Conference cookie::notes$archive:cd_v1

I own a Teac PD-11. When I read SR article, I had to double check to make
sure it really was! The SR features are way out of line with what the unit
actually has. They stated it had RC. (Nope) Disc elapsed time. (Nope). I
think the sugg.lis. was probably way out of line also. I got mine at Service
Merchandise less than a year ago for $299. A 50% discount seems a bit steep.

Could Teac be recycling model numbers?

Point is... Verify the features SR had printed, you may find your options
are wider. (or narrower)

Happy hunting

Edd

MIKE...

I have a few thoughts on your problem of selecting a CD player.

Stay away from TEAC anything.  I use to work in a high end stereo shop in
Denver, as the service manager.  I had to order repair parts from TEAC.
TEAC just plain does not support repair of thier equipment.  It would take
up to 6 months some times to get parts for thier tape recorders.  Unless
things have really changed lately, you just can't get repair parts.

The SONY 520ES is rated quite high by STEREOPHILE.....but I have the 610ES
(one generation earlier) that has the tracking problem.  The 520 has
a completely different tracking design so they may have solved thier
problem.  The 520ES would have a 3 year warranty, the other SONY would not.

Don't know anything about the DENON, so will not comment.

For some reason today I don't seem to be able to type "their" instead of
"thier", but I won't redo the note.

Dennis

Re: .0

I agree with .2.  The SONY should be a great machine.  I've got a 620 and
have been very happy with it.  In my mind the three year warrany is definately
worth a second look.

As far as useful features go, I think time remaining has got to be one of
the most important features.  I've done quite a bit of taping and find it
very useful.  Especially when your cutting it close and want to make sure
you don't miss anything.

Steve

       Thanks for the responses! Looks like I'm narrowed down to
       three...

       One question I forgot in the base note - what are the differences
       (besides cue by time) between the CDP-520ES and the CDP-302? Are
       the differences worth the difference in price? Note a typo in the
       base note - the list price for the 302 was listed as $550, not
       $500.

       Mike

Mike,
Regarding digital filtering, oversampling, etc, etc.

Rather than put a lot of effort into understanding these and determining
if they are improvements, hype, and so on, I recommend you take a CD or 
three that is music you like and varied (you know, lush, dramatic, laid back,
intense) grab your headphones and find a store that will let you listen to
at least two or three of the models that fit your features/budget checklist.
Plan on spending at least an hour listening, and dont be afraid to listen
to the same spot with all the players of interest before moving on in the
piece. 

Dont let yourself become to overwhelmed by the lack of background noise or
you will never be able to make a best sound choice. They are all much quieter
than your average phono, tape or FM, which is nice but distracting to a first
time listener of CD.  If you cannot identify one which sounds best to your
ear, further store listening probably wont help you decide. Pick one.   

Before you plunk down the dough, make sure you can return whatever you buy, 
for cash refund, within some time (no less than 30 days). This should be
enough time for you to become familiar with how it really sounds to you.
If you like everything about it near the end of this period, keep it. 

If there is any doubt in your mind as to whether this one is perfect for
you or not, go back to the store with your CDs and headphones and listen
and push buttons all over again. In that 30 days you are bound to have
accumulated the ability to approach these things on their level - more CD
savy - if you will.  Your second choice may or may not agree with your first,
and if not its no skin out of your wallet, pick the one you really want.

Walt

RE: .4  Difference between the 520ES and the 302

Other than an extra year of warrantee, according to a recent net.audio posting,
the only difference is the use of better electrolytic capacitors in a few
important places (power supply, dc blocking, filtering).  While some people
can hear the improvement, the better capacitors are still lousy for filter
applications and Sony should have done much better.

After all the problems people have with Sonys, the extra year of warrantee
might be worth it!

My personal vote is for the Yamaha decks.  I've got a CD-X2, and love it.
I picked mine up for $250.00 on sale.  I did compare to Pioneer and Technics,
and the Yamaha was far and away the better player.

Well, I like my CD-X2 just fine except for the fact that it's a lemon.
I finally took it in to the shop to have a chronic tracking problem
fixed, and was told it would take at least 6 weeks.  If you scan for
my old note (where I called it a CD-x1 by mistake, you'll see that
I wasn't alone with this problem with Yamahas.   If I were to buy another,
I'd check it out IN THE STORE with several disks, and refuse anything that
skipped even once.

       OK, thanks for all the recommendations for players. My feeling
       had been that from everything I've heard, the CDP-302 would suit
       me just fine, so I just wanted to see if I could find anything as
       good for cheaper, or maybe something a little better for a little
       more. I wanted to narrow my choices down to 3-5 players, which it
       appears I have done, so I can be better armed when I go out
       looking. Now, back to my other questions:

       1. Good/cheap dealers near Boston? I've been to Tweeter and
       haven't been impressed. And what about mail-order?

       2. Cheap disks around Boston? Last weekend I went to Boston
       Compact Disk and the Coop. BCD had prices generally ranging from
       $14.99 to $16.99 (but $20.99 for Blood Sweat & Tears' "Child is
       Father to the Man", an album I never expected to see on CD). I
       then checked out the Coop, which had a wider variety of prices
       but generally seemed slightly more expensive. I bought a few
       disks at the Coop anyway, because they package everything in
       jewel boxes while BCD sticks to cardboard. I was disappointed in
       the selection at the Coop (didn't look carefully enough at BCD to
       judge theirs) - I couldn't find several disks I was specifically
       looking for: Donald Fagen - The Nightfly, Steve Reich - Music for
       18 Musicians, Peter Gabriel - Security (didn't have any PG, for
       that matter), Suzanne Vega, Oregon (??? - I know there's at least
       one of theirs on CD), anything of Aaron Copland (not counting
       Lenny's piano arrangement of El Salon Mexico). Which reminds me,
       does anyone know of a CD including Copland's Piano Variations?

