Sony CDP-610ES CD-player Review

The “second-generation” Sony CDP-610ES digital Compact Disc player, though somewhat less expensive than Sony’s original CDP-101, is very similar in its basic design and features. The CDP-610ES lacks the programming facilities of some CD players, but it provides just about any other operating convenience one might desire. Moreover, it is furnished with an infrared wireless remote control that offers even more operating flexibility than is available from its front-panel controls!

Pressing the open/close button on the disc-loading door activates a motor-driven drawer that slides out so that the disc can be placed in its loading tray. A second touch on the button retracts the drawer and disc to the playing position. The numeral 0 then lights up in the fluorescent display area to the right of the disc drawer while the word disc appears in red next to it. To the left of the door are a pushbutton power switch, a slide switch for playing discs under the control of an external timer, a stereo headphone jack, and a small knob that controls headphone volume in five discrete steps.

The principal operating controls of the Sony CDP-610ES are a group of flat pushplates below the display window. Pressing play starts playback of the entire disc beginning with its first track. The display shows the number of the track being heard, the index number of the subsection (if any), and the elapsed time in minutes and seconds from the start of the current track.

A pause button is located below play, and to its right is a group of manual-search buttons. Equivalent to a tape deck’s fast-forward and rewind controls, these accelerate playback in either direction when pressed. One pair, marked with double arrows, speeds up the play nearly three times, reducing 1 minute of normal playback to about 23 seconds. The second pair of buttons, marked with triple arrows, can scan a minute of normal program in only 2.5 seconds. At either speed and in either direction, the accelerated program is heard with its normal pitch but at a lower volume level.

Above the manual-search controls is a pair of larger automatic music sensor buttons that are marked with double arrows for forward and reverse. These can be used to skip forward to the beginning of the next track or back to the beginning of the current track. Pressing one of these buttons a second time will cause the player to skip to the beginning of the previous or subsequent track; repeated operations thus give access in either direction to the beginnings of all the tracks on the disc. If a button is held in, after a couple of seconds the process takes place automatically, much as a digital tuner scans a radio band.

If the disc is indexed—that is, if the starting points of musically significant subsections were encoded during the mastering process—a pair of small index buttons can be used for quick and accurate access, from either direction, to any indexed point within the current track. A stop button is located just below the index buttons.

At the top-right side of the panel are several buttons that control the player’s repeat functions. Pressing the button marked 1 will repeat the current track indefinitely, and pressing that marked all will keep repeating the entire disc. Any other portion of the disc, whether part of a track or a number of complete tracks, can be repeated indefinitely by pressing the memory button once at the start of the selected section and again at its end. The repeat instructions can be canceled by pressing the clear button.

Other controls at the right include an ELAPSED/REMAINING TIME button, which changes the display from elapsed time within the current track to the total remaining time on the disc, and an auto pause button, which causes the player to pause at the end of each track. Play can be resumed by touching the separate pause button below the play button.

The rear apron of the CDP-610ES contains two sets of gold-plated line-output jacks. The level of one pair is variable and is set by a front-panel knob; the other is fixed at the maximum level. A beep control causes the player’s internal beeper to emit a short tone each time a signal is received from the remote control. A multipin connector is also provided for unnamed accessories to be released in the future.

The Sony RM-111 Remote Commander, included with the CDP-610ES, is a compact, battery-operated device measuring only 2-1/8 inches wide, 1 inch thick, and 6-7/8 inches long. It contains no fewer than thirty pushbuttons, which duplicate the functions of most of the player’s front-panel controls. Omitted are the headphone-level control, the auto pause and timer controls, and the power switch. But the remote control has a set of buttons marked from 0 through 9 and a start button that are not provided on the panel of the player itself. With these controls it is possible to access any track directly by keying in its number and pressing start. Although the remote unit does not have a volume knob, there is a pair of line out buttons that raise and lower the level at the variable-output jacks (the front-panel volume knob turns when these buttons are pushed).

Since most of the performance specifications of Compact Disc players are delimited by the specifications of the CD system itself, the manufacturer’s specs for the Sony CDP-610ES are much the same as those for all the other CD players on the market. They include a frequency response of 5 to 20,000 Hz ±0.5 dB, distortion less than 0.003 per cent, dynamic range greater than 95 dB, and channel separation greater than 90 dB. The rated line-output level is 2 volts at a 0-dB recorded level (the system’s maximum level), and the player is designed to drive a load of at least 10,000 ohms at its fixed-output terminals or 50,000 ohms at its variable terminals. Price: $850.

