Conference cookie::notes$archive:cd_v1

264.0. "CD and the impact on Audio!" by THORBY::MARRA () Wed Jan 22 1986 07:54

    Exerpt from StereoPhile vol 8 # 7...
    
    Kyocera DA-910 CD player review... (1600$) !!
    
    J. Gordon Holt
    
    "Those of our readers who are still anti-CD are going to be offended
    by what I am about to say. Pertly because they do not want it to
    be true, and mainly because it is.  I shall utter the heresy anyway:
    the Compact Disc is, right now, doing more for the cause of high-end
    audio than anything that has ever come along before!
      There, I've said it. Now I shall explain it.
      Prior to CD, the world's major audio equipment manufacturers -
    and face, that means big Japanese manufacturers - generally scorned
    high end audio as impractical, fanatical tweakery.  They loaded
    their products with features of all kind - flashing colored lights,
    sophisticated switcheng, and fancy signal processing circuitry -
    everything but high-calibre sound quality.  If you wanted "purist"
    design, you did NOT buy Japanese. (It must be said that Sony, Yamaha,
    and Kenwood sis try to enter the high-end field with some superb,
    albeit overpriced, products, but were scuttled because of their
    mainstream image among consumers.  Only one Japanese firm ever earned
    a positive image with perfectionists, but Nakamich is hardly a major
    Japanese Manufacturer.) The CD is changing all that.
      A major contributing factor was the unrestrained ebullienc of
    the hype which accompanied CD release: "perfect sound forever."
    The mainstream audio press - Stereo Review, High Fidelity and Audio-
    even reported initially that the first players were perfect.  But
    the so-called underground audio magazines, and a lot of perfectionist
    recording companies, soon made themselves hear as having strong
    misgivings about CD, and it is a tribute to our present influence
    in the field that the big magazines listened and, before too long,
    actually reported that maybe, just maybe, they too heard a difference
    between CD players.
      As soon as it was suggested that all CD players might NOT sound
    alike, the race was on to design a player that sounded "better."
     Now these designers, mind you, were working pretty much in the
    dark, and in directions counter to much of the conventional wisdom
    in audio engineering, which declares that most of those measurable
    defferences are NOT audible.  Yet the design people soon found that
    when one of those measurements was improved, so was the sound of
    the player!  Suddenly, conventional wisdom went by the board.  Those
    major manufacturers started studying perfectionist audio practices
    and taking them seriosly, for exactly the same reasons high-end
    manufacturers have been using them all thses years: they improve
    the sound.  Don't ask why; they just do.  And so, we have the Kyocera
    DA-910."
     					.
                                        .
                                        .
    
    four times oversampling
    three power supplies
    separate D/A converters
    digital output filtering with gentile final-stage analog filter
    (Look, ma, no ringing!)
    A completely DC-coupled analog section, completely side-stepping
    the issue of capacitor audibility (of course, no one can hear
    capacitors!) by getting rid of them completely.
    In short, the DA-910 is designed in much the same fashion as a Mark
    Levinson, Nelson Pass, or Lew Johnson might design a product.

         				.
                                        .
                                        .
    
    Okay, Now the nitty gritty.  How good is this perfectionist-designed
    CD player?  Well, there's bad news here, and there's more bad news.
    The first is that the DA-910 costs so much you probably wont be
    able to afford it.  That was not a misprint at the head of this
    report.  The price is $1600, making the DA-910 the most expensive
    CD player money can buy at the time of this writing(4).  The other
    bad news is that this is the best damned CD player I have ever heard.
    I hate to say it, but it's worth the outrageous price tag.
      It does everything better that any player I have used until now.
    It images better, gives a deeper, broader soundstage, and has tigher,
    deeper low end (although only by a very small margin over that of
    the Sony CDP-520ES). It has a noticeably sweeter, easier, and more
    open high end than either the sony or the other prior contendor
    for the best high end, the Nakamichi OMS-5.
    
      (4) Not a chance.  The Cambridge CD player weighs in at $2300, and
      Meitner has a no-doubt-expensive player in the wings, with Spectral
      and Krell breathing hard on its heels.
    

