Scored a Denon DCD-1500 straight out of 1986. From what I could find these originally sold for about $700 in '86 money. Sounds warm, fantastic. Now to go dig the rest of my CD’s out of the basement.

    • DickHertz@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      7·
      9 days ago

      No… Its got dual Burr-Brown DACs with variable and fixed outputs. I wish it had digital output but for $50 i’m not complaining. Sounds good on my little Edifier R1280T speakers, works for now. 😅

    • daggermoon@piefed.worldEnglish
      4·
      9 days ago

      Toslink was a rarity back then. Related, I have a CD changer from 2001 I think. I connected it to my modern DAC and it sounded worse than the analog output. I still don’t know why to this day. Shouldn’t it always be better?

        • daggermoon@piefed.worldEnglish
          2·
          8 days ago

          I just wouldn’t expect my Denon HDCD CD changer to sound better than my Topping E50. I’m thinking it’s the coax output that’s the problem.

    • blackbeans@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      9 days ago

      No need to have this for most setups unless you are an enthusiast. Any A-brand CD player built after ~1985 has oversampling and 16-bit DACs. Sure modern DACs are better, but the audible difference is rather insignificant until used in a setup with high end speakers or headphones.

        • blackbeans@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2·
          8 days ago

          1 bit audio dacs use a different architecture (delta/sigma) which had some benefits in the late '80s and in the '90s (lower cost and very linear frequency response). They are fine if implemented well

          The only dacs that suck are the cost optimized dacs in bottom of the barrel cd players and portables.