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which player is best for CD-DA?

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 6:35 am
by Shroo-man
sometime in the future I will buy a CD-i just specifically to play Digital Audio CDs connected up with an amplifier and speakers. so basically I want to know what is the best cd-i player to use in a sound system? I was thinking maybe a Philips 490 or Grundig 110E?

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:20 am
by Bas
Didn't the 220 come with a digital audio output?

If you use a standard amplifier the 210 or 220 might 'fit' better because of the size, but I'm not sure if one is technically better than the other...

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:46 pm
by WindowsKiller
All CD-i players are quite bad when it comes to CD-DA playback quality. There's no oversampling or whatsoever to improve audio quality. I've tested a 450, 470, 210, 350 and 370, and none of them could even compete with the cheapest dedicated CD player.

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:49 am
by Shroo-man
so you're saying the cheapest model is the best? by that do you mean the 205 and 910 models?

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 1:10 pm
by XCLTempesT
I think the first cdi players: CDI205, CDI 220/00 and CDI910 have very good audio quality. All these models use a Philips bitstream DA converter, that produces (imho) very nice audio.
Even though Bitstream was actually a costs saving method, it was marketed as "high tech" and the performance was rather good compared to similar priced cd-audio players of the time (panasonic also introduced its '1 bit' DA converter technology in its audio cd players at that time for the same reason).

Bitstream is an oversampling DA converter, so at least the these first models had oversampling.

Philips later introduced a lot of cost saving methods in order to lower the price of CD-I players. I do not believe the other cd-i players had a bitstream converter (maybe the first portables do: 350 and 360, but I would need to check that), and I believe the others used integrated DA converters (and had worse audio).

But the latest consumer cdi-220/60 cdi-220/80 and the CDI-740 players do have an PCM digital audio output, so you could use a good quality DA converter in your amplifier.

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 1:32 pm
by WindowsKiller
Shroo-man wrote:so you're saying the cheapest model is the best? by that do you mean the 205 and 910 models?
No, I mean any cheap CD player (not CD-i player) will sound better.