Over the last week, I've been using an old, make that very old (15 years?), Sony CD/DVD DVP-NS725P player to break in my freshly modded conrad-johnson GAT Series 2. At the same time, because of other circumstances beyond my control, I've been relegated to using this player to listen to some of the CDs in my collection. Surprisingly, this $200 player isn't sounding half bad. It's certainly not driving me out of the room and has pretty good low end, dynamics and soundstaging. Images are far from paper thin and the music--take for instance the California Guitar Trio's rendition of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody--actually is engaging and one doesn't find their attention wandering to getting ready for work on Monday. This little Sony certainly not embarrassing a pretty good system or getting in the way of the music.
Of course, more than anything, it seems that the mastering is ever so critical with digital recordings. The whole recording and mastering process was going to hell in a handbasket before the advent of digital --and it's taken a long time to reverse direction and make any inroads in that matter. The variation in sound from disc to disc or song to song on sampler discs (or even at shows on music servers) is often beyond belief Tonight I threw Philip O'Hanlon's special sampler CD Demo disc XII into the Sony; quite a few of the RBCD cuts sounded very nice. Including among them was a track from George Duke (Warner), Lindsay Buckingham, Vienna Teng and Nat King Cole and George Shearing. Yes, there are things the Sony player could do better, but at a throwaway price of $200, it's an extraordinary performer.
Ducking for cover!
Of course, more than anything, it seems that the mastering is ever so critical with digital recordings. The whole recording and mastering process was going to hell in a handbasket before the advent of digital --and it's taken a long time to reverse direction and make any inroads in that matter. The variation in sound from disc to disc or song to song on sampler discs (or even at shows on music servers) is often beyond belief Tonight I threw Philip O'Hanlon's special sampler CD Demo disc XII into the Sony; quite a few of the RBCD cuts sounded very nice. Including among them was a track from George Duke (Warner), Lindsay Buckingham, Vienna Teng and Nat King Cole and George Shearing. Yes, there are things the Sony player could do better, but at a throwaway price of $200, it's an extraordinary performer.
Ducking for cover!

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