Denon DCD-1500AE CD-player
As before such popular brand is faithful to the traditions in design, performance quality and content. Strict, high black case, huge display on polished, machine-cut front aluminum panel, minimal necessary set of buttons and, like club badge on the lapel of the coat, gilt nameplate. Chic and shine! Everything was always good with dresses of "Denon" club members. What is inside? A special servo drive Denon S.V.H. (Supress Vibration Hybrid), which minimizes disc vibrations, is applied in the player. A firmed technology Advanced Al24 Processing provides the highest sound quality. DAC based on Burr-Brown PCM1791 chip does processing of the signal with readings of 24bit/192kHz. Coils of oxygen-free copper in separate supply sources for analogue and digital parts provide clear and stable voltage, what allows decreasing essentially noises level and blocking distortions. A powerful, A/V chassis crowns all internal equipment. Pure Direct mode, turning off digital outputs, is provided in the device; the display can be suppressed completely, in order to avoid additional framings, and also you can display the information if disc has it.
Take a stake of examination tickets (discs), sit comfortably and start the listening. We want to pay your attention on one nuance. The matter is that some of tested CD players are able to play discs of high resolution SACD, when other models don't have such possibility. However we straight decided that it would be rational to share impressions about quality of the work with recording of another format and even compare CD tracks of hybrid discs with tracks, having the same but DSD content. This is such test in test. Playing phonograms on CD doesn't cause any claims. Probably, the sound doesn't have inaccessible "space" depth, but the material is worked out very confidently, at high professional level. Such golden mean of good and qualitative sound. Existence of warmth and delicacy injects a necessary charm. Speaking about SACD, compositions in high definition are played correctly, but here is a paradox: at comparing of two disc layers (was mentioned above) we like the sounding of standard track more - there are more basses and they are more assembled and the sound, to our opinion, is denser and more natural. Possibly this demands on specificity of mastering of one or another layer or maybe increased definition doesn't always do music good.
You have to switch on wanted mode for the listening of CD, CD layer of hybrid disc or SACD stereo track. Both the faceplate and the remote control have "SACD setup" button. However there is a small ruse about how correctly use it. At pressing the button on display inscription "stereo", meaning the transition to SACD or CD zone, has to appear. This was already mentioned in the instruction, but you have to switch (push the button) very quickly otherwise only one variant will be set in motion. At activated Direct mode there will be no signal on digital outputs if you want to use them with another external DAC or separate processor.
