Toshiba SD-9200 DVD-Audio/Video player Measurements part 2

The SD-9200's analog stage seemed bombproof, a maximum-level 50Hz tone resulting in just 0.0014% (-97dB) of second-harmonic distortion (fig.6). This was taken into the standard laboratory load of 100k ohms. The only change when this was dropped to a severely low 600 ohms was the introduction of the third harmonic (fig.7), but at -94dB (0.002%) this will be subjectively irrelevant. Levels of intermodulation distortion, even into a similarly low 1k ohm load (fig.8), were also extremely low.

Fig.6 Toshiba SD-9200, spectrum of 50Hz sinewave, DC-1kHz, at 0dBFS into 100k ohms (linear frequency scale).

Fig.7 Toshiba SD-9200, spectrum of 50Hz sinewave, DC-1kHz, at 0dBFS into 600 ohms (linear frequency scale).

Fig.8 Toshiba SD-9200, HF intermodulation spectrum, DC-24kHz, 19+20kHz at 0dBFS into 1k ohm (linear frequency scale).

Finally, as the Toshiba SD-9200 is able to play CD-Rs, I could test its word-clock jitter rejection with the Miller Audio Research Jitter Analyzer. The results were superb, with the player offering just 152.3 picoseconds of peak-peak jitter, one of the lowest figures I've measured. The spectrum of the jitter (fig.9) was much cleaner than I've found to be usually the case with DVD players. Other than data-related sidebands in this graph (marked with red numeric markers), the only other jitter sidebands lie at ±75Hz (green "2"), which means they're related to the subcode frame frequency, and at ±481Hz (purple "5"). In both cases, they contribute much less than 70ps to the total.

Fig.9 Toshiba SD-9200, high-resolution jitter spectrum of analog output signal (11.025kHz at -6dBFS with LSB toggled at 229Hz). Center frequency of trace, 11.025kHz; frequency range, ±3.5kHz.

All in all, this is impressive measured performance. Too many DVD players suffer from compromised audio performance, due to the presence of so many disparate ultrasonic clock signals floating around within the chassis. Yet the Toshiba's analog outputs are about as jitter- and distortion-free as you're likely to find, even from an expensive high-end CD player. The only thing that bugs me about the SD-9200 is its need to be hooked up to a TV in order to navigate the DVD-A and DVD-V menus to get the music playing properly.—John Atkinson

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