CD Changer AFTERMATH (Sony 85ES Review)
Dan Wallach
I definitely got a good deal through the mail (thanks Jerry!) and have
the real US warranty and everything. I ordered last Tuesday and it
arrived today, Monday. The store was:
HCM Audio
1-800-222-3465
1-916-345-1341 info (rarely use this, unless 800 busy)
1-916-345-7269 FAX
1015 Mangrove Ave.
Chico, CA 95926
[disclaimer: I'm not affiliated, except for being a happy customer]
(I talk about how the player sounds, later. First, the "features")
Nits and such:
* It has line-level variable and fixed output (gold plated). The variable
output can be changed via the remote control. The digital output is
optical. Yippie. I have yet to understand what's wrong with coax.
* Initially, it made a noticible noise while playing, comparable to somebody
whispering "Ssssssss." It's quieted down a little, now.
* The Custom File stuff is a joke. You can have it show you 10 chars for
up to 184 CD's, plus you can change what it says when there are no discs
("NADA D00DZ"). You can program up to 24 discs and have the player remember
the program. This is nice, but, you can only play a disc's program back
when the player is in "Bank" mode. Well, I'm not going to program all
~190 of my discs and odds are, I'll probably have maybe one programmed
disc and 4 non-programmed discs in there. Turns out, in Bank mode, the
player will ignore all discs that aren't programmed. This renders this
feature effectively useless. Sigh! Looks like they didn't really design
the carousel from scratch but rather hacked the single-disk "Custom File"
hardware to work on the carousel.
* I like having the 10 track selection buttons on the front panel. I'm
not convinced this is worth the difference in price between the 75 and 85,
but I'm happy with the deal I got.
* This player is the most shock resistant thing I've ever seen. My player
sits atop my clothes dresser. My previous Pioneer PD-6300 would tend to
skip if I closed the drawer too fast or hard. As yet, I've been completely
unable to skip the Sony. At all. This is in stark contrast to the Yamaha
changer which would skip quite bad, in the store.
* It came with four screws, and the manual mentions they only come with the
85ES. For the life of me, I can't figure out where these screws go. I
think they go to the fake (uh, simulated) wood side panels.
* Right now, I have it on random play with 5 discs, and it isn't taking
very long between tracks at all. Just now, it took 9.3 secs from the
middle of one CD to the middle of another.
But, how does it sound:
I was comparing the Sony to my Pioneer (1.5 year old) PD-6300. The
Pioneer has 8x oversampling, 18-bit D/A. At the time, it cost $300
but I've seen similar recently for more like $225. That would make
the Sony relatively twice as expensive (modulo discounts).
The Sony seemed to have slightly cleaner highs -- on Steely Dan, Aja,
the vocals sounded more airy and the percussion, particularly the cymbals,
were slightly better defined.
Right now, on Pink Floyd, Momentary Lapse of Reason, "Dogs of War" it
appears to be totally clipping in the loud parts (sounds like static
from bad FM reception) but I think this is just a poor CD recording.
I guess it can't create perfection from a lack thereof :-)
It's hard for me to really tell for sure because my wimpy Kenwood 55W
receiver just can't hack the volume that well. I'll know better when
I get out of the dormitories and into someplace where I can justify
buying better speakers and amplifier (and hopefully, can afford such).
As long as you're not sitting right next to the player, the "sssss"
noise isn't appreciable.
Oh, well. That's all for today. Thanks to everybody who sent me
mail and helped me decide which player to buy, and where to buy it.
Dan Wallach
dwal...@soda.berkeley.edu
Bob Niland
> * The Custom File stuff is a joke. You can have it show you 10 chars for
> up to 184 CD's, plus you can change what it says when there are no
> discs ("NADA D00DZ"). You can program up to 24 discs and have the
> player remember the program.
That's evidently a typo in the manual. I think they meant to say that you
can only program up to 24 steps per disc. You can CF the full 128 discs.
I've already programmed well over 24 discs.
> * It came with four screws, and the manual mentions they only come with
> the 85ES. For the life of me, I can't figure out where these screws go.
> I think they go to the fake (uh, simulated) wood side panels.
They replace the screws for the wood panels, if you remove the wood panels
for racking.
Regards, Hewlett-Packard
Bob Niland Internet: r...@FC.HP.COM 3404 East Harmony Road
UUCP: [hplabs|hpfcse]!hpfcrjn!rjn Ft Collins CO 80525-9599
Jerry Grooms
+-- r...@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Bob Niland) writes:
>
>re: > Well, I finally got my Sony CDP-85ES today.
>
>> * The Custom File stuff is a joke. You can have it show you 10 chars for
>> up to 184 CD's, plus you can change what it says when there are no
>> discs ("NADA D00DZ"). You can program up to 24 discs and have the
>> player remember the program.
>
>That's evidently a typo in the manual. I think they meant to say that you
>can only program up to 24 steps per disc. You can CF the full 128 discs
This should be 184, as originally mentioned, right?
--
Jerry Grooms
gro...@eosl460a.erim.org
Dan Wallach
>* Initially, it made a noticible noise while playing, comparable to somebody
> whispering "Ssssssss." It's quieted down a little, now.
Well, it hasn't gone away, and I'm starting to wonder. Turns out,
when it's in pause mode, it tends to click. When it's on those
quiet parts between songs, the "ssss" goes away! I put in my copy
of _Digital Domain_ for further tests.
_Digital Domain_ has sine waves of three amplitudes. For the quieter
waves, the "ssssss" sound actually got quieter! For all zero, the
"noise floor," the changer is quite silent with only an occasional
short "sssss".
This is really, really weird.
Can others duplicate my results? It's rather suprising. I just got
a Consumer Reports magazine which rates the 75ES as it's best carousel
changer. Maybe their unit worked fine.
If nobody else has noticed these problems, I'll be taking the thing in
for warranty work (and so soon...) to see if they can fix it. Either
that, or I'll just open it up and have a look inside. All you need to
open it is the right hex key... I'm tempted to go at it with a can
of freon in one hand and a can of light machine oil in the other.
Dan
Michael J Kobb
>In article <1991Feb26.0...@agate.berkeley.edu> I wrote:
::* Initially, it made a noticible noise while playing, comparable to somebody
:: whispering "Ssssssss." It's quieted down a little, now.
:
:Well, it hasn't gone away, and I'm starting to wonder. Turns out,
:when it's in pause mode, it tends to click. When it's on those
:quiet parts between songs, the "ssss" goes away! I put in my copy
:of _Digital Domain_ for further tests.
:
:_Digital Domain_ has sine waves of three amplitudes. For the quieter
:waves, the "ssssss" sound actually got quieter! For all zero, the
:"noise floor," the changer is quite silent with only an occasional
:short "sssss".
The phenomena you mention also occur on my '85ES. My old C7ESD also did the
same thing, but it was much more noticeable.
Can anybody explain this??
--Mike