Category: Audio Gear

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Grail Obtained

Sony D-7. This was the model of my very first Discman, bought new in 1985. That particular one is long gone, but when I started getting back into this hobby a couple years ago I rwas keen to get another. Unfortunately most of the offerings on eBay were either prohibitively expensive or looked like they were ridden hard and…well, you know the rest of the phrase. This one came up about a month ago and the seller indicated it had “new batteries in the battery case.” (The D-7 doesn’t have “batteries” in the traditional sense. Think of its battery pack like what you’d see inside a laptop these days.) Even if the BP-200 pack was shot, the rest of it was in such great condition I figured I’d take a chance and would send it off to Kaosun like I did with my D-15 some time ago if it actually needed the mods. I put down the maximum bid I was willing to part with, and waited for the auction to run its course. Imagine my surprise when I won the auction for far less than my maximum!

It arrived yesterday. It really is in pristine condition. Everything works, and while I haven’t run the battery down to see how long it lasts yet*, it does work off the battery pack just fine. It’s not a Kaosun repair; there’s no charging LED on the battery case, but it seems to be just as good.

Yeah, like all pre-GForce players of the era, you just have to breathe on it and it will skip, but that goes with the territory. The fact that it sounds amazing more than makes up for it, and it can drive my Sennheisers louder than what I can tolerate—something that can’t be said for the examples of the later Sony players with the digital amplifiers I have. The mechanism is much quieter than either my D-10 or D-15, two other players of the same era—which is kind of surprising.

So yeah, I’m squealing like a schoolgirl meeting the Beatles in 1964 at the moment…

*EDIT: It lasts long enough to get through 4 CDs before needing to be plugged in to recharge.

*EDIT (10/29): Out of curiosity (and no cats killed in the making of this post) since publishing it initially, I popped the cover on the battery pack. Inside were 4-AAA cells wired in parallel with appropriate ancillary circuitry for the circumstances. I might’ve been somewhat offended if I had not read about using just this method, albeit with the flat gumstick battery design.

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Early Afternoon Soundtrack

Pet Shop Boys – Fundamental (2006)

Welcome to The Sodom and Gomorrah Show!

One of my all-time favorites. I went out today after PT in search of a couple Laura Branigan CDs albums I had in iTunes but not in physical format. Yeah, I could’ve cut corners and ordered directly from Discogs, but why not support a local business if I can?

My first stop was BookOff. I was certain they’d have them, but alas, not a single Branigan CD was to be found. It was there I noticed Fundamental. I was reasonably certain I already had this in my collection considering how much I liked it, but I still double-checked my database to make sure before plopping down seven bucks at the counter.*

Anyhow, my next stop after leaving BookOff was Zia Records. Twenty years ago it never failed me, but It’s been so long since I was there I wasn’t even sure it was still in business.

It is. And business was booming. (This was one aisle that was not packed with shoppers.)

Again, no Laura Branigan. WTF? Granted, I didn’t search any of the numerous bargain bins as I wanted to get home, but there was nothing in the regular racks.

It turns out my timing was impeccable. Within a few minutes after returning home, DHL arrived to drop off a package from Quebec, the other item in the photo above.

“What?” you may ask, “Another CD player?!” Yes, Virginia. Another Discman. I found this in an eBay auction three weeks ago. I put in a reasonable bid—no more than I was willing to pay if the bidding heated up—never expecting to win.

I’m starting to think I should buy a lottery ticket because yet again, I won the auction.

It took weeks to get from Fermont to the international border, but once it passed customs, it arrived here overnight.

Now I hate to have two “Wow” posts in two days, but I have no other word for this. The D-7 was the very first Discman I ever owned, and this one isabsolutely flawless. No scratches, no missing pieces, no corrosion on the chrome bits…it makes me wonder if it was sitting in a hermetically sealed box, unused, for the last 40 years. The seller indicated that “the batteries in BP-200 battery pack have been replaced,” indicating the unit has received service, because it requires some very specialized skills to swap out the original cells with modern replacements, and it’s behaving like it was given a complete going over.

So how does it sound? Perfect, as I expected. Yeah, like the other players from the 80s that I own, you look at it wrong and it skips, but that’s to be expected since there was no anti-skip technology at the time. And unlike the other models I have from the era, the mechanism on this D-7 is absolutely silent. Kudos to whoever serviced this thing.

*Well fuck. It turns out I did already had it. The reason it didn’t show up in the database was that I inadvertently searched for “Fundamental ” (with an errant space at the end of the name) and not “Fundamental” (no space).

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Now I Know Why They Haven’t Issued A CD

It’s because it won’t all fit on a single CD and I guess they didn’t want to go to the expense of releasing a 2-CD set. But they did two disc vinyl, so who knows?

