Sony PS1 a great CD player or an urban legend ( and other myth's)

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The PS1 as a CD player is supposed to be a very good player, you should see if you can find it.

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The PS3 is no slouch!

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Depends if it’s the version with the RCA outputs doesn’t it?

I recall watching a video somewhere about it.

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Not sure that matters over much.
The PS3 has toslink digital out, no RCA out, which I feed into a cheap little DAC and it sounds stellar.

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And that’s what matters :+1:

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Yep, as we discussed in the weekly Chat, the PS3 was the last best option. The PS4 and 5 cannot play CDs at all.

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The PS1 being a great audiophile player sounds exactly like any other audiophile myth.

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Better put the green pen around the edge of the CD before playing.

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Oh my gosh what a trip down memory lane! Do you remember the Armor All fiasco?

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?? Armor All is an American brand so it may have been USA specific.

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Oh, if I remember correctly you were supposed to rip the CD then burn it yourself, on a greened CD, as it would then sound better. Think that was Mr Linn’s proposal

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Sam Tellig, a Stereophile regular, opined that Armor All applied to a CD and then polished, unleashed glorious sound. The makers then informed him that it could eat away at the CD’s protective layer. Huge black eye for the mag.

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About 15 years ago, when the Sony PlayStation CD playback urban legend was making the rounds in audiophile hearsay, Stereophile put the myth to the test bench. Needless to say, it did not measure well in terms of resolution.

AJ

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Wow. This threw me back ~20 years ago - Yamaha released a CD burner with some AudioMaster trickery, where the drive used extra long laser pulses to burn the disc, shortening the maximum recording time while at the same time improving sound quality by reducing jitter.

I had access to one. Burned a CD I had using this feature. I believe I could hear some differences between the two discs, but I don’t know the reason. It might be AudioMaster. It might be bad mastering. It might be CDR vs CD. Didn’t pursue this much.

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The issue with all these older devises is the internal DAC. All decent players today have much more modern, better sounding converters. As disk spinners outputting to a modern DAC they are okay. Sam Tellig is actually Sam Gillet, an old time audio writer, easily influenced by personal favors.

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Actually, the Sony SCD 1, was one of the finest players of it’s day.