your computers via USB. They also have a combined CD player/cassette deck in the TEAC AD-850-SE - a monster of vintage audio and karaoke. Good luck balancing it on your head. Some reviews say the PD-301-X CD player scratches discs, so buyer beware (I don't like slot-loading CD mechanisms in general).

Some analysis and criticism on the W-1200 cassette deck output and mechanism (premature head wear?): https://www.reddit.com/r/cassetteculture/comments/1gcsvqj/teac_w1200_test_and_measurements/

If you want an optical drive for your computer or laptop, I recommend Pioneer's drives. I think these are the last high-end Blu-ray/DVD/CD burners that will be made, so get them while supplies last.

Also, I learned that Cyrus Audio in the UK was taken over by its board manufacturer, SMS Electronics. They claim to manufacture their CD equipment in-house, which is really unusual for a small manufacturer - most hi-fi players use commonly-available CD and DVD lasers and transport mechanisms. They've discontinued their high-end XR lineup and introduced a new 40 series range. The 40 CD player is $4,000 (£2,995.00), which seems kind of expensive.

 

Edited 8 hours ago by HiWire

[Craig Sawyers]

I was 26 then. And I was an early adopter, with the Philips CD104 in 1984.

And then I began to wonder what was going on. CD's at that stage, and players too, sounded like a bag of hammers by comparison to vinyl records.

Thank heavens the technology has moved on, although digital, while sounding really accurate is somehow less engaging than scraping a fragment of diamond over a piece of plastic. Maybe I just like listening to the inherent raft of distortions from record reproduction😁

[HiWire]

It's interesting that Sony never released a portable HDCD, SACD, or Blu-ray player (which was probably wise).

They basically (involuntarily) passed the torch to Apple and its iPods and iPhones. They're not audiophile devices, but I've compared my 3rd-gen iPod Shuffle to my other equipment and it sounds pretty good with Sennheiser and Klipsch earbuds.

Looks like people are still running and modifying the Philips CD104:

https://eiaudio.de/gear-and-review/cd-players/philips-cd-104/