PHILIPS CD-100 from 1982,..Legendary Vintage

I had a Phillips CD102… I bought it as a package with 3free CD’s. Eric Clapton, Phil Collins And Dire Straits. I still have the CD’s but sadly not the player.

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My CD150 is from 1985 so that makes it over 30 years old, and my Sony 227 ES is from1989 and both work fine in my current system.

Neither is significantly embarrassed by my SU.

My Dad came with me to buy the CD104 from Dixons and got them to knock £20 off . I spent it straight away at WHSmith on 2 classics , Simple Minds ‘Once upon a time’ and Peter Gabriel ‘So’ .

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:small_blue_diamond: Pete.T,…Good Choice :+1:t2:.

/Peder🙂

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You still have it? It seems to be a legendary one.

Are you sure, the CD150 uses the TDA1540 DAC which is a 4 x oversampling 14 bit DAC. The digital filter and oversampler (DSP) SAA7030 device is incorporated into the 1540 DAC chip.
Have you somehow done surgery on the CD player to replace the digital filter and DAC?
As the TDA1540 was a well regarded Philips DAC that at the time sounded better than much of its competition (more smooth and musical) due to then newish implementation method of oversampling, and compensated to some extent for the SQ limitations of 14 bit and allowed the input and output filter to me more apodising (to use current vernacular) , I can’t imagine Philips wouldnot want their CD150 player not to use it…
Philips later developed the TDA1541, which was a 16 bit version of the TDA1540, again with 4x oversampling, and some consider this to this day one of the most musical DACs ever made for 44.1/16

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Hi Simon,

I don’t claim any credit for my exploits, except for being brave enough to take a soldering iron to my CD players. The article (which I would have to seek out again) discusses modifications to many of the early Philips based machines including some very nice Grundig and Revox CD players.

In my machine the SAA7030 chip is separate and can be removed and linked out (4 No. wire links).


There is another pin which needs lifting or grounding (cant remember which) on one of the controller chips which sets the configuration to 14 bit. I just wanted to see how 14 bit CD sounded. :0)

I wasn’t suggesting that Philips didn’t intend the over sampling chip to be there in the CD150 only that Philips did intend the CD format to be ‘14 Bit’, but that in agreement and pressure from Sony with whom they developed the CD standard, they went with 16 bit. Obviously having now standardised on 16 bit they needed to find a way of using their already produced 14 bit chip set, hence the oversampling chip. So as I say, I just wanted to hear how Philips originally intended CD to sound.

B&O made machines which used the same TDA1540 chips, (as did others), these are equally modifiable and look quite pretty too if you can find one with the top lid still in one piece! All of my mods are reversible so I don’t feel any great guilt of desecration. Plus many of the machines are quite cheap on ebay and thought of as junk, (the shame of it).

My Sony 227 ES has two TDA 1541 16 bit DACs operating in parallel, a configuration which was popular at the time. Sony installed oversampling and referred to this machine as 18 Bit. Looking at the circuit, (they published them in those days!) the sighting of the power supplies and caps around the DACs is well thought out and nicely implemented, less so in the budget CD150.

Paul Messenger, uk well known audio journalist, uses still the marantz cd 12 da 12 from 1989. He prefers it sound vs modern high end cd players.

I believe that the CD12 is another player which used the liked TDA1541 R2R DAC chip.

Thanks, interesting… without oversampling I would have thought would need to have a higher order analogue low pass filter… to remove some of the grunge…
Yes you are right of course the SAA7030 was physically separate to the actual converter(s).it was incorporated into their TDA5040 implementation design pattern not the actual chip as I implied :pensive:
Simon

I find all this a bit of cheap fun and i have learnt a little about the early CD players including some I have bought and previously considered sacrosanct.

Chatting to the chaps at Audio Note, i discovered that my DAC one is an early model, like some of the other converters in their range it uses the AN 1865 DAC chip. Mine incorporates a filter, later units dropped the filter, in the name of sound quality, they say.

I read this thread with interest especially comments on reliability, so here is my Philips CD303 bought for Christmas 1983 still working fine and on display sitting along side a similar period Luxman turntable both linked to my SuperUniti which is out of sight.


I still have the demo disc (-second edition) Philips supplied with the early players.

Peter

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