Continuing with CDs?

xxxp Yeah pretty much. You have to turn off pretty much every special feature for the best quality, but to be fair, you could understand why they had them if they were made for portability. MP3's and iPods were already big though so I never used a Discman for portability, it was just something to have on my desk or the table with my headphones in lieu of a stereo system.

mark e, I actually found one of those in storage and coincidentally pulled it out over winter break and tried it. Sadly, it doesn't work.

hah I'd be pretty interested in seeing if I could bring it back from life! what was wrong with it? did it turn on?

(looking at that NAIM it's a) ridiculous, i'd only ever seen it half open, not fully out like that and b) it's not just a tray, it's obviously the entire drive and pickup that's swinging out, hence the thickness)

and as mike mentioned upthread, loads of slot loading players now, even the higher end stuff. asking for trouble imo.

yes, fuck a slot load

on features and quality... i looked up the new Yamaha pictured above and it has a "pure direct" button which disables its digital outputs and even the LED for the display in order to give you the cleanest possible analog output...... yeah

xxxp That was a problem. The power cord must've been worn on the inside because you had to bend the cable/wire in different positions until power actually got fed into the player. (I wouldn't leave it plugged in for long unsupervised- I'm guessing there may be a frayed wire inside, which could be a hazard.) After it came on, I tried playing a CD, and for some reason it wouldn't track it correctly. Like it would skip through the disc. You can hear very brief snippets intermittently, but then the player would start skipping ahead or stalling, etc. I didn't want to throw it away in the trash for environmental reasons - it would be great if it could be recycled for parts but it's always tricky with obsolete and non-functioning electronics.

A good portable is perfect for home listening. Mine is replaced for now with a Tivoli "Model CD" that came up cheap locally, just for the look.

Apparently no one is making decent new portables

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiMdpE1Nz5w

xp sounds like the lube on the worm gear is dry and needs replacing. re: power cord, could be a bad power adapter or the soldering of the jack inside is bad. both should be pretty easy fixes!

that's the sony d-2 innit? probably would cost more to repair from one of the discman repair services, although I'd be happy to take a look at it for free

if you're interested in picking up an old vintage discman for home use, i'd recommend the sony d-33 - still $15-20 on eBay and sounds pretty decent

yes, fuck a slot load

― call all destroyer,

100%

once my discman died i avoided anything that was slot loading.
my first proper cd player was a richer sounds purchase that's hidden up in the attic.
just remembered : the brand was 'eclipse'.
it was cheap but did the job as we were young and broke.
the drawer thing was flakey as f^ck though after a few years.
that said, it still works.

my car has a slot loader (yeah yeah it's old), and the f^cker is tempramental at the best of times.
hence i only i ever put in skinny promo cds that i aint fussed about.

https://whybuynew.2dimg.com/10/1451471630_3981.jpg

xxp I can't get it to you anytime soon, but honestly, if you'll cover the shipping (maybe just email me a shipping a label), you can keep it and hopefully fix it for yourself. It's basically in storage back home, where Covid has gotten really bad at the moment. Once it settles down, I can ask my parents to fish out the player and power adapter the next time they swing by the storage unit. I'll probably remember - there's a bunch of stuff I need to ship to my current place, but I won't be able to do it until things settle down and I have time to travel back.

(I already have enough players, so I don't mind giving it away if you can fix it. I just don't want to toss it into a landfill.)

I have no idea what happened to my Goodmans. I certainly didn't eBay it like the rest of my gear. It may be in a box somewhere. But for 2.5 years it was the heart of my hi-fi. It never went outdoors. "Outdoor hifi - is it a sin?"

lol. high frequencies mess with the birds.

cool man that sounds good! I'll ilxmail ya xxp

the old discmen were really nice SQ wise - i currently use a d-4 discman and it gets LOUD, even when using full sized headphones. of course the battery life is like 2-3 hours on AAs (for those that take em - a lot of the early ones used lead acid battery packs that are all dead by now) so I just use it on wall power.

in other CD news:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/pope-makes-surprise-visit-rome-record-store-gets-classical-cd-2022-01-11/

the old discmen were really nice SQ wise

similar to the time that scott once told us that PS1s were great as audio/cd players !?
the same techie gubbins given both = Sony ?

hmm probably! i would say (not having been there in real time) it's probably an example of sony taking a no holds barred approach to what was then a pretty new tech. the later discmen of the late 90s and early 00s were designed more to the market's taste. ironically, it seemed discmen got really good right featurewise w/ unlimited skip protection and mp3/cd-r support right around the time mp3/ipods were taking off

where do uk people buy back-catalogue cds (that isn't amazon)?

i have christmas money burning a hole in my pocket and figured i'd pick up those cure and fall and siouxsie and sonic youth cds that i don't have and don't really know where to look for them. norman records, lots of hits, but the cds, the 10 i looked for, were ALL sold out. is there anywhere with decent stock?

