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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2019 13:24:53 GMT
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Post by dsjr on Jul 31, 2019 16:22:13 GMT
There are others too, which I can't remember now. The Theta DaVID was mostly theirs I remember, or atr least there was substantial Theta extra boards and so on around the donor chassis. Doesn't this go some way to proving that we audio hobbyists listen with our eyes? Apart from the posh front panel, the £300 Philips machine inside was almost completely bog standard with no alterations made to the main machine at all, yet it was acclaimed as being reference grade!
At least my Micro Seiki player has a dedicated M-S analogue output board and a different power supply to the shared-chassis CD94 as far as I can see, plus some on-board mods not part of the original. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2019 17:46:14 GMT
Sweet Jesus, I'd never heard of such shitehousery. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2019 19:14:37 GMT
Bloody hell. I am gobsmacked.
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Bigman80
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AA Founding Member & Bigbottle Audio Creator
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 31, 2019 19:23:26 GMT
Seen it many times before and wasn’t at all surprised the first time tbh..Most Brit 80s and 90s CD players weren’t much more than standard jap or Philips players tarted up and tweaked. Micromega’s Logic was pretty much a rebadged budget Philips. DPA’s T1 transport was a CD42 witch a bit of the back hacksawed off before being stuffed and hidden in an Alu case. At the Penta show, some knob end was preaching to me how it had just blown away a Krell transport in a Absolute Sound review. Says it all, really.
I regard a lot of hifi as a con, so it’s refreshing when you find bits that aren’t.
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Post by macca on Aug 1, 2019 6:29:30 GMT
Seen it many times before and wasn’t at all surprised the first time tbh..Most Brit 80s and 90s CD players weren’t much more than standard jap or Philips players tarted up and tweaked. Make that all Brit CD players from any era. In fact all cd players from any country are all basically a Jap or Phillips transport and DAC. Digital has always been the biggest fantasy world going since the first Meridian or whatever (can't recall who was first out of the gates with a cd player supposedly from the UK. Think it was them) |
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Bigman80
Grandmaster
AA Founding Member & Bigbottle Audio Creator
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Post by Bigman80 on Aug 1, 2019 7:01:52 GMT
Yeah I remember the rave reviews for the meridian MCD. Was it ANY different from the Phillips model?
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Post by dsjr on Aug 1, 2019 7:11:20 GMT
Meridian MCD was different from the stock article and gave me a headache back then (Sony's never did). the MCD Pro was rather different and VERY much better in comparison with the donor machine and this was my first CD player. The replacement 207 was better than many models around that time and it came with an acceptable line preamp stage too. The MCD Pro used the donor machine as transport and everything else was in a tray underneath
I think you'll find the Meridian 200 series internals were slightly different (even the Quad 66 used their own boards from memory - to the Philips implementation) and the real failing was that they tinkered around inside all the time, not always for the better.
I think there was a Lexicon player that did what Theta did and also a Goldmund? Long time ago so may be incorrect.
To answer macca's broad sweep comments, the Cambridge CD2 may well have used Philips tech, but the way it was used was novel (16x oversampling for good or ill). Good sounding machine once run in and most were reliable for a few years too. Linn's players were different as well, but these were later. Arcam developed refinements of their own as well and as far as I know, weren't Philips clones apart from the basic chipsets and mechs.
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Post by macca on Aug 1, 2019 7:59:27 GMT
Essentially they all took an existing design and just tweaked it a bit, put it in a fancy case and charged loads extra for it. It's both a sweeping comment and true.
Putting one player entirely inside another box is just taking the practice to its logical extreme. That's the thing about digital, it isn't like a turntable where there are multiple ways of skinning the cat and heavy engineering can really make a difference. So they had to add perceived value somehow.
The only reason the original Cambridge was a 2 box job was because he couldn't fit it all in one box. But perceived value was improved so everyone copied the idea and people went out and 'upgraded' to two-box players. All smoke and mirrors.
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Post by dsjr on Aug 1, 2019 10:08:13 GMT
It was a bit more than that macca. The MCD Pro had an under-tray and the CD2 was a one box machine - the CD1 was more a development project and the only one we sold failed on delivery and was returned for credit (it looked a bit like a prototype inside I recall)
Back then, you could easily hear a difference between a stock Philips machine and say, an Arcam Alpha player. Paul Miller used to measure differences too - these early Philips things had ultrasonic nasties that needed controlling.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 1, 2019 10:27:47 GMT
Yeah I remember the rave reviews for the meridian MCD. Was it ANY different from the Phillips model? I think this was the first player I heard hooked up when I strolled into Bristol Laskys. It all sounded so bad I walked out after a few minutes and didn't touch digital until 1989. |
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Post by macca on Aug 1, 2019 11:16:05 GMT
It was a bit more than that macca. The MCD Pro had an under-tray and the CD2 was a one box machine - the CD1 was more a development project and the only one we sold failed on delivery and was returned for credit (it looked a bit like a prototype inside I recall) I read an interview with Stan Curtis where he happily admitted it. They were literally put together on his kitchen table.
Doesn't stop me wanting one ofc...
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Post by dsjr on Aug 1, 2019 11:22:00 GMT
The CD1 attempted to recreate the filtering used in the Sony 1610 pro A-D-A. When working, it DID sound superb for the time ('88 or so). I do trust Stan in engineering terms, but it's VERY old now should you ever find an intact example. The CD3 seemed to distil the thinking best and the thing looked better too (the CD2 suffered poor front panel castings, but as with all UK domestic audio, small quantity engineering (1500 pieces or less per batch) meant you had to take what you were given sadly)
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Post by sq225917 on Aug 2, 2019 20:54:31 GMT
The Goldmund was a Toshiba DVD player with a metal plate on the mech, new front panel and 115, 230 universal transformer fitted.
It should be noted however that this player has the cleanest spdif output ever, due to a fifo memory buffer. The only square wave spdif I've ever seen.
9k vs 300 quid.
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