Laboratory Measurements

The CDP-610ES’s maximum output level at 1,000 Hz with a 0-dB recorded level measured 2 volts, as rated. The frequency response, measured with the Philips TS3 test disc, was flat within 0.15 dB overall from 20 to 20,000 Hz, the principal deviation being a slight rise in the upper two octaves, from 5,000 to 20,000 Hz. A 90-degree phase shift between channels at 20,000 Hz indicates that the unit has a single dig-ital-to-analog converter that is rapidly switched (multiplexed) between the two output channels.

The 1,000-Hz harmonic distortion at 0 dB was about 0.0025 per cent, and it was 0.0023 per cent at —6 dB. Measurements could not be made at lower levels because of low-level spurious signals in the audio output (typically at —90 to —97 dB, which is equivalent to less than 0.003 per cent in level but is sufficient to obscure the equally low harmonic-distortion components). The intermodulation distortion was 0.002 per cent at 0 dB (roughly the residual reading of the test equipment) and 0.009 per cent at —20 dB.

Channel separation at 100 and 1,000 Hz was about 105 dB, decreasing to 87 dB at 10,000 Hz and 78 dB at 20,000 Hz. The unweighted noise level (referred to 0 dB) was — 92 dB, improving to — 100 dB with A-weighting. Flutter was unmeasurable, being at the 0.002 per cent residual of our flutter meter. The maximum unclipped headphone output ranged from 4 volts into a 600-ohm load to 0.56 volt into 32 ohms (the basis of Sony’s ratings) and 0.15 volt into 8 ohms. The listening level with 600-ohm phones was excellent, and we never had to turn the headphone output control all the way up for an adequate volume level.

The error-correction and tracking-servo system of the Sony CDP-610ES was among the best we have encountered. The “worst case” sections on the Philips TS4A calibrated-defect test disc—embedded signal-surface flaws 900 micrometers wide and surface spots 800 micrometers wide, as well as a simulated fingerprint— had no audible effect on the playback sound. Only a couple of other players we have tested have matched this performance, which is greatly superior in this respect to Sony’s first-generation CDP-101. The resistance of the player to physical shock was good on its top surface and nearly as good on the front and sides. It must be understood, however, that these are relative judgments. No CD player we have used is totally immune to skipping as a result of impacts on the case, although some players can withstand a great deal of physical abuse. Unlike LP turntables, though, CD players are inherently immune to the effects of acoustic feedback. The CDP-610ES was certainly as good as any of the others we have tested in its resistance to shock.

The new Sony player also proved to have fast and accurate cueing capabilities. Slewing from the start to Track 15 of the Philips TS4 disc (our standard test of slewing speed) required only 4 seconds, and stepping forward or back using the automatic music sensor required only 1 or 2 seconds for each step. One of our standard tests involves the transition between Tracks 17 and 18 of the Philips TS4 sampler, which have no silent interval between them. Most players clip a slight but detectable amount of the first syllable of the vocal at the beginning of Track 18. The CDP-610ES performed perfectly in this test, but when we set it to repeat Track 17, it played an instant of the start of Track 18 before returning to the start of Track 17. Although these tests may have little bearing on the utility of the machine to any home listener, they give an indication of the accuracy of a player’s cueing system.

Comment

We will make no attempt to comment on the “sound” of this or any other CD player, at least until consistently distinctive sound qualities can be demonstrated. That has yet to be done, and, indeed, the weight of the technical evidence suggests that there can be no significant sonic differences between two properly operating CD players.

It is obvious, however, that there are extensive and meaningful differences among players in respect to the convenience and flexibility of their operating features as well as in their ability to perform properly with flawed discs. Although the Sony CDP-610ES has no programmed-playback capability, for us its other facilities more than compensate for that omission. We especially liked its choice of fast-cueing speeds, the audibility of the program material during these fast modes, the handy remote control, and its superior ability to track damaged discs. In sum, the Sony CDP-610ES is a fine-performing Compact Disc player with many genuinely useful features at a price lower than that of Sony’s less-versatile first-generation model.

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