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 […]
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The Aurora was the company’s first turntable, and it cost little under £1,000 when it was released in 2014. It’s a high-quality skeletal belt drive design hewn from black acrylic with a low-resonance platter, just like the original from 2003. It lacks traditional sprung suspension and must be placed on a well-isolated table or wall
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The decade of the 1990s was perhaps equally as significant for digital audio as the decade before it, because it witnessed the first introduction of high-resolution recording and playback. The next wave of DVD players that followed towards the end of the 1990s were finally able to deliver 24-bit, 96Hz stereo, whereas Compact Disc had
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
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To honor the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Johan Sebastian Bach’s death, Ortofon released three new Kontrapunkt moving coil cartridges at the turn of the millennium. The a and b comfortably outsold the c, despite the fact that they were all slightly different. The b was my favorite of the bunch, with a Nude
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It’s difficult to overstate the decline of Dual, which had once been one of Europe’s leading turntable manufacturers, employing over three thousand people across various factories in West Germany during the country’s postwar economic boom. It originated in 1907 in the Black Forest village of St. Georgen, when brothers Christian and Joseph Steidinger began creating
The DVD-Audio vs. SACD conflict was raging by 2002. Many manufacturers first pledged their allegiance to one format, but quickly realized that they needed to support both new hi-res disc formats. Because this was before the age of so-called “universal” players, most businesses offered a choice of two models that were essentially the same. For
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Prices began to drop within a few years after the first SACD players arrived. You didn’t have to spend £5,000 on Marantz’s groundbreaking SA-1 any longer. Suddenly, DVD players with SACD compatibility became available for a tenth of the price, and the Philips DVD 763SA was the cheapest serious Super Audio Compact Disc spinner by
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The vintage Ultimo 10X, a high output moving coil built and manufactured by Dynavector of Japan, will be remembered by any analogue enthusiast worth his record collection. It was one of the most musical cheap pickups available in the late 1970s, with the added benefit of not requiring a pricey step up transformer. The problem
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Even in 2004, CD players seemed to be nearing the end of their useful life. Because of the onslaught of DVD-Audio, SACD, and even universal machines, less and fewer people sought outdated, unreconstructed CD separates. Those who did were discerning audiophiles who realized that even the best DVD spinner couldn’t play 16-bit Compact Disc as
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