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 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 1.5 out of 10 with its old pot - 2 is deafeningly loud with Alessandro MS-1) compared to the Sony D-EJ2000 (2002) - 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 with the Alessandro MS-1 is a sonic revelation. 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:

 

Edited just now by HiWire