Sony CDP-X779ES CD player Page 2

Fidelity starts with frequency response. If a CD player has built-in response errors, it can never reproduce the original signal properly no matter how good it is in other respects. Don't laugh; this has long been one of the major differences between competing players, even high-priced ones. I'm not talking about measured response, although (as our published curves show) there are often small differences there, too. No, I'm talking about subjective response—how the thing sounds.

A/B comparisons are scorned by the high-end community because they don't reveal most of the subtle differences between products. But one less-than-subtle difference they do reveal [Perhaps the only difference they reveal!—Ed.] is frequency response, and A/B'd pink noise can be very revealing of response differences, particularly at the high end. So my first comparison was between an original pink-noise signal and one from a CD (track 15 on Test CD 2). I had two pink-noise generators on hand, one made by the Heath Company for use with their now-discontinued real-time analyzer, the other an Ivie 20B. I checked first to make sure they sounded identical, which they did. (This is no guarantee they weren't both off a bit, but the chances of two being out of spec in the same direction are slim. Besides, they both measured flat on the Heath Spectrum Analyzer.) I opted to use the Heath because it has a volume control. I used a Y-adaptor to feed its mono output to a pair of unoccupied inputs on the Threshold FET-10L.

I started the CD player, A–B programmed it to repeat the first segment of the track (the second is uncorrelated), and carefully matched the generator level to it to within a small fraction of a dB. There was no audible difference at all! A good start.

For musical comparison material, I chose first my chorus-and-organ Dubois track (7) from Test CD 1. I started it playing, and hit Pause right on the first note. Switching to the Revox, I cued up my original tape of that segment to a few seconds ahead of its start point and—finger on the Sony's Pause button—pushed Play. On the first note, I punched in the CD, and they were almost perfectly synchronized. After matching levels at the Revox, I was able to start comparing.

First, I must say that I never cease to be appalled by how bad that Dubois recording sounds. Original or not, it has all the earmarks of a mediocre analog copy: It's rough, gritty, hissy, veiled, muddy at the low end, and the whole bottom range of the organ is gone. (It was, in fact, recorded on an Ampex 601-2, whose low-end equalization ceased at 40Hz. Even after all these years, I can still remember my dismay when, observing the VU meters standing at 0 during a 16Hz pedal note in the Seven Last Words, I switched them to read Playback and saw the needle drop to –20dB!) Why, then, did I abase these state-of-the-art CD players with such garbage? Because, as I said, it was the most high-powered of the three selections of which I had access to both original and CD copy.

What did it tell me? I thought, occasionally, that I heard differences at the top, but these were inconsistent enough (one minute the CD seemed to be toppier, the next the tape seemed to be) that I had to attribute them to self-deception. Low-frequency content and quality from the two sources were identical!

Next, the Järnefelt Praeludium (track 9), a more recent (and less mediocre) Revox A-77 recording whose pizzicato strings uncover the Wilmington, Delaware Opera House's superb acoustics like no other recording I ever made there (footnote 4). Same result: the CD sound was a spectral clone of the original.

But that's where the similarity ended. In other areas—inner detail, depth, and breadth—the CD playbacks sounded uniformly inferior to their tape originals. Player deficiencies? Nope, but I'll get to that subsequently.

The next comparison was with JA's Dream of Gerontius cut on Test CD 2 (track 13), a much more recent recording but one that had also originated with a Revox A-77. I did not have the analog tape of this but a PCM copy John had run off for me using the Sony PCM-F1. Here, the CD was clearly better than the tape, all of which came as no great surprise, and cleared the 779 of any complicity in the aforementioned tape/CD deterioration. The differences I had noted with the tape of Gerontius are characteristic of the PCM-F1, which is a bit dry and a bit soundstage-restricting. (My F-1 was once described by Peter Mitchell as "the worst-sounding he had ever heard"!) The other tapes had been transferred to digital with the Nakamichi 1000 ADC, which was one of the better converters available back in 1989, but has been revealed as sounding merely ordinary by today's standards. JA's Gerontius recording, by comparison, had been transferred to digital with the 20-bit Manley A/D converter feeding a DAT recorder.