That doesn’t mean I can’t burn it onto two CDs myself.

And here I thought my CD-burning days were long over.

I will admit however that Kane’s music is not everyone’s cup of tea and that even I have to be in a certain mood for it.

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New And Improved Way To Listen

At least for me! Late to the party as usual, but damn, a separate headphone amp really does make a difference!

I bought this FiiO K5Pro ESS Headphone Amplifier a year ago to more easily control the volume on a pair of powered speakers I was using at my desk. I didn’t really think too much of the sound quality of the FiiO one way or another, and when I swapped out those speakers with a different pair some months later it became a superfluous piece of equipment that was boxed back up and put in the closet.

Well, since getting my Sennheisers a couple months ago, driving them to an acceptable volume on either my MiniDisc or CD walkman players has been problematic without cranking everything up to one step short of max. The two players I have that will drive the Sennheisers—despite their absolutely awesome sound—because of their advanced age won’t play every CD I put in them. So there’s that.

I remembered I had the FiiO in storage, so I pulled it out and hooked it to one of the CD Walkmans I have that has a dedicated optical LINE OUT jack via a SPDIF cable to the FiiO. After a few days I still wasn’t aware of any improvement in sound, but it certainly did provide the power the Sennheisers needed. The FiiO is a headphone amp, after all.

It was only after I connected the headphone jack directly to the CD player and then reconnected it back to the FiiO did I realize how much better evrerthing sounded. More crisp, more alive. Punchy bass. In other words, my reaction was “Wow!”

Apologies to John Cusack and HIGH FIDELITY.

So what am I listening to?

“Baby Let Me Kiss You”

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Morning Tunes In Honor Of Its 50th Anniversary

Elton John – Blue Moves (1976)

Like many others, when  Blue Moves first came out—and for many years after—I had a love/hate relationship with this album. The sound was so different from all of Elton’s previous work, and yet still so fresh. It also annoyed me no end back in the day that all four sides of the album wouldn’t fit on a standard 90 minute cassette tape, requiring that you buy a notoriously thin and prone to breakage and entanglement-in-the-player 120-minute cassette.

Now, of course half a century later and the initial shock of it has long worn off, I think this collection is brilliant.

Favorite tracks to play at bleeding-ear volume: One Horse Town, Boogie Pilgrim, Crazy Water, Shoulder Holster, Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, If There’s a God in Heaven (What’s He Waiting For?), and Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance).

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Tuesday Evening Enigma

Enigma – The Greatest Hits (2001)

Y’know how if you haven’t heard some music in years, and you put it on and you’re immediately taken away to another place and time? Yeah, it’s like that.

I have a love/hate relationship with this player. On one hand, I think its classic mid-80s design is unmatched and it has a certain amount of nostalgic affection, the D-10 being the first second portable player I ever owned. On the other hand—and I’ve written about this ad nauseam—the damn thing skips if you so much as look at it funny. How I lived with this behavior back in the day is beyond me. Maybe it’s because the technology was still so new and borderline magic (when it worked) that its sensitivity to knocks and jolts was just something I lived with. I suppose that also explains why I went back to a cassette Walkman in 1990—at least for my commutes. I know I still loved it for stationary listening at work.

It also refuses to play certain discs without error all the way through. CDRs produce a constant hissing sound, and even commercial discs have to be pristine; no dust or—gods forbid—fingerprints, or they’ll glitch.

So why do I keep using it? The sound. It has one of the best, if not the best headphone amplifier of all my players. And it—along with my D-15—can easily drive my Sennheisers to a satisfying volume without having to be cranked up to 9 to get there.

Some of the sensitivity to dust and dirt no doubt is attributable to the unit needing routine service and a tuneup. The grease on the laser sled’s wormgear looks okay, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t dried bits of grease that require more disassembly and cleaning than I’m comfortable with. Fortunately, “I know a guy” who’s worked on this era of machines for me in the past and everything works like new after he’s worked his magic on it, but I don’t have the money right now. Maybe after the first of the month since there’s really no urgency since I have several other players I can use.

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A Rarity

Sony adopted color with abandon in the 90s and 00, but back in the mid 80s they were more reserved, usually offering only a rare, red option when they offered anything except black, silver, or gunmetal. This example I spotted on eBay:

It’s a rare item, but that price is still ridiculous (and has dropped nearly $500 since it was first posted). The D-10 is the same model I bought new in black in 1987 and paid something like $350 (a little over $1000 in today’s currency).

I have another black one now, and I was kind of surprised when I got it’s such a sensitive little flower. You scarcely breathe on it and it skips. And it most certainly does NOT like CDRs (not surprising because those weren’t even a thing until several years later). Still, of all the old school Sony players, it remains my favorite, if only for the nostalgia factor.

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