Description
Get it now before the kids decide CDs are cool again. Works flawlessly and has been my personal player for the last 2 years. Trying to downsize. Like all of Sonys top-line products, the CDP-X799ES is loaded with bells and whistles, most of which—like Custom File and Shuffle Play—are of little interest to serious audio types. However, unlike the typical feature-laden product, in which performance is heavily compromised to keep the price competitive, the 779 gives every indication of real attention to quality. Its built like the proverbial brick outhouse, with a heavy, low-resonance chassis, a hefty power-transformer case (which apparently houses two transformers), and so on. The deck is solidly built and sounds that way, being reassuringly smooth and quiet in operation. It maketh no clunks, no bangs, no grinding-gear noises when the door opens and closes.Design features Most of the 779s basic design is the same as that of the earlier CDP-X77ES, to which review I refer interested readers. So I wont go into a long and tedious description of the 799ESs circuitry, chip sets, and interior decor. Rather, Ill mention only the features Sony felt were important enough to cover in a technical white paper about their 1992 players. (Yes, the 779 is that old.)Complementary PLM A/D Converter: Instead of the X77s two DACs per channel, the 779s high-density linear converter uses four per channel to output its pulse-length–modulated (PLM) bitstream at 90 million pulses per second (footnote 3). This is claimed to provide even higher waveform precision than before and, as a side effect, an incredible 131dB S/N ratio!Direct Digital Synchronization: Sonys attack on the jitter problem involves introducing the clock signal right into the DAC, at the point where the digital signal is converted to analog.DC Servo FET Line Drive: The analog section in each channel consists of a servo-controlled, DC-coupled FET, with no capacitors whatsoever in the signal path. This addresses what has been shown to be the major shortcoming of most CD players: a mediocre analog section. The servo control is simply to ensure that no DC offset can appear at the output. Ive always had a weakness for FET sound, particularly in low-level circuits, because it combines the best aspects of tube and transistor sound, with none of the shortcomings of either. The benefits of a capacitorless signal chain are unarguable.Digital Servo: This refers to the servo that controls the players laser-optical pickup. Long considered legendary in the disc-tracking department, Sonys players havent seemed to need improving in that respect for a number of years, so this latest innovation would seem to be just icing on the cake. First used on laserdisc players, where tracking problems are exacerbated by the discs 12 diameter, digital servo control simply means the analog output from the pickup is converted immediately to digital, kept in that form to do the necessary filtering (of noise and disc eccentricities) and control-voltage calculations, and then D/Ad just before feeding the servo control amplifiers.Laserdisc players with digital tracking control have proven to be much more stable and glitch-free than with analog control, both in sound and picture, so theres no reason to believe CDs wouldnt be similarly helped. Whether the difference would ever be audible from CD is moot. But then, Sonys high-end players have always been designed with the view that If it might conceivably help, why not do it? (In high-end, we call this no-holds-barred.) Because digital control-signal processing consumes less current with less current-drain fluctuation than analog processing, it should cause less signal-modulating power-supply voltage change in other parts of the player.Solid Deck Platform: New materials and even heavier construction than in previous models reduce even more any tendency for the deck as a whole to resonate in response to rapid servo movements, for more precise and stable pickup positioning.Improved Drive Motor: The turntable motor is a brushless, slotless (no large gaps between rotor segments) design to minimize cogging, and the bearing is a polished sapphire. (When, I wonder, will we see a vacuum-holddown CD platter?)Sealed Disc Drawer: Not a new Sony feature—both Nakamichi and Meridian have transports and players with a sealed disc section—the drawer assembly is fitted with an air seal which, when closed, is supposed to prevent airborne sounds from impinging on the disc surface. Well, if that can foul an LPs sound, I suppose it could affect a CD. Everything else seems to.Circuit Isolation: As much as possible of the wiring is now on rigid, low-resonance circuit boards, all of which are electrically isolated from one another for minimal noise leakthrough. Separate, shock-mounted twin-core power transformers serve the digital servo and signal-handling sections. There is only one AC cord. (Sony, you disappoint me!)
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