Can a CD player's sound degrade?

[struth]

sounds a bit like the carraige is dry.. maybe clean and regrease it.

[Macca]

Quite possible that the Marantz is just 'better'. There's a disturbing amount of bollox on the Densen website:

The four Densen CD-players are critically acclaimed musical performers with a large group of devoted followers. They all share the Densen characteristics of extreme musicality, military precision in mounting and soldering, easy upgradeability, and good looks. (all means nothing)

The players are based on extruded aluminium casings that minimize vibration and magnetic distortion (bollox), on non-feedback Class A amplification stages, discrete analogue stages, on advanced and jitter-free clock circuitry (bollox), and custom-made CD transports with is optimized for perfect data transfer. (bollox)

Most of them can be updated to the model above by your dealer or distributor. Further they can all be updated with external powersupplies like the DNRG and 2NRG resulting in a strong update path, and even stronger performance. (why not put better supplies in to begin with? - bollox).



The top model B-475 uses Densen Super Leggera technology, using a super lightweight cabinet, to minimize influences on the circuits, and allow the player to "breathe" freely! (utter bollox)


It's just a completely standard CD player in an expensive looking case with some marketing bollox to justify the premium price.

[Macca]

Not convinced?

Super Leggara:

The Densen B-275 is the first Superleggera product from Densen. The term superleggera will not be unfamiliar to conneceurs of advanced sportscars, as this Italian term, meaning super light weight, has been used to describe the chassis of some of the best and most famous sportscars ever made.
The industry standard has been to build bigger and bigger products, with larger and larger circuits and powersupplies, resulting in cabinets both holding delicate audioelectronic and massive powersupplies. Densen has with the Superleggera products divided these into 2, allowing the audiocircuit to be totally separated from the powersupplies mechanically, resulting in a dramatic removal of the powersupply vibrations which will smear the signals of a normal amplifier. In the B-275 the huge powersupply has its own cabinet, while the delicate audiocircuit is in the Superleggera cabinet, where everything possible has been done to reduce the weight and remove vibrations. This has made a dramatic improvement of the sound, and where huge high end products normally is associated with dark and slow presentation of music, the words that springs to mind when describing the B-275 Superleggera is words like agile, precise, fast, dynamic and natural.
The B-275 simply let the music breath more freely, due to the removal of unnessesary weight. This is in line with Densens effort in previous models, where the attention has always been to make a light cabinet, but here it is obviously taken to extremes with the 2 cabinet solution.

lol, do what now?

[Lawrence001]

Actually some of it reminded me of Musical Fidelity's claims (eg. military grade aluminium/valves) and they sound pretty good. Also some of the old dacs sound better than most of the ones. So yes it could just be a bit average but it could also be a system mismatch or aged components. (If replacing caps in an old amp makes it sound better I don't see why it can't also hold for CD players, at least in the output stage).

Edit: just saw Martin's second post and it is definitely verging on complete BS. I wonder if Densen poached MF's head of marketing

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[simon g]

To be honest, I never thought Densen players were that great to start with. What you're up against here is that the likes of Marantz have huge economies of scale, significant R&D resource and manufacturing skills that Densen can't even dream of matching. It's often the case that the large, established brands, operating globally, have excellent, fine sounding products at sensible pricing levels. Densen is a tiny company operating with just a very few people.

The trouble is that forums and the like tend to focus on the small, boutique or niche type brands. It's very easy to get caught up in the 'oh, it's a mass market product; it just can't be as good as my 'audiophile' one'.

[Macca]

Actually some of it reminded me of Musical Fidelity's claims (eg. military grade aluminium/valves) and they sound pretty good. Also some of the old dacs sound better than most of the ones. So yes it could just be a bit average but it could also be a system mismatch or aged components. (If replacing caps in an old amp makes it sound better I don't see why it can't also hold for CD players, at least in the output stage).

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You're right but in my experience if components in a cd player start going out of spec or failing this is reflected in the player not reading discs, cutting out, not playing the whole disc and so forth, not in slightly degraded sound quality. I own lots of faulty CD players!

This is just a case of an expensive CD player being bettered by one that cost a fraction of the price and that's something I have come across a number of times.

[Lawrence001]

I remember the Densen Beat amplifier getting good reviews but not read anything about their CDPs.

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[Macca]

To be honest, I never thought Densen players were that great to start with. What you're up against here is that the likes of Marantz have huge economies of scale, significant R&D resource and manufacturing skills that Densen can't even dream of matching. It's often the case that the large, established brands, operating globally, have excellent, fine sounding products at sensible pricing levels. Densen is a tiny company operating with just a very few people.

The trouble is that forums and the like tend to focus on the small, boutique or niche type brands. It's very easy to get caught up in the 'oh, it's a mass market product; it just can't be as good as my 'audiophile' one'.

Spit on. Added to which like any non-Jap manufacturer with the exception of Philips they buy in all the parts from OEM anyway. They aren't making their own DACS and transports. Maybe they build their own analogue output stage. Maybe.

[struth]

People like what they like. Its as good as the listener thinks it is, and that goes for all equipment

[Pharos]

Is there no end to the descriptions intending to convey a concept, and then how they have worked at improving along the lines of that concept?

Who precisely do you want spat on Macca?