Tuning CDP's

Harold Cooper standing in the audio closet

These are a few of the names. When I think about how many CDP's I have tuned, both recent and past the list becomes endless.

maybe it's time to give this topic it's own thread

Above is a pic of Harold in our jungle of rotating units, as well as a pic with a few of them in my room number two.


at AXPONA 2017

Hi Michael!
Do you consider the Mag 2100 the "one", or are there others? I have the Sony DVP-SR510H which sounds way better than the NAD, Rotel, and Linn Genki that I've used in my system. I haven't had a really good look around the shops here, but on-line the Mag 2100's listed on eBay are mostly over $60 including shipping. So I'm wondering if there are other players to look for...?

Thanks!
Chris

Hi Chris

Here are the approved Magnavox CDPs that we have been using for the low mass tuning you've been reading about.



I wouldn't venture outside of this camp, as you may not get that CD warmth and deep bass. None of the other brands I have tested do what these do.

The price of these units will more than likely continue to go up.

good luck shopping

I have a local hit for a Magnavox MDV3000 for $50, looks like the MDV2300 but with HDMI connectivity. Should I try it, or is the HDMI going to present some problems?

Thanks again,
Chris.

Hi Chris

I haven't used the 3000 before, or seen the inside so I don't know how similar the circuitry is. I do know that even units that are close but not these units I mentioned don't have the same sound. My guess would be that the 3000 has a different design inside, but that's a guess.

Let me know if I need to send you one.

Hi Michael,
If I don't see any of the recommended Magnavox's you mentioned above, I might pick up the MDV3000, open it up and show you the insides to see what you think...

Thanks again,
Chris.

Hi Michael,
I've picked up the MDV3000. Without doing too much, removing the case and loosening the screws and wires, I can already hear that it's much better than the Sony. I can't seem to download a photo of the insides of this player for you... I'll figure that out some day. If you ever get one, please let me know what you think.

I've also discovered that the AudioNote interconnect I was using on the player was obscuring the music! A Kimber PBJ interconnect that I happened to have does a much better job!

Hi Chris

Let me know when you are ready for Picasso. Ray's are good cables to play with though since you already have them there. Ray's a great guy!

something to think about

On Ray's ICs, unscrew the barrel and move it away from the RCA end. See how you like that. What I did when I had Kimber was snip off the barrel with metal shears. Make sure you like the sound first. Also, thanks for the report on the comparison. It always helps when others post the comparisons, so as not to get me in trouble with any designers

Once folks start tuning they obviously look at the hobby differently and as things open up it's easy to detect products that are causing blockage, like what you have in comparing Ray's cables vs Audio Note's.

If I run across a MDV3000 cheap I'll snag one.

Thanks, Michael!
Other than picking up the Magnavox player, I'm going to hold off on getting any of your products because I'm pretty stuck with the way my stereo system is configured, which is with the tv system in the living room. With lots of furniture and stuff, I can't even lay out the speakers and each component properly or dress any of the wires and cables so they don't cross over each other. But even with some of your suggestions, I'm finding quite a substantial difference in the sound! In the meantime, I'll play with the barrels on each of the interconnects to see how that affects the sound.
Hope to join you in full tuning some time soon!

Hi Chris

When I wrote my post I was laughing because it sounded like a MG sells pitch. I hope folks know that my only pitch is for them to explore what the hobby of listening has to offer. I hope you never feel like buying MGA has anything to do with my excitement for your tuning journey. Shoot, if it was up to me, I'd send my designs out for free to everyone and fill up all my time referencing music with you guys.

I'm sure you already know this because of our posting back and forth over the years. I very much enjoy your posting, partially cause I can envision so many audiophiles at home who have bought into the equipment game passing up the most important aspects of this hobby. Sometimes I wish TuneLand was live and real time so listeners could see the fun that goes on between me and other Tunees behind the scenes. Tonight for example I was on the phone with 2 Tunees and another Turntable fella as well as PMing on facebook answering questions. In between all of that I was previewing my latest wire design (wishing I could speed up burnin)

Let me know what you think of the barrel removal, and always, Always, ALWAYS know you are part of the family

PS: wanted to share this. I was talking to an audiophile the other day, and as we were chatting he stopped me and said "your a nice guy, I'm surprised" he followed it up with "I've heard you were a real audio tough guy". We laughed for a bit, as he was telling me I was nothing like my reputation of calling out the industry. I have always gotten a kick out of the images people paint, before and after meeting me.

