Disc Players

The AD-812 is the perfect CD player for those who dislike banks of buttons and legions of flashing lights. It has only nine controls and the simplest possible display, with no remote control or hidden menus with extra functions concealed within. While it might be marketed today as a stripped-out audiophile product, in 1986 it was simply a no-frills, straightforward player.

With Soulnote having already proved its analogue mettle in these pages with the E-2 phono preamp , does the brand have similar prowess with digital? And not just with CDs, for this S-3 flagship is a fully-fledged SACD player.

Think JBL and, not unreasonably, you’ll probably think ‘speakers’. The company has been in the loudspeaker business for getting on 80 years, having been founded in California in 1946 by James B Lansing, from whom it takes its name. Lansing himself took his own life just three years later but left an insurance policy to keep the company going, in which form JBL has become an internationally famous audio company and, since 1969, part of what is now Harman International. In 2017 Harman became an independent subsidiary of South Korea’s technology giant, Samsung.

Early CD players from Philips and Sony are considered by some collectors to be the most covetable vintage models because they came from the very companies that created the format. You can add to this list machines from Denon, whose Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) system underpinned the way analogue signals were transformed into digital data, recorded, played back and finally turned back into music again.

When Hegel announced its Viking CD player, the phrase 'never say never again' sprung to mind. You don't need to have a particularly long memory to recall the company's previous silver-disc spinner was named Mohican [HFN Oct '16] because – geddit? – it was going to be the last such machine the Norwegian company would make. The format's popularity was seemingly dwindling in the face of music streaming and the vinyl resurgence. Hegel even made commemorative t-shirts for its final fling with CD.

The appearance of portable CD players in the mid 1980s presented buyers with something of a dilemma. Should they purchase a full-width model or one of the mobile machines, almost all of which could easily be connected to a full-sized system? A portable would be more versatile, but a large player would be expected to offer more facilities and better sound quality.

The Denon duo in the limelight here are an obvious refresh of the previous generation DCD-1600NE disc player and PMA-1600NE amp, introduced in 2017, rather than entirely new designs. Partly that's because both the £1299 DCD-1700NE and £1699 PMA-1700NE look very similar, if not identical, to their predecessors. The solid construction, metal front fascia that curves to ensure the Denon logo catches the light, the weighty volume knob in the middle of the amp, the old-school tone controls… it's all very par for the course, as is the choice between black or silver colourways.