CD/DVD Players

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

Rega’s first Planet CD player, which was released in the mid-1990s and was not to be confused with the first Planet turntable, was the company’s entry-level silver disc spinner. This was the 2000-model-year update, and it was an unusual piece of equipment. It’s a pleasure to operate simply because it doesn’t have a traditional drawer

MiniDisc was on its way out in 2003. Sales were dropping, and the format’s brief resurgence between 1998 and 1999 seemed like a distant memory. Of fact, it was at this point in its sales cycle that vinyl made significant advancements in the sound quality of its players, and we now see CD doing the

Compact disc had a particularly intriguing period in the early 1990s. Digital audio, like ‘that difficult second album,’ had a dilemma in terms of how to progress. Philips and Sony had developed slick second-generation machines, but these were simply evolutions of their first-generation goods, and it was time to start over and create fresh forward-thinking

The Cyrus CD transport, which was released in 2011 for £699, filled a much-needed vacuum in a hi-fi world that was suddenly seeing a drop in the number of silver disc spinners being produced. Linn had already announced that it would no longer offer Compact Disc players, and the major Japanese manufacturers — with the

A top Marantz engineer once told me, “The original Bitstream players sounded horrible.” You understand that this is strictly not for publishing, yet it is refreshingly open all the less. Others used more diplomatic terminology at the time, but it’s worth noting that the company didn’t release a flagship Bitstream system until 1994’s CD-15. This

The sheer quantity of low-cost Philips-based Marantz CD players produced in the 1980s and 1990s is staggering. The market was continuously moving throughout the heyday of the silver disc, and Marantz, like everyone else, had to come up with new features, adjustments, and/or style to maintain its market position. In 1988, Marantz released the CD65

In 1988, the recordable CD (also known as CD-R) was introduced. The format, known as CD-WO (CD-Write Once), was fully compatible with the original ‘Red Book’ CD standard, offering up to 74 minutes of recording (650 MB), although later CD-Rs gave up to 80 minutes of recording (800 MB) (737MB). CD-RW (CD-ReWriteable) discs were also