New Transport

Well, the new CD player (to be used as transport) arrived, courtesy of HenryT.

Heavy is good I think. Perhaps that I think that was obvious based on my 100kg rack, but the 13kg Marantz CD16 seems to prove the point.

On its own it's rather smooth (as marantz are) for my taste, but I bought it as a transport. As that, it is really rather good, and that's even before the DOB (part of which is a clock) gets installed.

Rather gratifying to see that the base plate of the chassis is about 3mm thick copper plate, and the rest of the casework is also copper (rather than silk screening on top of the black paint, the paint is silk screened on, so the writing on the back is bare copper.

First impressions of the sound (as transport for the superdac) is that it is punchy and musical, at least relative to the rotel. Perhaps not quite a WM job, but not bad...

I'm a happy bunny.

 

Glad to hear it.

The CD16 takes a good couple of hours to warm up from cold. The bottom end will get fuller and you should get a bit more life once its warmed up properly, it tends to sound a bit lean from cold. Incidientally, I use to leave the CD16 on all the time before the laser died and got replaced, so I'm suspecting that leaving it on all the time might not be a good idea if you want to preserve laser life.

Punchy yes, timing can be a bit off, but a clock mod should help in that area. As a CDP I found it could be a bit hashy up top, but yet still smooth, not that you'll be worrying about that side of its performance anyway.

The build quality is rather impressive on the CD16, but particularly the bottom plate as you said, that's the one area where the CD16 is much better built than the more expensive Accuphase I currently use.

 

Can I just ask..

Why did you not go for a lower model like the 5400? They use the same transport mechanism if I am not mistaken all the way up to the cd17. So wouldn't they all sound the same if you are only using the digital outs? Or are there other improvements as well that make it sound better from the digital out?

 

You are indeed mistaken.

The CD16 uses the CDM4 pro mechanism with plenty of attention paid to power supplies and the chassis is made of a significant amount of copper.

The CD5400 uses the VAM1201 mechanism, with a cheap, "sufficient" power supply and casework made of paper-thin steel.

And even players using the same mechanism and digital outs can sound very very very different indeed. Compare timpy's or michaelab's heavily modified TEAC T1s with stock T1s, and they're a bit different. The casework, chassis and mechanism are all the same though...

Edit: realised that I forgot to put the pic into the first post.

 

looks nice Isaac.

jus need a new amp now

 

Re: Re: New Transport

Just curious, but I'd have assumed the laser was probably only on if a disc was spinning? Am I wrong?

 

Glad to hear you like the Marantz CD16 Isaac but you have to admit that it's not nearly as good looking as the RCD-991.

PS. dust your shelves sometime

 

Re: Re: Re: New Transport

i would also like to know the answer to that i assumed as long as no disc was in the tray then the laser would be doing nowt. I always leave the thing permanently switched on.........is this screwing with my lasers lifespan ?

 

Not nearly.... WAY better looking, tbh. The display is a much more pleasant colour, and not as obnoxiously bright, and can be switched off (I can sleep again!), and the styling is... well, present. The rotel is a box with some buttons and display and drawer in the middle... the marantz is softer, yet more imposing.

The laser should not be on unless a disc is actively being read... My CD63 was fine with 7.5 years in my ownership of 24/7 power on and it's still fine with 24/7 power on in my parents system since I moved on from it in january. The rotel's laser was fine, but the transport mech suffered a mechanical failure.

I did dust the middle shelf (where the amp used to reside. Don't really notice it on the bottom shelf, except for in the pic with flash lighting....

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: New Transport

I believe this is correct in most cases, but not all, from what I've read elsewhere.

Certain models of Philips mechs leave the laser running as long as the CDP is powered up. I don't think this applies to any of the modern Philips mechs from the past 2-3 years. I use to leave the CD16 switched on all the time, and the original laser died in that after less than 5 years. On the otherhand, I've got a Sony ES CDP that I also use to leave on 24/7 for about 5 years which I still own, is now over 12 years old and have never yet had to replace the laser in that machine.

I leave my current CDT, an Accuphase DP90 switched on 24/7 too (this has a Sony derived mech).

 

Isaac, have you reMOved the inner tubes from under the slabs? I thought that you liked their effect on the sound

 

No MO, they're still there... You can see the white writing on the one under the cdp, and the one under the superdac shelf is sticking out a bit. What I've found is that the trick is to use as low a pressure as possible that keeps the component suspended (many people do the same with seismic sinks).

Also, one of the tubes got a puncture .... Replaced now though.

 

Isaac,

Have you ever considered doing some mods to your RA-971?

Just this week I did some small modifications to my mates RA-931.
It's fairly basic inside and I love the way you can just take off the top cover and bottom plate so there's no need to take out the board.

The pre amp stage is just a single op-amp.
I removed the input caps to the op-amp. In the 931 they were some small yellow Elna electrolylitics (yuk). The same type of cap is used between the op-amp output and the power amp input. I replaced these with some Black Gates.

I also replaced the op-amps generic supply caps with some Panasonic FC's

This little mod made a nice improvement.
Next I'll up the bias current a little bit and see if I hear any improvements.

 

I haven't really, because there's only so much I could do... The caps in it are mostly black gates... I've put an IEC socket into the casework. I could play with some op amps, but the time investment isn't really worth it because I'd rather go rather more upmarket... even with loads of tweaking, it's still not going to compete with a £1k power amp. And the concentric balance control annoys me....

I'm going to have a shot at building my own amp with the txfmrs that I've got.