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Nakamichi CD Player 3 - How do I make it useful?

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Posted on August 30, 2016 at 01:35:45
Sherwood Forest
Audiophile

Posts: 240
Joined: October 7, 2014
 Hello all,

Abstract:

Scored a *very* clean Nakamichi CD Player 3 at a thrift store for $25. Normally that'd be a bit high for an 'as-is' purchase, but this player is exceptionally clean, has no scratches anywhere on the case, and included the remote. It's a 6 CD changer, and it has a surprisingly robust transport with really only a tray belt as a weak spot. It will read any burned CD I can feed to it, it has a fairly powerful headphone amp, and it has a very high build quality, aside from a couple of voltage regulators that could really use heat sinks. It has an actual ladder DAC, the Burr Brown PCM1700. It has no digital output.

The Rub:

It sounds like ass. I mean, it's not as harsh as some of the early Sony monstrosities or anything like that, but it has a really bad harshness. The PCM1700 is noted by some to have a bad zero-crossing glitch that may or may not be to blame. Here's the interesting part - the player has MSB adjustments for each channel. If I listen to a passage as it fades out with the factory adjustment, the sound is appallingly dithered sounding. You hear artifacts that sound almost like low-quality MP3. If I adjust the MSB pots fully CCW, the artifacts at fade out disappear completely, but really the overall sound isn't much improved.

Now, I am willing to accept that this DAC might not be the best DAC in the world or be up to modern standards, but can it really be THAT bad, and could the MSB adjust have such a dramatic effect without something else being wrong? The voltages seem to be in order, but I have not dug much further.

I really like this player as a transport or as a player for a spare room, but not if it sounds like this. I need to either figure out a way to improve this thing or perhaps to add a digital output.

Anyone have any experience with this gear, or have any ideas? It's a nifty player and hell, it's a Nak. It would be a shame if it were doomed to sound like complete crap...

 

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RE: Nakamichi CD Player 3 - How do I make it useful?, posted on August 30, 2016 at 05:20:19
Crazy Dave
Audiophile

Posts: 14371
Location: East Coast
Joined: October 4, 2001
 I used to sell Nakamichi, but this one came out after I was out of the business. I can tell you that in their time, the Nakamichi CD players were considered to be very good sounding players. The reason I am posting is that I just bought an Onkyo C-7030 at a thrift store for $35. This is a current $200 CD player, and I was curious how is would sound compared to my vintage players. I hooked it to my Sennheiser HD-555 headphones and it sounded like dreck. On both rock and classical and rock it was lifeless and boring. I figured, oh-well, maybe they cheated out on the headphone amp. After all, it definitely is a "price-point" product, but I also thought that a company like Onkyo should be able to design a decent IC chip headphone amp on the cheap. I noticed 2 days later that I had neglected to turn it off, so I gave it a listen again. It was completely transformed. It was now punch and detailed. The image was big! "Experience Hendrix, the Best of Jimi Hendrix" had me standing up, singing along and playing air guitar! So my advice is to leave it on for a couple of days and see what happens.

Dave

 

RE: Nakamichi CD Player 3 - How do I make it useful?, posted on August 30, 2016 at 12:04:12
Sherwood Forest
Audiophile

Posts: 240
Joined: October 7, 2014
 Hi Dave,

You know, I hadn't even considered that. Maybe the caps need a chance to come back to life or something. Chances are it hadn't been used in a while. The tray belt had given up, and there were 6 discs still in the player when I got it. Ready for a laugh?

UB40 - Promises and Lies
Huey Lewis and The News - Four Chrods & Several Years Ago
10,000 Maniacs - MTV Unplugged
Clannad Cran Ull
Norah Jones - Come Away With Me

Actually, the Norah Jones is a damn well recorded album and is useful as a test CD.

I still don't get why the MSB adjust has such an audible effect and why it now seems to want to be turned all the way CCW before obvious artifacts go away, but who knows. I'll let this thing cook for a day or two.

Anyone ever retrofit a Coaxial digital out to a player before?

 

RE: Nakamichi CD Player 3 - How do I make it useful?, posted on August 30, 2016 at 15:37:29
Crazy Dave
Audiophile

Posts: 14371
Location: East Coast
Joined: October 4, 2001
 I had assumed that vintage gear was already broken in, but have had a few pieces that needed to burn in before they sounded good. It could be because they sit for a while.

Those would be the right CDs for the era. I'll bet your Nak sat for a while.

I resisted listening to Nora Jones for a while. When I finally did, I found I liked her. I must be getting old!