Hey Michael,
I totally get it! Even under such restrictive conditions, the sound of my system has improved significantly just from your suggestions and the information I've gotten from your site and following what you do with other Tunees and watching what happens with their journeys. I don't feel at all that anything's a sale pitch, just a journey in discovering sound. And I much appreciate that you make everyone feel welcome and a part of a very dynamic family!

Yep, it's fun stuff, that's for sure.

Hi Michael,
I tried unscrewing the barrels on the PBJ interconnect and found that the sound really opened up, but the bass became very indistinct, like a wall of bass in front of all the other sounds! There's so much stuff in the living room (carpets, books, records, heavy furniture, drapes, paintings, etc.), I don't have a chance to tune the room. My system is mostly Linn, so I went back to a Linn interconnect, unscrewed the barrels, and got a more "contained" sound, which is ok for now. My music for referencing was Miles Davis "Kind of Blue", Bill Evans "Some Other Time", Vince Guaraldi "A Charlie Brown Christmas (tis the season!), Cecilia Bartoli "Arie Antiche", and since the MDV3000 is a dvd player, I watched Ridley Scott "Blade Runner- The Director's Cut". I also listened to some Brian Eno "Ambient", etc. and had fun with an almost "spatial" sound, almost floor to ceiling and wall to wall!!
The player BTW is sitting on some 2.5" squares of light birch plywood. What I might do is find a MDV2100 and compare the sound to the 3000.

I also tried unscrewing the barrels of the interconnect on my McIntosh MR74 tuner and as well the whole sound became too indistinct!

Yep, sounds like the system wanted to break out of it's shell a little on you. It's good that your finding the synergism and able to dialing things back that get unruly. It's easy to unbalance things if your not able to do all 3 parts of the audio trilogy at the same time. Saying that though, Linn is a really good brand for using closer to the wall (if it's a good sounding wall). They are one of my favorite "method" brands. I wasn't a Linn dealer for long, but really enjoyed their camp. Always nice to talk to designers who know where they want to go and know how to get there. I've tuned a lot of Linn systems. If I were not a crazy man Linn would no doubt be on my short list. There are so many systems that when placed close to the wall they sound horrible, Linn is not one of them. I find Linn systems very easy to listen to once that gel happens.

Great music what an awesome line up

Is that Blade Runner 2049? The original is one of my favorite movies. I'm afraid to watch the new one

That was one of the versions of the original Blade Runner. I have just acquired "Blade Runner- The Final Cut", a version released in 2007 that Ridley Scott actually had a hand in remastering and re-editing. Highly recommended!!
Blade Runner 2049 will definitely not disappoint, although I would be curious to hear what you might have to say about the sound of this new movie...

Hi Michael,
I managed to get a 2100, so a month of listening compared to the 3000 with top case off, straps removed, screws cracked, and each resting on birch plywood blocks, I'd have to say the 3000 sounds much better than the 2100. That difference will probably disappear however once all the innards are extricated from the lower casings and each component tuned accordingly.

Good luck with your move!

Thanks Chris, have fun tuning

Hi Michael,
You may have published this information elsewhere, but can you tell me why these players sound so good? I have a 3000 in the living room system, a 2100 in the bedroom, and I'm now awaiting a 2300 for the office.
One thing I notice about using the 2100 (not the 3000 so far), sometimes it starts to "chatter", an audible mechanical vibration coming from the metal rail that sits over the transport. I find that by touching it gently with my finger, I can move it just slightly to decrease, if not eliminate the vibration and chatter. Is this typical of the 2100 and maybe other older Maggies? If so, is there a fix?

