Is Your (Portable) CD Player Lying to You?

[HiWire]

Bit of a link bait title, but I'm glad we're well clear of the lossy compression era in hi-fi CD players - I always turned skip protection off.

The test album is Goldfrapp's Head First - pure synthwave ear candy.

I pulled out my old Panasonic SL-S160 from 1995, plugged in the Alessandro MS-1 and inserted 2 Eneloop AA 1.2V NiMH batteries and it sounds a bit looser and not as deep in the bass with its MASH DAC (with XBS bass off - this budget player lacks skip protection), but serviceable (volume is somewhere around 2 out of 10 with its scratchy old pot and decent channel matching - 2.5+ is deafeningly loud with the Alessandro MS-1) compared to the Sony D-EJ2000 from 2002 - the SL-S160 was an excellent match for my old Sennheiser HD 320 headphones with a nominal impedance of 100 Ω back in the day.

Switching back to the D-EJ2000 on 1.2V gumstick battery with the Alessandro MS-1 is a sonic revelation (perhaps not a surprise, comparing a budget player to a cutting-edge flagship). People underestimated the Sony when it was released (it came with horrible stock earbuds) - it has a much cleaner overall sound, far more separation, resolution, bass depth, soundstage, you name it - it blows the older Panasonic away in every category - you can hear things on the Sony that are completely obscured on the older player at the same volume level - younger people raised on iPods and wireless headphones have no idea what they're missing.

It is like comparing a landscape in a dark fog to a bright, sunny and clear day. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to finally test a Chord Mojo 2 - I used a Toslink optical cable out of the Sony D-EJ2000 to the Mojo 2 into the Alessandro MS-1 and I heard no difference. It was both reassuring and surprising. Obviously, the source and the headphones were limiting factors, but I walked away discovering that a $150 portable CD player from 2002 can match a $650 DAC from 2022 in my informal test.

 

Edited 1 hour ago by HiWire