CD/DVD Players

Philips, being the creators of the CD format, were understandably the first to market with CD players, however an avalanche of designs from the Far East shortly followed. We had previously reviewed the Philips CD100, and it is still considered the ‘baby’ of the Philips series. The CD303 reviewed here is Philips’ largest machine and […]

In hi-fi, bravery usually refers to the courage to release something that stands out from the crowd. Yamahas with sloped fronts and Michaelson Audio’s Chronos amps come to mind… True bravery, on the other hand, is acknowledging that you made a mistake. Marantz has done the same with the reviled CD-11. It was well received

In the mid 1980s, Philips’ announcement of new mechanisms and integrated circuits for CD players promised great performance devices at cheap rates. Their fancy buzz phrases, such as “16-bit four-times oversampling” and “digital filtering,” piqued the interest of magazine contributors, who had already formed a soft spot for Philips models since they sounded the most

When it comes to audiophiles’ critique of CD, Ken lshiwata of Marantz International gave his opinion at the end of the 1980s: “It will take some time for the digital medium to be regarded as an audiophile medium – given the shortcomings of the digital medium, I believe it will take around 5 years…” Back

The dependence on Philips’ innovative Bitstream decoding system is the center of attention in the CD840. This model costed a little more than it’s predecessors, but not because of the new Bitstream circuitry… Indeed, hi-fi fans were assured that the Bitstream chips’ basic simplicity will drive down pricing. The CD840, on the other hand, is

Common sense would have you think that CD players have only improved over time, and that any CD player from 1994 will beat out any player from 1989. Perhaps this is accurate in terms of the transportation sections. And this might even be true for D/A converters… Nonetheless, in my view, there are a few

Closing up the 1980s, Philips announced four new CD players, ranging in price from £149 for the entry-level model CD380 to about £500 for the flagship model Philips CD880. Made in Belgium, the Philips CD880 is built on a heavy die-cast frame with a thick steel baseplate on trendy ‘drum’ feet, a copper-plated steel rear

The Marantz CD-17 KI Signature is the epitome of the Marantz philosophy: always striving for that little bit more. Last year, I tested the CD-63 KI, the first in a small series of special uprated versions of established Marantz goods overseen by Ken -Ishiwata, Marantz’s design wizard. This entailed taking a simple machine, dismantling it,

Even if we exclude the several other brand names (Mission, Meridian, Marantz, and others) that utilize the Philips chassis and mechanism, Philips had always maintained a commanding position in the sales numbers for CD players in Europe from their collaborative creation for the format (alongside Sony, of course). They had a tendency to focus their

Marantz is one of the rare firms that has succeeded in the mainstream while also progressing along the audiophile route. Its ambitions appear to have risen steadily over the last few years, as additional refinements and advancements surface in its Reference range. The SC-5 preamplifier, for example, is available with a battery power supply (of