Notice the uncanny similarity of J.G.H. to the average Stereo Reveiw
reader:

	SR reader:	J. Hirsch's reveiw says so, the spec's say so,
			... it *must* be great!

	JGH:		Its insanely expensive, meets his design philosophy,
			... it *must* be great!

- Jim

The $1600 price isnt much below what I would expect a product which gets
this generation of CD right to run the buyer, the buzzwords in the reprint
(thanks for the trouble) touch on some of the right areas. The trouble is,
so far Kyocera has produced a lot of fairly expensive stuff, with the
accompanying buzzwords, which have been yawners. This would be out of character
for them, unless Holt is on their payroll, or was into the mushrooms again.

I will have to find a dealer who carries this thing and see for myself.
                       
Walt

Thanks for typing in all that stuff - have not gone to get a copy yet.

I agree with Ward about Kyocera.  The Nak units use most of those same
"audiophile" design features, yet after a long listen a few weeks ago,
the NAK OMS-7 high end had me suffering.

Kyocera is a big ceramic manufacturer.  I am constantly amused at the new
applications of ceramic construction materials they claim improves the sound.
Its use in solid-state amps makes as little sense as using tiptoes.

Maybie they did do a better job than Nak in implementing good design ideas.
The only way to tell is to go listen.  Unless Kyocera is spending a bundle
on 16-bit DACs (with honest-to-God 16-bit performance), they are making a
tidy profit on their CD player.

RE: audiophile Japanese products.  Doesn't LUX have a tube line in Japan?

Mark

RE: .3

> I agree with Ward about Kyocera.

Let's keep our W. Clarks straight.  264.2 was written by Walt Clark
(GRAMPS::WCLARK).  Other notes in this file (and related A/V files) are
written by Ward Clark (TLE::CLARK).  We both care a lot about quality,
but I'd say Walt is more fanatical (and obviously richer) than me.

-- Ward

RE .0

" ... gentile final-stage analog filter..."

Now that could bring a whole new dimension to audio design!

You can look at the Kyocera at believe it or not Lectra City.  They inherited
the franchise from their Massachusetts parent company (Prism Audio).

Unfortunately the Lectra City (old Tech Hi Fi idiots) salesman don't have any
idea how the players work.  So your on your own.

Steve

I know the Manchester Lectra City carries them in the back room.  I don't
know if the Nashua store has them or not.  I've only been in the Nashua
store once and would never go back.  

I went in there asking to listen to two pairs of speakers.   After 25 minutes
of listening to every Bose speaker in teh store he finally put on one of the
speakers I asked for.  (Note:  This was after physically grabbing him and
telling him he'd better put the one on I wanted or else!!!)

Steve

Re: .4 

Thanks Ward. Yup this Clark goes by Walt.

By the way, rich is what someone else is.....most of my hifi stuff has been
done with a lot of my own value added and over a long time (I could not
afford to replace much of it with its equal in todays market). 

I guess I have to admit to some fanaticism, but I justify that to myself
by repeating "anything worth doing is...." and tempering things by trying
to remember this is supposed to be fun.

Walt 

We listened to the DA-910 last summer at the dealer we bought our PS stuff from.
So far, it IS the best CD player we've heard, over the NAK, Revox, and Meridian.

But since Mark Kaepplein started spreading a rumor lately, I called the dealer
and asked about the new PS CD player, when it would be out, etc. Well, just last
night he told me that they HAVE THEM IN THE STORE! He says that he thinks it is
better than the DA-910 and goes for about half the price, $799 I think. They
generally do about 10% under list on PS, so I guess $720 or so. He can't be
trying to push that one over the DA-910, at twice the price he's got to be
making about twice as much, so I have no reason to doubt what he is saying. 

We haven't listened to it yet, but you can bet that we will when we next drop in
there when I return from two weeks at the CSC/CS. We plan on listening to some
speakers and making a decision about them before we consider another CD player,
unless the D5 becomes terminal. 

After we've heard the PS, I will let everyone know what we think of it.