Hi Chris

I have been super busy and thus my responses have been brief. But, these are such important questions, and Audiophile changing, that I want to keep this thread fired up in the hopes that other listeners can explore this. I have to run to FedEx but I need to come back to this so our fellow listeners can make the changes themselves and give the CD it's just due.

We know your energies and attention are needed in all kinds of places at this time! We can wait whenever you have a moment... It just astounds me that using even just some of your suggestions, like the Maggies, can make such a difference to the sound of my system(s)!

Subscribed.

Hi Chris, and welcome to the conversation Steven.

The Magnavox CDP is for sure one of those products that is a game changer for listeners. Back at the last AXPONA people were a bit in shock (some laughing) to see that we used the Maggie CDP for our front end. One reviewer actually thought it was a car player because of it's size.

Yes, there are a few places on TuneLand that cover the topic that are probably hidden within threads of users. With the Magnavox I'm happy to repeat myself and even dive in deeper. This CDP is the perfect example of where High End Audio went wrong. Before I go further let me combine this thread with an earlier one.
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Hi TuneLand

Who would have ever thought we could have a true audiophile product for $29.00 let alone it being my reference music playing source. If your suffering from digital fatigue let me tell you that there is no need. By weird chance magnavox came out with a compact DVD player that has become my absolute favorite sounding player ever. When I say favorite I mean "at any price". Call me crazy if you would like but I have heard this player take on all comers and make High Ends DACs sound like canned toys. Someday somewhere there will be something better, but for now you are nuts not to pick up one or several of these.



Audiophiles for years have complained of digital jitter and the fatigue that digital recorded music has. I challenge those statements and say it is because High End Audio engineers do not understand the mechanics of materials. Their playing with numbers instead of taking the time to understand how signal passes through parts made of different materials and how the signal itself needs to dissipate naturally as an energy source while carrying and passing audio language. High End Audio has made big mistakes in this area and over the years companies like Magnavox, Sherwood, Samsung and others have designed products knowingly or not that are fantastic signal hosts. I, unlike my audiophile designing colleagues am not tied to the idea that $$$$ means performance. I'm not attached to faceplates and wowed by reviews. it doesn't take much to experience true music reproduction, but it does take a different mindset than that which has been praised over the last 40 years only to end up with tiny soundstages and brittle lifeless sound. music is expansive and vibrant. So vibrant that our recording engineers can not give you the entire dynamic range without damaging your system. Simplicity is the key to great sound as StereoPhile's Sam Tellig has said for years. I would suggest that the industry take this to heart and go further than even Sam has in his adventures. The question is "how simple is too simple"? The Magnavox tuned represents a good answer to this.

I base this thread on listening and the exploration of purifying the signal to the point of feeling the recording in the room with you like no other designer has ever done. Will they in the future? I certainly hope so and than some, but until then there's nothing like the tune.
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Because the maggie is so flexible there are many different ways you can tune it.

here's a bridge and then the bridge with top tuning from a canopy


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So why does the Maggie sound so good? For me everything comes down to materials/vibration/tuning.



Obviously Magnavox/Funai/Philips know how to make DVD/CD players. They better since they pioneered the product and are the largest DVD player manufacture in the world. They are one of the masters of KISS (keep it simple stupid). Also who will question the quality of the space program. Bottom line is if they have figured out how to mass produce the finest sounding CD player with their reputation I'm pretty happy with that. It's not a matter of sound for these guys, it's a matter of marketing. For years the best of the best have had to figure how to sell to 3 markets with basically the same product. Names have been changed around and look appeal has been something they have had to deal with if they wanted to capture all 3, and they will be the first to tell you it hasn't been easy cause of perceptions. There were times they tried to fuse the names of their brands together but the buying public didn't go for it so they ended up going back to separate names. So for me at least I don't have a hard time at all believing the best can be built for $29.00. We should take it as a blessing and buy them up before someone changes the design. But if someone wants to spend 100 X the price of the best sounding player for something that is at least second place, Oh well . This will be one of the mysteries I will need to live with.

