NEC CD-500E CD-player Review

The NEC CD-500E compact disc player has an unusually simple control panel. The operation of this front-loading machine is controlled by a clearly marked group of four soft-touch push-buttons. The large, square play/pause control performs its functions on alternate touches. To its right is the rectangular stop/clear control, which stops playback on the first touch and clears the programmed memories on the second. Two slightly smaller buttons with double-arrow markings step the laser forward or backward by one recorded track with each touch; holding a button in steps the laser repeatedly.

Smaller buttons open and close the disc drawer, activate the repeat function, and enter selected tracks into the unit’s memory. The CD-500E can be programmed to play up to fifteen tracks in any desired order by successively locating each desired track using one of the skip buttons and then pressing the MEMORY button. Once the machine is programmed, the skip and REPEAT buttons access only the selected tracks. The player can also be operated from a timer, since it goes into play mode automatically when power is applied if a disc has been loaded.

The CD-500E’s display is also considerably simpler than most. For a few seconds after a disc is loaded, a numerical readout shows its total number of tracks (up to ninety-nine) and then reverts to the number one. When play is pressed, the tracks are played in sequence starting with the first. In programmed operation, the display shows only the numbers of the programmed tracks. A four-section operation mode display indicates the presence of a disc in the machine, the status of the repeat mode, whether a programmed sequence has been stored, and when the disc is actually being played (the symbol in the last section blinks when the player is in pause mode). There is also a front-panel stereo headphone jack and a small output-level control. The rear apron of the player contains two pairs of jacks, one for fixed and one for variable line output; the variable level is controlled by the same front-panel knob that adjusts headphone volume.

The NEC CD-500E is furnished with a wireless remote-control unit that duplicates all of its front-panel functions except the power switch— even the disc drawer and the program level adjustment can be operated remotely! The black-finished player measures 16-7/8 inches wide, 10-5/8 inches deep, and 3 inches high. It weighs 9-3/4 pounds. Price: $329.

Lab Tests

The level from the fixed outputs of the NEC CD-500E was relatively low, measuring 1.6 volts; the CD standard is 2 volts from a maxi-mum-level (0-dB) recorded test signal. The channel levels, however, were matched within 0.05 dB. The maximum level from the variable outputs was identical to the fixed output level. The frequency response was flat within +0.3, —0.6 dB from 20 to 20,000 Hz. The signal-to-noise ratio (A-weighted) was 94.2 dB, and the total harmonic distortion (THD), excluding noise, was between 0.0047 and 0.0063 percent for levels between 0 and —20 dB. Our THD + N measurements (including noise) were slightly higher, 0.007 percent at 0 dB and 0.031 percent at —20 dB, because of the contribution of noise.

The stereo channel separation measured 87 dB at 1,000 Hz and fell to 70.5 dB at 20,000 Hz. The crosstalk at 1,000 Hz was quite asymmetrical, measuring —94 dB from left to right and —80 dB from right to left, but this effect diminished greatly at the higher frequencies. The square-wave response of the CD-500E indicated its use of analog lowpass filters. Also, the interchannel phase shift rose from about 5 degrees at lower frequencies to 81 degrees at 20,000 Hz, which is characteristic of a single digital-to-analog (d/a) converter being multi-plexed (switched) between the left and right channels.

The CD-500E tracked all of the calibrated defects on the Philips TS5A test disc without difficulty. Its cueing between the unseparated Tracks 17 and 18 of the TS4 disc was perfect, and it slewed from Track 1 to Track 15 of that disc in 4.5 seconds. Its resistance to physical shock in the form of tapping with the fingers was very good on the sides of the cabinet but poor on the top. Even a light drumming anywhere on the top plate would cause loss of tracking when a disc was playing. The headphone volume was excellent with medium-impedance phones, and their load did not noticeably reduce the level at the rear output jacks.

Comments

Although the NEC CD-500E has most of the normal operating and control flexibility of a typical CD player, as well as full remote-control capability (rare in the lower price ranges), it lacks one of the most basic features we have come to expect from CD players—a fully informative status display. In particular, we were surprised and disappointed by the lack of any time information either for the current track or the entire disc, which is provided by virtually every other CD player we have seen. Although the CD-500E’s simplified display tells the user which track is being played, we would expect more.

Another common feature omitted from the CD-500E is a fast-scan mode. The laser can skip from track to track but not within a track. The instruction manual refers to a fast-scan capability, but it was not present in our test unit.

Although the CD-500E fell slightly short of other CD players in some of its measured characteristics (notably high-frequency channel separation), it actually met its specifications quite nicely. In fact, the performance of any CD player is so far beyond real-world requirements that in most respects it could be degraded by a factor of several hundred without any audible effect. In actual use, the NEC CD-500E sounded as good as any other CD player we have tested.

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