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Who still listens to their First Generation Cd Players?

I still like the sound of those early cd players except early problematic sonys
vinny55
harrylavo's avatar
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harrylavo
346 posts
 
Another vote for the early Phillips gear .... mine an 880 (just below the 960 but still about $1300 back in the day).  Heavy as a concrete block, absolutely three-dimensional sound (although premature fade-to-black,as the machine had rising non-linearity below -90db as the early chipsets all did).  Mine is not operating currently but I soon hope to have it repaired and then it will go into the system alongside my Oppo 105.  I A/B'd it back in 1989 vs Sony's top model, and it beat the pants off of it.
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niodari
305 posts
 

My main music source remain CD players (and  rarely I use my Yamaha K-850 cassette deck - some cassettes give good dynamics). CD players I use are (about 20-years old) Krell CAD 300, Yamaha CDS2000 and sometimes Arcam  CD 73. Krell has  the oldest burr-brown dac which gives a reasonably good uncolored reproduction (unlike newer ess ones). But I use Krell basically as a transport with Raymio DAP 777, that somehow compensates inaccuracies in the interpretation of digital signal. I think I can accept the resultant analog sound and not worry too much about the accuracy any more. So I intent to continue to use CD source. Streaming is not good for me, its like driving a car with an automatic transmission vs manual one.

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niodari
305 posts
 
And I can avoid use of LPs as Raymio DAC settles the problem with analog interpretation.
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nonoise
10,903 posts
 
I wish I still had my Philips CD-80. I had it modded by Stan Warren and can't, for the life of me, remember why I gave it away.

All the best,
Nonoise
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bdp24
9,868 posts
 
@nonoise, the CD-80 was built like a tank, wasn’t it? Made everything else seem like a toy. That is, until I got an Esoteric ;-).
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