Scored a Denon DCD-1500 straight out of 1986. From what I could find these originally sold for about $700 in '86 money. Sounds warm, fantastic. Now to go dig the rest of my CD's out of the basement.

Picture of a Denon DCD-1500 CD Player

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[–] 11 points 1 month ago (1 child)

I'm no connoisseur, but I love me some AV gear with a VFD display

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago*

    I love that CDs are making a resurgence like vinyl did last decade. In the past couple of years, I've been buying more and more new albums on CD again. It's cheaper and (let's be real) sound better than vinyl. Still buy LPs periodically when they don't cost an arm and a leg or when they aren't pressed as a damn double LP. Who honestly wants to flip a 40 minute album 3 fucking times?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (12 children)

    Oo v nice, digital output? You could use a much better DAC now and get far better sound than an 80s DAC.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    No... Its got dual Burr-Brown DACs with variable and fixed outputs. I wish it had digital output but for $50 i'm not complaining. Sounds good on my little Edifier R1280T speakers, works for now. 😅

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    I don’t think 1986 had digital outputs on consumer, probably not even on professional devices.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Toslink was a rarity back then. Related, I have a CD changer from 2001 I think. I connected it to my modern DAC and it sounded worse than the analog output. I still don't know why to this day. Shouldn't it always be better?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    No need to have this for most setups unless you are an enthusiast. Any A-brand CD player built after ~1985 has oversampling and 16-bit DACs. Sure modern DACs are better, but the audible difference is rather insignificant until used in a setup with high end speakers or headphones.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    The JVC I just got has a 1 bit dac apparebtly. I can't really tell it apart from my Sony

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    1 bit audio dacs use a different architecture (delta/sigma) which had some benefits in the late '80s and in the '90s (lower cost and very linear frequency response). They are fine if implemented well

    The only dacs that suck are the cost optimized dacs in bottom of the barrel cd players and portables.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    That’s perfect!

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    Beautiful machine. I have a Sony from around the same time. Unfortunately, it doesn't work properly.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Congrats. I scored a denon pma 360 for $40 from eBay before they exploded in popularity. I’ve explored replacing it with something more recent, but I just love the warm denon sound too much to let go of it.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    That's a nice cd player! I have a Denon DRA-335R amp and it's just fantastic. Keep the old physical media stuff alive!

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Very nice pickup.

    Have you got the mini-shelf ready to hold and display the 'now playing CD'?

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