Dave

 

RE: Nakamichi CD Player 3 - How do I make it useful?, posted on August 30, 2016 at 15:52:52
fantja
Audiophile

Posts: 15524
Location: Alabama
Joined: September 11, 2010
 Sherwood-

the spinner has an inferior DAC to make up for the fact that it is a CD changer. This might be as good as it gets...

 

RE: Nakamichi CD Player 3 - How do I make it useful?, posted on September 8, 2016 at 13:02:26
KanedaK
Audiophile

Posts: 2519
Location: Brussels
Joined: April 27, 2010
 Well, all CD-changers i've experienced (Yamaha, NAD and Sanyo) were crappy sounding. Dunno about the Nak tho.

That said, a proper recap, with something like Elna Silmic II, can bring great results. that, and some modern opamps to replace the originals.

 

RE: Nakamichi CD Player 3 - How do I make it useful?, posted on July 21, 2017 at 21:31:06
Sherwood Forest
Audiophile

Posts: 240
Joined: October 7, 2014
 I know this thread is good and old, but I have a followup to post. I stumbled across a seller on Ebay flogging off BB PCM1700P chips for about 6 bucks, shipped from China it came to about $9 total. The original PCM1700P chip had a 1990 date code on it, and the one I received had a 1996 date code. This was interesting to me because I'd heard of a zero-crossing glitch that was rumored to plague this chip, but the same person who talked about it had no idea if the problem persisted into later production versions.

So for the hell of it and because I had one laying around, I decided to put in a socket in the place of the original DAC and once that was done I put in the new DAC. Nothing. Not a single peep out of it. I double checked my soldering, and even swapped back the original DAC and still nothing. Confused, I removed the socket and soldered the new DAC directly to the board as the original was. I either tore off a pad then, or when I put the socket in the first time so I repaired that with a jumper wire and put it all back together...

It worked! Moreover, the horrible glitchy sound was cured! I haven't done a lot of listening yet or allowed it to break in, but the sound is immediately better. Also of interest is that the trim pots I adjusted before no longer seem to have such a dramatic effect on sound, in fact so far I have a hard time telling the difference between when they're at either extreme.

So at the end of the day, it appears that I had either a very early and horrible sounding version of the DAC, or mine simply went defective. Either way, for $9 I am pretty happy with the results and now I think I might go ahead and invest in a new set of belts for this unit. The only reason I like this unit so much in the first place is the very high build quality of the transport and other mechanicals, and the Nak name. It's also a pretty unique changer mechanism, storing CDs vertically but not in a magazine, and internally but not in a carousel.

 

RE: Nakamichi CD Player 3 - How do I make it useful?, posted on July 22, 2017 at 16:22:14
fantja
Audiophile

Posts: 15524
Location: Alabama
Joined: September 11, 2010
 Thanks! for the update- Sherwood Forest.
are you a "modder" of cd players by trade?

 

RE: Nakamichi CD Player 3 - How do I make it useful?, posted on July 22, 2017 at 22:52:11
Sherwood Forest
Audiophile

Posts: 240
Joined: October 7, 2014
 Not even close, just decided to rescue this particular one because I liked it. I do I.T. work by trade, overbuilt tube amps is where I actually enjoy working on circuits. I find digital stuff way too fiddly to be any fun for me.

 

RE: Nakamichi CD Player 3 - How do I make it useful?, posted on July 23, 2017 at 00:11:58
belyin
Audiophile

Posts: 1285
Location: New Orleans
Joined: November 1, 2003
 I still like my Anthem CD-1 6 cd changer.

 

RE: Nakamichi CD Player 3 - How do I make it useful?, posted on July 23, 2017 at 04:20:08
fantja
Audiophile

Posts: 15524
Location: Alabama
Joined: September 11, 2010
 I see. Too bad, as we cd lovers could use more cd player modders.

 

RE: Nakamichi CD Player 3 - How do I make it useful?, posted on July 30, 2017 at 06:41:38
knewton
Audiophile

Posts: 563
Location: Mid-Atlantic/Northeast
Joined: May 18, 2010
 If it sounds too much like "ass" to use even as as spare room player then I would suggest not bothering with it further. Unless you know exactly how to make it more musical sounding, the time and frustration are probably not worth the effort for an uncertain result. It might be acceptable for transport duty if it had an digital output, but I think you indicated that it didn't. The next stop for it may be back to the thrift shop for purchase by someone who doesn't much care about it's lack of musical sound.
_
Ken Newton

 

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