(actually, the sonic youth were on bandcamp so those were easy)

Basically, discogs.

One thing I've been enjoying is checking out CDs from the library, ours always has interesting selections

discogs or eBay or webuy.com (cex) or music magpie (i buy a lot from musicmagpie on eBay)

just bought a Norma Tanega CD from Discogs last week

Basically, discogs.

And a wonderful resource that is.

Koogs:

I would never buy from Amazon unless it was somehow necessary. But surely Fopp? They sell all that stuff upstairs.

One thing I've been enjoying is checking out CDs from the library, ours always has interesting selections

I'm jealous of this. Our otherwise excellent library has an absolutely terrible CD selection. They've got a great DVD/Blu Ray selection, but they appear to have given up on CDs about 2004. When I first moved here in 2008 it already appeared to have been ignored for several years and it hasn't been touched since. It's so disappointing. The jazz section that remains is decent, but only about 20% of the CDs I've checked out have been playable, they are either scratched to absolute shit or the anti-theft strip they apply to the top surface of the disc itself renders them unplayable in most of my disc drives.

Yeah, I get a twinge of jealously when I see people talking about local libraries with great and well curated CDs.

And not just local - Seattle and King County both have great online catalogs and will deliver for pickup at your local. One of the reasons I donate to them.

yeah, PF, fopp. i was hoping to do it from the sofa though, avoiding the great unvaxxed.

i always forget about upstairs at fopp. downstairs is full of dvd goodness, but i never think to go up.

Picked up a tall IKEA CD storage unit left out on the pavement today. There were two but I could barely carry that one.

uk online option : music magpie.
free postage no matter the price.

Koogs, surely you can order online from Fopp?

Maybe a dumb question but how does one use a Discman or similar device with external speakers without losing one of the stereo channels of the CD mix?

if your current cd player is losing a stereo channel when connecting to external speakers that means you probably have a bad connection or are using a mono cable instead of a stereo cable

ok but if there’s a single output on the Discman and a single input on the speaker how do you get stereo out of that?

1/8 inch headphone out is a stereo connection iirc

yeah the headphone out on a discman is TRS or a stereo jack. older discmen have a separate line out jack (i.e. no volume control) that you could connect to a preamp or receiver with volume control

Here’s my situation. I have a circa-2000 Panasonic discman that only has the headphone jack output so I use to use that to play thru an external speaker but it only played one channel. Later I acquired a late-‘90s Panasonic that additionally has the separate line out jack, but I still have the same problem going out of that jack. Still just one channel.

what external speakers are you using?

it sounds like you're plugging a mono 1/8" into that jack, not a stereo one - there are both versions

make sure the plug of the wire you're using has a stereo tip:

https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-6stteikkyf/product_images/uploaded_images/stereo-vs-mono-plugs.jpg?t=1602102561&_ga=2.189390443.157792817.1601837151-826071131.1599170371

^^^

Ah OK, that could be all it is, thanks

And at the other end you need to send one channel to one speaker and the other to the other speaker.

Right, but the speaker I’ve been using is just a single speaker (designed for iPods actually)

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ab2c68a32f2e5ece753428fc7b400b00-c

you can get converters for mono sources to stereo earphones, just feeds the same signal to both poles. i guess something else is available for the opposite. although i'm kinda surprised that it isn't designed to take stereo and just deal with it (effectively mixing it down to mono).

fopp famously has no online shop - it only has a few stores as it is.

hmv.com is ok, but there's one local to me so i can just pop in (plus i have vouchers and they don't take them online)

Yeah, I just found that I do have a stereo plug in the house… which splits into two plugs at the other end… but then I also have an adapter thingy that takes the two plugs and channels them back into one plug so I can input that into my speaker. And it works! Now I can listen to “Purple Haze” and finally hear a vocal along with the instrumental part.

sounds like it probably splits into rca plugs (i.e. red/white plugs)? if it works, it works! but you could always get a 3/8 to 3/8 stereo aux cord, they're quite cheap and available pretty much everywhere. https://www.radioshack.com/products/3-ft-1-8-stereo-plug-cable

Yep that’s what it is, and yeah I figured there must be a single cord to use instead of going thru the adapter. Thanks!