       And how about mail order? I've gone through this file and noted
       CDC seems the most popular one, but no one's discussed it lately
       and I'm wondering if they still have the best deal.

       Mike

re: .9

When you say "they package everything in jewel boxes while BCD sticks to
cardboard" - are you sure you weren't looking at the theft-resistant boxes
that most discs I've bought come in?  They are a cardboard box twice as tall
as a jewel box, and the jewel box (and disc) are contained within.  It's
the same idea as those plastic contraptions cassettes (and 8-tracks, groan!)
are sometimes packaged in.

Hopefully helpful,
Dan

Re: BCD:
    BCD doesn't displayt he actual discs, just the labels attached to a sheet
of Plexiglas.  This could have been confusing.

Re: CDC
    I have the latest CDC catalog.  The prices are still pretty good,
but when there are local sales, you can do better locally.
				Steve

re:BCD

Adding to what Steve says, BCD just displays the liner notes, wrapped in
plastic and backed with plexiglass. You bring this up to the counter,
and they pull the proper selection from their shelf behind the counter.
This is a reasonable method, as it helps prevent theft, and it optimizes
the display space.

	And you can find SUZANNE VEGA there, besides.
        
--- jerry

       Ahhh! I thought that those were the disks in cardboard sleeves,
       not the liner notes... Funny, the first disk I saw when I went
       into the store was Suzanne Vega - but it's not a top priority for
       me, since I have it on tape.

       Mike

	Mail order update:
	
	Saturday I called up CDC and ordered a catalog and 13 disks (the
	minimum necessary for the $1/disk discount). Most disks came to
	$13.49 after discount; two were $11.99 (King Crimson's
	Discipline, and Glenn Gould's recording of the Goldberg
	Variations, if you must now). Postage/handling is $2.50 for the
	initial order and $2 for backorders. Four of the disks arrived
	yesterday (Tuesday). It would have been nice to get more than a
	third of my order, but otherwise I'm happy.
	
	Mike

	Cuomo's has the CDP-302 on sale for $449.99. Good price?
	
	They also have the CDP-30 for $99.99. Whoa, the $100 barrier
	broken, you say? Not quite... in the fine print:
	
	With purchase of Sony 100 watt music system S5000 show below.
	
	The system in question costs $1000 ($1100 with the CD player, of
	course).
	
	Mike

re: .15

We paid $420 at Lechmere's a year ago in March.  They seem to have decent
savings when they have a sale.

Donna

$449 is a typical sale price, but note that the CDP-302 is in such high
demand that it rarely goes on sale.  I haven't seen an advertised price
that low on the 302 in six months.
				Steve

	I finally got my CD player - a CDP-302 at Q Audio in Cambridge.
	I could have had it for $435 for cash and gotten a one-year
	warranty; being low on cash and wanting the two-year warranty I
	paid $488 which also included their "one-shot deal": one time
	only you can take all the disks you want out of their stock for
	their price ($10-12). The selection wasn't quite up to the Coop
	or Boston Compact Disk - I ended up with only five because they
	seemed to have just about every disk I already owned or had on
	backorder with CDC, and didn't find that many others I was
	interested in (well, there were a number of recordings of
	classical pieces I would have liked, but I didn't bring my list
	of recommended recordings). You have to pay cash (or check) for
	the disks.
	
	I'll add this: if I were to recommend a single non-classical
	track as a demo for the medium, it would be Joe Jackson's "Heart
	of Ice" on "Body and Soul".
	
	Mike

	A couple of interesting phenomena I've noticed: usually when
	listening to something on headphones I turn up the volume as
	loud as is comfortable. With my CD player, I noticed when I took
	off the headphones with music still playing that the volume I
	was listening at was much higher than I use for other audio
	equipment (the advantages of clean living and clean sound:-).
	The other thing is that watching the display at the beginning of
	a track that starts with pickup notes annoys me - something in
	the back of my mind insists that 0:00 should correspond to the
	first downbeat!
	
	Mike

I think the queueing points are set when the CD is mastered.

--PSW

"Phrase Repeat".

The Technics SLP2 has an 'A-B Repeat' mode, whereby you can select
two arbitrary points on the disc and repeatedly play the same section
over and over again). 

This can be as short as a couple of notes (the first time I tried setting
it up, I thought I'd broken the deck; all it did was warble on the same
two-note phrase!)

Nigel

	All the players I mentioned had it (otherwise I wouldn't have
	mentioned them:-). As a matter of fact, this past weekend I
	learned the chords to all the songs on Talking Heads' "Little
	Creatures" album with the aid of the phrase repeat. On the Sony
	there's nothing fancy about it - hit the A-B button at the
	beginning of the phrase you want to repeat and hit it again at
	the end (of course, you can skip ahead if it's a long segment)
	and it'll repeat over and over and over with a slight gap when
	it goes back to the beginning. I know what you mean about
	wanting to be able to leave a big gap - I had to use the pause
	button a lot.
	
	Mike

    On my Sony CDP-200, you can also use the phrase repeat to skip things
    you don't like.  You go to the end of the segment you want to skip,
    hit "A-B", go back to the start of the segment, hit "A-B" again,
    and you magically have an "unrepeat" function.
    
    I think what this actually does is repeat the whole disk with the
    one segment missing from the middle.  It is sometimes useful if
    there's a song you really hate (like that one in the middle of
    Synchronicity).