So much for the comparison tests. How did the 779 sound? I promised I wouldn't nitpick about recordings I knew little about, but I will say that I've spent countless hours now listening to a wide selection of good, bad, and indifferent CDs, and I've found no reason to fault this player. Although I felt it to be a little uninvolving for the first week or so, its sound has steadily improved, to the point where I can become really emotionally involved with the music—something that isn't supposed to happen with CD. The 779's sound is detailed without being analytical, alive without being aggressive, sweet without being veiled, and almost (but not quite) as liquidly lush as the best analog sound I have heard. TJN had complained of a certain rounding-off of attack transients from the earlier X77, but I heard no such tendency from the 779. A triangle at the back of the orchestra would cut through the general hubbub as effortlessly as I hear it when listening live.

I can't assess the 779's soundstaging on an absolute basis, because I have nothing with which to compare it. (My own tapes tend toward dryness, because I find a rather upfront and immediate sound to be more involving than the distant, awash-in-reverb perspective of many contemporary symphonic recordings.) But I heard considerable depth and breadth from CDs that do have it (like Reference Recordings' recent efforts). And my copy of JA's tape was clearly less deep and spacious than its CD transfer.

Ultimately, what impressed me the most about the 779 was how often it gave me the goosebump response that means the sound has touched me on an emotional level. I'm still not ready to replace all my favorite LPs, because they often do the same thing for me. But I find myself going to the LP shelf less and less often these days as my collection of decent-sounding CDs grows and my tolerance for surface noise and bass-muddying acoustic feedback dwindles.

Before going on to other things, I ran a few of the tracking obstacle tests on disc 2 of the Pierre Verany test set. The 779 was close to its holding limit on track 33 (single 1.5mm surface glitch), and fell apart on the 2mm of track 34. On the double-whammy two-glitch test, it failed on the 1.5mm of track 48. These are excellent test results, although—according to P-V's blurb sheet—not unprecedentedly good. But then, not one of the 50-some music discs I have played on the unit has ever mistracked audibly.

Where does the CDP-X799ES rank with the competition? To get a handle on this, I borrowed from Santa Fe two higher-priced players that garnered enthusiastic reviews in February: a cdplayers/Kinergetics KCD-40 ($2295) and a Proceed PCD 3 ($2995). Also provided, for my enlightenment, was the Theta DS Pro Basic II outboard D/A decoder ($1995 plus whatever deck you use with it, $2395 with the optional AT&T ST optical input) that CG had reviewed in January. I had used an earlier version of the Proceed (the PCD 2) for some months, and found it to be overly warm and rather lifeless. I had also auditioned the Kinergetics at an earlier date but, because of my "reference" system at the time, had judged it intolerably cold and analytical. (Subsequently, a more neutral system changed my perspective on that judgment.)

I started with the pink-noise comparisons. Spectrally, the Kinergetics and the Sony were a toss-up with the pink-noise source, so similar that I couldn't decide whether there were any differences at all. I decided there weren't. The Proceed was less soft at the top than the earlier PCD 2, but was still a little more closed-in than either the Sony or the Kinergetics.

For musical material, I used my Dubois recording (God, I'm getting fed up with that!) to judge absolute tonal accuracy, and JA's Gerontius for tonality, soundstaging, and low-end weight and extension. I also used several commercially available recordings for making one-on-one comparisons between the players: Reference Recordings' Malcolm Arnold disc (track 3) for soundstaging, inner detailing, and bass-drum heft, Bob Harley's drum-set recording on Stereophile's Test CD 2 for articulation and rhythm, and the Chesky Beethoven 9th (vocal section, track 4) for scrape-flutter assessment. (Scrape flutter, due to "violining," where the tape continually snags then releases, like a violin bow drawn across a string, is common to all analog-mastered recordings, and it is exacerbated by any hint of "digititis" from a player.)

