Modern versus vintage CD players

[Marco]

It's an established fact Neil, that in hi-fi, ingrained scientific dogma can often induce selective deafness!

Marco.

[struth]

A lot of folk dont hear the differences much though. I could hear differences the wife couldnt and Gazza and Brian can hear differences I cant, so its not a level playing field

[Marco]

A lot of folk dont hear the differences much though.

Yes, but there's a marked difference between not hearing differences because you can't, and 'not hearing' them because you don't *want* to!

Marco.

[struth]

Yes, but there's a marked difference between not hearing differences because you can't, and 'not hearing' them because you don't *want* to!

Marco.

true, but hard to prove

[Marco]

I think it's fairly obvious to most folks, from the evidence of certain types of behaviour, so doesn't really need proving.

It's like with cables, and those who somewhat 'conveniently' claim that expectation bias only works one way, which is when you're 'expecting' to hear a difference, because you WANT there to be one, but somehow miraculously doesn't apply when you DON'T want to hear a difference, perhaps due to being brainwashed in that way by an (often blinkered) objectivist belief system.

The fact is, you can 'imagine' that you've NOT heard it, just as much as 'imagine' that you have!

Marco.

[struth]

I think it's fairly obvious to most folks, from the evidence of certain types of behaviour, so doesn't really need proving.

It's like with cables, and those who somewhat 'conveniently' claim that expectation bias only works one way, which is when you're 'expecting' to hear a difference, because you WANT there to be one, but somehow miraculously doesn't apply when you DON'T want to hear a difference, perhaps due to being brainwashed in that way by an (often blinkered) objectivist belief system.

The fact is, you can 'imagine' that you've NOT heard it, just as much as 'imagine' that you have!

Marco.

very true. open mind = open window

[Svend N]

I'm toying with the idea of buying a digital source and am interested in the cream of the cream of Sony, Pioneer from the 80s. But, are they fixable if anything goes wrong, and do they really lose out on sound
quality? I'm talking the best of the best from that era - so not cheap even now.

Any thoughts...

Hi Adrian,
I recently had my early '90s era Teac VRDS-10 player modified, and it completely transformed the sound. I not able to compare it's present sound to that of a new machine, as my experience hearing anything new of reasonable quality is limited to a Naim machine costing about C$3500, and that at a dealer and not my system. But I can honestly say I was not impressed by the sound of the Naim in that system (caveat ). OTOH, the sound of the Teac in my system is now outstanding. There is far better depth and breadth to the soundstage and better imaging; smoother, warmer sound; much more bass and greatly improved bass definition..... I could go on...but in short, it was improved in every way possible. Well worth the effort and expense.

By comparison, the Teac's sound pre-mod was flat and uninspiring, dry character, 2-dimensional sound stage.... I would say it was good sounding, but nothing special. And the Teac was not a shabby machine in it's day. If you Google it, you will see that the VRDS line of machines have somewhat of a following today. The VRDS-25 seems to be most coveted.

To your original question, I think you could take a high quality vintage machine with a solid drive and good electronics and transform it into something special. But I my humble advice would be to do it only if: (A) you had the support of a really good tech; (B) the manufacturer has a known reputation for supporting legacy products with basic wear-and-tear parts (belts, lasers, motors); and, (C) the cost of buying the unit and modding it was much less than that of a new machine (assuming the new machine would give equal or better sound quality).

FYI, the mods on the Teac cost ~C$600, parts and labour. The mods included: replace the on-board clock chip with a Tent Labs discrete low jitter clock board; replaced the output op-amps with NewClassD discrete op-amps; upgraded selected capacitors (this is where a good tech is worth gold, who can ID the best caps to replace for actual sonic gains); upgraded the power supply; disabled the output muting transistor; replaced the power cord with a shielded fattie. We have owned the player since new, for 20+ years, so the upgrade cost was easy to justify. But I would think twice if I had to buy a used machine and then pay to have it modded. Further along that train of thought, having heard what a modded player sounds like compared to stock, I would never be happy using a vintage machine stock without also adding the mods. Just my opinion, having experienced the before and after.

I might suggest you do some web research on this to see what others have done. You could start by searching for low jitter clock board and discrete op amp mods -- there are several companies offering such boards for a whole range of machines:

http://www.net-audio.co.uk

http://www.audiotuning.de/english/in...5-digital.html

http://tentlabs.com/index.html

https://www.bursonaudio.com

I hope this helps. If you have any questions re. the Teac mods, feel free to ask.

Regards,
Svend