One aspect of the 582's performance was truly outstanding: its ability to track. The 582 played through track 35 of Disc 2 of the Pierre Verany test disc set—these tracks simulate dropouts. Anything beyond track 27 is beyond "standard values but inside the theoretical [sic] correction capabilities of CD players." The 582 even played track 36 without glitching too much. There are only 38 basic tracks. Moreover, the 582 played four out of five damaged discs in my collection, including two discs no other player has been able to flawlessly track.
If only the sound quality had been a bit (or even two bits . . . hell, I don't know) better, I could recommend this machine most enthusiastically at the piddling price. Maybe I got a bum one—you expect sample-to-sample variations at this price point. I should also say, in fairness to Philips, that I have not heard a better machine at the price (I have seen the 582 selling for as low as $179.95), and I have heard far worse. You may have better luck.
Adcom GCD-575: $599
I got two samples of this machine—early production and late production. Late production is better, I think—the sound is smoother. Victor Campos of Adcom told me about the changes, most having to do with tighter tolerances and a few parts upgrades.
Never mind the tech stuff, this is a very good-sounding player for the money—devastating to most of the competition at the price in that once I heard the Adcom, most of the other players were unacceptable. What makes the Adcom so devastating is its low-level resolution—ie, clarity. This is from a 16-bit Philips DAC with 4x oversampling. I wonder why I haven't heard this resolution from Magnavox and Philips machines.
Soundstaging is very good, and imaging is excellent. Ambience retrieval, too, is most impressive—just short of the very best you can get with a CD player and far better than what you might expect for the price. Instruments are very clearly localized, and there is air around them—they don't exist in a void, as they do with some CD players.
There are limits to the performance, of course. Dynamics are somewhat reined in. When you get to the fourth movement of Tchaikovsky's Manfred, this machine, like many, gives up—it cannot deal in a totally satisfactory way with the dynamics.
Parts quality looks good for the price, except for the drawer mechanism, made by Sony, which looks like it belongs on a cheap machine. Every time I used the drawer, I thought it might break—but it didn't. Even more disturbing was the poor shock resistance. This player skipped when I walked up to it! And I had it on a Mission Isoplat with a VPI Magic Brick on top. (The Adcom is shipped with no transport screws. Maybe that's a mistake.)
Adcom is known for innovation. The GCD-575 has, in effect, its own built-in line amp, which gives a variable output of up to 5.3V, with an output impedance of 100 ohms. You control the output level with a conveniently located volume control on the lower-right corner of the front panel. The Adcom GCD-575 can probably drive any power amplifier directly. You could have a dynamite duo: GCD-575 and GFA-535 power amp for under $1000 list.
Another novel feature is AFPC (Analog Frequency/Phase Contour). Switching this gives you a dip in the presence region, boosting frequencies below 1kHz by about 1dB, cutting frequencies above 1kHz by an increasing amount to –3.2db at 20kHz. This is akin to a slight LF boost upward with the Quad 34 preamp's tilt control. I found this feature occasionally useful, but it's no substitute for adequate weight in the bass.
The Adcom sports a polarity reversal switch that works via remote. Julian Hirsch says he couldn't hear any difference with the switch in or out. I bet you can! When the setting was right, there was more air around the instruments. More space.
What causes me to hesitate about this player is the flimsy factor—the rickety drawer and the player's exceptionally poor resistance to shock (this on the two samples I had, plus another sample I examined . . . as well as on Julian Hirsch's test sample). Sonically the Adcom GCD-575 is a winner at the price, but not so good that I would be tempted to switch from something like a Magnavox CDB650. I suppose my real complaint is that Adcom did not choose to build this player to a higher price point.
Yamaha CDX-1110U: $1199
This machine (at $1199 list) is one of the new generation of Yamaha "hi-bit" or "pseudo" 18-bit players, as the competition calls them. I've been trying to sort out the technical claims—Yamaha's vs the competition's (ie, those manufacturers who offer players with "true" 18-bit DACS). I have failed.
Briefly, an oversampling digital filter generates additional bits beyond the 16 bits of the basic CD format. In the Yamaha scheme, 18 bits from the oversampling filter's output are wired through switches to the inputs of a 16-bit DAC. When the two upper bits are not being used, which is most of the time, the 18 bits are shifted so the two unused bits are ignored and the 16 lower bits are used instead. The analog gain then needs to be reduced by 12dB accordingly.
The question is whether this "bit-switching" causes distortion. Onkyo, in a "white paper," contends that it can, while Yamaha, not surprisingly, contends that it doesn't. On the contrary, says Yamaha, their bit-switching scheme actually acts as a dynamic noise reducer. A cynic might wonder whether Yamaha uses this scheme because 16-bit DACs are cheaper than 18-bit DACs. But I'm not the Audio Cynic—just the Audio Anarchist.
Yamaha's poop sheet makes a big fuss over the fact that the machine delivers such a low level of digital signal leakage that no analog filter is needed to clean up the digital mess . . . ah, noise. But Yamaha supplies a filter anyway—via a second pair of output jacks. This is weird, because analog-out from the player sounds much better with just the digital filter, just as Yamaha says it does. According to Yamaha, there is virtually no phase shift with just the digital filter. I hear a clearer, cleaner, more focused sound. Why, then, spend money on the extra analog filter and extra pair of jacks? Inscrutable! If they didn't do this, maybe they could afford to put in a pair of true 18-bit DACs. Ah . . . but Yamaha claims that the bit-shifting is sonically beneficial. You can see how easy it is to get bogged down.
Let's not, for we would then lose sight of the fact that this is a superb-sounding player—probably the most analoguey player I have yet heard.
Why so analoguey?
The Yamaha CDX1110 has ambience aplenty—the kind of life, light, and air that analog freaks have been craving. There is a bloom around instruments—especially noticeable with an amplifier which itself has plenty of bloom, like the B&K ST-140. (Through the Threshold SA/3, all the CD players tended to sound more alike.) Whether or not this spaciousness is specious—a partial byproduct of the bit-shifting process—I don't know and don't care. It's lovely. Enjoy it!
This spaciousness is combined with an exquisitely smooth, sweet, and delicate high end—rather like a really neat high-end cartridge! Again, lovely.
Sounds too good to be true, huh?
Well, on the downside, the Yamaha CDX1110 does not have all the low-end body and low-end punch of some more expensive players. And there is something vaguely uncertain about the way notes emerge from the silences.
In the December 1988 issue of Hi-Fi News & Record Review, Paul Miller writes about machines that do not offer a totally quiet background. You can't hear hiss, but there's a vague sense that something is "going on" in the background.
I got two samples of this machine—early production and late production. Late production is better, I think—the sound is smoother. Victor Campos of Adcom told me about the changes, most having to do with tighter tolerances and a few parts upgrades.
This machine (at $1199 list) is one of the new generation of Yamaha "hi-bit" or "pseudo" 18-bit players, as the competition calls them. I've been trying to sort out the technical claims—Yamaha's vs the competition's (ie, those manufacturers who offer players with "true" 18-bit DACS). I have failed.