The Proceed and Kinergetics were found to have slightly less low-end heft and authority than the Sony. The Kinergetics sounded a shade lean, while the Proceed had extension but not much impact, sounding almost a little slow through the bass. The Kinergetics was just a shade more forward than the other two, and the Theta and Sony threw the most convincing soundstage of the bunch—a bit wider from the Theta and deeper from the Sony. Scrape flutter sounded the same from three of the players, but was subtly softened by the Proceed, which didn't surprise me a bit. The crud sounded a little more agreeable, but at the cost of some musical detail. In terms of sit-back-and-relax musical enjoyment, I found the Proceed the easiest player to listen to but also the least involving, while the Kinergetics sounded very fast and alive but also just a shade dry. The winner here was the Sony, which managed to sound at once easy and alive.

All of the foregoing auditions were done from the players' analog outputs, using their own internal D/A converters and analog sections. What, if anything, did the Theta have to contribute? Used as transports, feeding the Theta from their coaxial digital outputs, all three players sounded absolutely identical to me. (I could not try the optical linkups because of interfacing compatibilities.) But the sound was unquestionably better through the Theta—spectrally the same as the Sony, but with a slightly greater feeling of ease and liquid transparency. The Theta sounded—dare I say it?—a bit more LP-like. But I'll be damned if I heard any of the "dramatic" differences, either between players or between the analog and digital interconnections, that some other reviewers have reported. Maybe my system doesn't have the (exaggerated?) resolving powers of theirs, but the more I compared, the more I felt that the price differences between these devices (figuring the Theta's cost as including a deck to drive it) were much more significant than their sonic differences.

Don't get me wrong: There are differences between these which were great enough that they could make or break the sound depending on the rest of the system they are used in. (An overly analytical system, for example, could be abetted by the Proceed, a laid-back one by the Kinergetics.) But the Sony is neutral enough that it would be a good bet for use in any system that isn't badly colored. Is the Theta outboard worth the additional $ outlay? That, I think, depends on how acutely aware you are of CD's current shortcomings. It does improve matters, but both your system and your aural acuity will determine just how much difference, and that is what you must base your decision on. The wisest move might be to buy an all-in-one player first, and add the Theta (or an ever-higher-rated outboard) if you feel you need it. Since the Theta improves the sound of all of these players equally, the logical starting point would be the cheapest of the three: the Sony CDP-X799ES. It's also probably the one you are least likely to want to upgrade for a while.

Summing Up
I got completely hooked on the Sony's crowd-pleasing features: its lightning-fast responsiveness to commands, its remote-control versatility, its several auto repeat modes (a godsend for anyone who routinely uses test CDs), its choice of display modes, and its near-intuitive ergonomics. (And while I accept Madrigal's reasons for making the Proceeds look the way they do, I still think their players look c-l-u-n-k-y.)

The Sony CDP-X779ES is a honey of a CD player, and I remain, as of now, unconvinced of the necessity for paying more. But if you're one of those quasi-digiphobes who consider every out-of-place bit an insult to your musical sensibilities (of course, a real 'phobe wouldn't even be reading this review!), then by all means spend the extra $1400 or $14,000 for a more exotic and analog-like two-piece CD system. Better still, don't abandon vinyl at all until CD reproduction gets even better than it is now. Or wait a few years until today's $14,000 CD sound can be bought for $2000.

But would I buy a Sony CDP-X779ES? You're damn right I would.

Footnote 4: Some record company should investigate that hall as a possible recording venue.
Sony Electronics Inc.
16530 Via Esprillo
San Diego, CA 92127
(858) 942-2400

hollowman's picture

With all the excitement about vinyl these days, it's important to realize how far digital (CD) had progressed in its first decade: from criticism in its first gen. models, to gradual (but universal) praise starting with modded first gen. (Meridian, Mission, etc.)... and so on.
This Sony player still sounds good today.
I'm not sure 16/44.1 playback with the best modern gear (Chord, dCs) is substantially better. If anyone (esp. professional audio reviewers) with Chord/dCS/etc. gear concurrently have access to Sony ES series from early 90s, please spill forth a review.