materials

The sound of wood has been recognized as one of musics best sounds. Wood has this magical tone quality and is able to focus on a narrow bandwith or expand to full range. But it's the richness of the harmonics of wood that has made instrument builders go to great lengths in their voicing of the finest instruments. I have been fascinated with tone since my first drumset and guitar. As kids we would gather by the piano to annoy our parents and pretend we were the next big band. Speakers for me even at 8 were instruments in my mind. I never made the separation between my cousin's heath kit and my guitar amp, or my speaker cone and kick drum. To me they all had the same job. The thing I did pay attention to though was the different sound of materials. Even though I was playing the same notes the difference between wood steel and plastic drums was dramatically different from each other. Something was up here and it made enough of a difference to me that I was in my first pro band at 13 and on my first tour by 15. Not only do we tune our instruments, but if we are into tone we really tune our instruments. I can remember guys coming into the studio or even at home playing with their equalizers, and I would show them how I could do the same thing only through voicing materials. the equalizer always won out because of time, but the hand voiced changes always blew away the EQ. Why? The EQ doesn't know tonality. The EQ is a volume control whereas materials have texture, body, timbre. Engineers freak out when they hear this because they are trained to be puppets. Puppets that call tone "psychoacoustics", and psychoacoustics must be related to distortion somehow.

Now follow me here cause this could change the way you view your stereo. All materials have tonal saturation. This means that a material has it's own set of frequency highs and lows across the frequency range. If you put a bunch of different materials together you have a blend of peeks and valleys. This is why when you hook up a stereo it usually sounds pretty bad. Lets face it an un-tuned system stinks. You can get a better sound out of a boom box set in a nice sounding corner than a system out of tune. Bose realized this long ago. So we know I like tuning wood but what about all the other materials? The strength that wood has in the tonal department is hard to find in other materials cause they have a different molecular structure. Some of them can simulate the sound of voiced fibers, and the tonal saturation is fairly evenly distributed but most of them tend to get peaky sounding unless the conditions are perfect. For example metals can get very fussy and very few can produce a full range spectrum of sound. Fortunately for us copper was widely used for electricity or we could have been in a real mess finding conductors that passed both electricity and audio signal. Ever hear some of the same parts we use with copper only replaced with other metals? Well you can live with it for a while but it will start making your skin crawl after time. You will start noticing how thin your music sounds. And how pitchy it is. At the same time too much copper can cloud the signal greatly.

Alright, now we have wood and copper. What about other metals or other types of materials? First let me say that we have to be very careful of 2 things when choosing materials. One is runaway notes and the other is note voids. For your stereo it is best to use materials that can host a wide frequency range. If you don't you will be tweaking forever cause there will always be an inbalance between what is missing and what you have too much of. It's far better to have materials that can develope propper tonal structures and then tune them into shape. This is why you see me saying "no dampening". Listeners typically way over dampen an already over dampened system and that leads to a very small soundstage with miniture instruments and performances. It's also how you get peaks in your system. Peaks are not formed by a frequency being amplified as much as they are by the surrounding frequencies having colapsed, making them sound like they are sticking out. Talk to a tunee and they will tell you that when their system is at it's best they need to turn down their volume control. This is because they have raised the volume of the notes around the fundimentals across the board instead of systems that need the volume turned up because their signal is missing.
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In my last post I started to get into materials. When you look at a stereo's components you can see that you don't need a lot of material to make it work.




