Vintage Philips CD-104 Player.

[richardfinegold]

Well, I like to think I have a pretty good pair of ears and having done a side by side comparison of three discs using my ‘new’ vintage Philips machine and my Quad ‘Elite’ player and find they are both enjoyable in slightly different ways. The Philips is brighter in the top register whereas the Quad is generally smoother. The Philips is slightly lacking in bass so I simply adjust the sub-woofer and that compensates nicely.

Where I have noticed a difference is when a well off friend has loaned me his spare Macintosh player(!) Now THAT makes a huge difference and is superior to anything I’ve ever heard through my system. If I had a spare £8k I might consider buying one.

So, PG, since you are touting your auricular and otic tissues as sine qua non, have you had a recent audiogram , and are you willing to share that result with us?
The Phillips is probably sounding brighter due to the (by current standards) relatively primitive digital filtering of early CD players

[gradus]

So, PG, since you are touting your auricular and otic tissues as sine qua non, have you had a recent audiogram , and are you willing to share that result with us?
The Phillips is probably sounding brighter due to the (by current standards) relatively primitive digital filtering of early CD players

As hearing loss inevitably accompanies ageing is there any point in buying 'high-end' equipment for say the over 60's if hearing range is much reduced?

[smittims]

Surely. it's a matter of 'if you're content with what you have (as richard I think suggested earlier) why pay more?'

An old friend of mine could not distinguish Bollinger from £3.99 ASDA Cava. She thought they were both 'very nice'. QED.

[pastoralguy]

So, PG, since you are touting your auricular and otic tissues as sine qua non, have you had a recent audiogram , and are you willing to share that result with us?
The Phillips is probably sounding brighter due to the (by current standards) relatively primitive digital filtering of early CD players

Pardon…?

Oh, and it’s Philips, not Phillips…

[richardfinegold]

Having just had alarming results on my audiology test last week, I am now wondering how much credence to give to anyone who claims to have a “good pair of ears” and who has also hit a certain age in life. I think PG is a bit younger than the mean on this Forum so he might still be well preserved, otically speaking. In my case I was starting to note a decrement and then it really seemed to accelerate after my Lymphoma treatment 2 years ago. However I participate in an Audiophile forum and there are several that crow about their hearing acuity and I’ve begun to realize that these individuals are octogenarian range. They insist that members post pictures of their systems in order to have “street cred”, but are unwilling to share audiology results. Given the commonality of high frequency loss with age, I am now unwilling to accept anyone’s assertion of superb auditory assessment capabilities once they’ve hit 50, without some kind of documentation .
btw, there are apps that give very sophisticated and reasonably accurate hearing tests without having to have it professionally done. Some headphone companies have incorporated this and then allow one to use digital processing to sculpt the sound to attempt to correct for the deficits. We have 2 family friends that are professional audiologists and I fear for their job security.

[Keraulophone]

The first Philips player was a top loader, and I think mine was the one which came after that.

The very first CD player available in UK shops was the Sony CDP-101 released in Oct 1982.
The first Philips CD player, the top loading CD100, followed in the same year.
The Philips CD104 appeared two years later. https://www.hifi-advice.com/blog/cla...ayer-timeline/

I waited for the 1985 release of the excellent Denon DCD-1500 before venturing to one of the many HiFi stores in Tottenham Cout Road. That was a memorable day, as I went to ENO's Parsifal at the Coliseum conducted by Reggie Goodall. In Act 2 part of the scenery started to collapse from above the stage. This made a mockery of the mood the performers were trying to create, and so eager was I to listen to my new CD player that I left the flower maidens to their task, reclaimed the package from left luggage at Victoria Station and went home to bask in the startlingly clear and crackle-free sound of my first CDs. My current player is the very solidly built Yamaha CD-S2100 which can handle the SACD format which was gaining popularity at the time.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I bought my first CD on 01/03/1983 - the day they were introduced in Europe. Half an hour later, I bought my first CD player - a Philips top-loading model. It worked well, without annoying gaps between tracks. It was stolen in a house burglary in the summer of 1987.
I did have one annoying characteristic - unexplained crackling during the winter months. Apparently this was an issue with some early players, caused by condensation on the lens.

[pastoralguy]

I bought my first CD on 01/03/1983 - the day they were introduced in Europe. Half an hour later, I bought my first CD player - a Philips top-loading model. It worked well, without annoying gaps between tracks. It was stolen in a house burglary in the summer of 1987.
I did have one annoying characteristic - unexplained crackling during the winter months. Apparently this was an issue with some early players, caused by condensation on the lens.

Sorry to hear it was stolen, Alpie. In those days cd players were very desirable objects as indeed were the discs. What did you replace it with?

[RichardB]

So, PG, since you are touting your auricular and otic tissues as sine qua non, have you had a recent audiogram , and are you willing to share that result with us?

I'm not an expert, but surely the degree of sensitivity to some particular frequency range, as found in an audiogram, isn't the only measure of whether one has a "good pair of ears" where music is concerned, right? There would also be the ability to resolve the different components of a complex superimposition of sounds, or the spatial location of sounds, or fine differences in pitch, all of which I would imagine are the result of (self-)training, rather than necessarily being adversely affected by aging.