And it's true that less is best when it comes to a signal path, but equaly important is what the material is made out of and how it helps or hurts the signal transmit from one part to the next. You see signal vibrates and needs to vibrate. Some act like an audio signal is this magical thing that gets from one place to another without movement. Well the world is flat and standing still. Audio is motion and this motion does not go straight down the signal path. It vibrates and this vibration doesn't want to be cut short of it's life cycle. It's is energy and needs to act like energy to function at it's fullest potential. When we dampen the vibrating signal that is traveling and stop it short of completing it's natural cycle part of the signal comes up missing at the output end. If there is one area where High End Audio has blown it, it's here. If fact the longer we let a vibration dissipate without distorting it through dampening the better the music sounds. Metal chassis are notorious for creating harmonic distortions inside of components. They mess up the electromagnetic exchange that needs to take place between certain parts and the environment and make it impossible for signal carrying parts to escape the fields created. Shielding is a two way street and over shielding is one of the biggest problems for the signal path. In our industry we talk about electromagnetics as if they are floating energy sources waiting to interfere with our equipment, but the reality of it is hobbyist use too many components and don't know how to organize their cable. Their creating their own fields then they make it worse by enclosing their components so that the signal never has a chance to breathe. I use to think that separate components was to get away from the problem but over the years I have realized that separate components with multiple transformers are what is causing the problem. We have all these power plants smothering our signal and think the problem can be solved by making everything ridiculously thick so the interference can never get to it. This is backward from what the signal wants and needs to reproduce the real space, real size and real sound of a recording. Usually taking the top off of a component will set it free enough to tolerate but if the chassis is still interfering the rest of it should go.
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Yes, I'm still on the topic of the maggie but I feel it's necessary to paint the picture completely. So if we should be using little material and thin jackets covering cables and parts, it's starting to look like maybe the parts we are looking for should be built out of light weight low mass vibrating materials? That would be correct! Don't think we're pulling this out of our theory hats either. I/we have spent years comparing parts, and if the goal is openness clearly the low mass parts are the way to go. Even on my highest end speaker (The Chameleon) when we switched out the highest of high end caps with the low mass caps the music jumped to life. It was like someone turned on the lights after living in darkness. After doing this change across the whole network the peaks and valleys all but disappeared. It also led to me changing my entire crossover designing philosophy. The opposite was also true. Adding over massed parts to the signal path in my electronics caused me to not only turn up the volume but the soundstage decreased. The effect is like squeezing the music. At first you think it's clean, but after a while you are aware that part of the music is missing and there are holes that appear like black spots in the stage. The sound also became 2D and thin, shifting to the upper frequencies and thinning out the base of the music and the bass itself. For me this is clearly opposite real music. I want clear but I want it inside of something that is present. I don't want to sit down and listen to something 2D when the rest of my life is 3D. I don't want my sound brittle and I don't want the sense that the recording is not filling the room or further more filling the house. Why should I have music in the next room sounding like a tin can.

Moving on, the parts are half the battle but if they are attached to dead sounding circuit boards how are they going to vibrate and disapate energy? Their not, if they don't dissipate they reflect and send the energy trying to leave right back up into the parts, causing them to have canceled signal. When comparing boards there is a huge difference between those hard, thick horrible sounding boards and the boards you can pick up, tap on and hear a nice tone. Again why would I think that signal can pass through things that sound bad? Why would I think that dead sounding, high pitched boards would not make the music shift up?

It's looking more and more like the Magnavox has everything we want from a mechanical point of view to pass a very musical signal. But come on cheap plastic chassis? Even if you like the sound of the parts and the sound of the circuit board you have it sitting in this cheap chassis. I use to think the same thing until I researched "cheap plastic". Plastic is made by the compound and filler. The least expensive of the plastics can have up to 50%  filler. The most common filler used for the less expensive plastics? Paper. What is paper made from? Hmmm, I haven't taken my player on Bones to find out what the composition is nore do I care to, but looks like we have a true audiophile product that knows how to reproduce music from not only the act of listening but also the technology side.
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Some take the maggie down to the board and some leave it in it's shell or part of it's shell.



One problem with taking it all the way down is the unit if not perfectly level will chatter. Not hurting the sound but driving you crazy. When I take it all the way apart I usually have it in a separate room from my listening but when in the same room I leave it put together.

Here's one outside the room still in it's shell minus the top cover and tweaked.


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Here's a pic of the Magnavox MDV2300 top tuned.


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So the post above probably answers some questions, I'll have to go back and read. And my answers now may seem repetitive, but this is so important for our hobby that walking through this several times is a plus I believe.


as seen at AXPONA 2017