Aiwa XP-V716 Personal CD Player

You've probably read that all CD players sound the same--only the features are different. Over the years, my ears have told me otherwise, so I compared cheap Sony, Aiwa, and Philips machines using the same CDs and headphones (my treasured Sony MDR-V6, sadly discontinued). I found substantial differences in sound quality that a technical explanation confirmed.

I needed a player so I could review CDs away from home. So on my way to Long Island this weekend, I bought a Sony DE 206CK for $69.00. It was a neat-looking unit with automatic volume limiter and came car-ready (it had their very effective ESP2 buffer system, a cigarette lighter adapter, and a cassette adapter). Claimed battery life is 15 hours. Controls were easy to use in the car. There was an annoying beep whenever a button was pressed.

The Megabass bass boost is smooth and nice. I listened with my good old discontinued Sony MDR6 headphones, so I can't say anything about the supplied headphones, but all the over-ear headphones I've heard that come with Sony CD players have sounded fine. The overall sound was pleasantly smooth. All in all, a lot of player for the money.

But something bothered me. Another Sony at the store, $40 more, had "1-bit DAC" printed on its case, and I wondered--was one Sony better than another? Were there other machines out there that sounded better than Sonys? I was determined to find out, so I listened closely to several CDs and returned the unit on my way back to Virginia. As it turned out, both Sonys had the same DACs--only the printing on the cases was different--but once I get curious about something, I have to keep going until I understand it.

So I scratched around on the web until I ran across Grant M. Erickson's superb "A Fundamental Introduction to the Compact Disc Player" at http://www.tc.umn.edu/~erick205/Papers/paper.html . I wandered happily through techno-wonderland for a good long while, but I'll spare you the gruesome details.

The short take is that CD players can employ very different methods of getting information off a CD and into the listener's ears: multibit, which requires major klugery to work acceptably, and one-bit. One-bit comes in two flavors: Matsushita's pulse-width modulation (PWM, also known as MASH--Multi-stAge noise SHaping), and Philips' pulse-density modulation (PDM) or Bitstream conversion method, which is inherently much quieter and more accurate than other schemes.

I decided to get a player utilizing PDM. The shop I visited offered an Aiwa XP-V716C with "1-bit DAC" printed on the case for $72.95, and I bought it in hopes the included booklet would reveal its use of the Philips PDM system (the clerk wouldn't let me open the bubble pack to check, but he said if I didn't like it when I got it home, I could return it). The Aiwa is a remarkably slick-looking player, another car-oriented package, again with a second-generation buffer (48 seconds, but switchable to 12 seconds or off to improve sound quality and extend battery life), a cigarette lighter adapter, and a cassette adapter.

Among the more unusual features are CD-R/RW capability (to make sure you can play home-brewed discs), a three-LED battery strength gauge, an LCD backlight that you can activate by waving your hand in front of a small sensor, and (of all things) a tiny wireless remote. Claimed battery life is 30 hours. The two-stage bass boost was smooth, and overall sound with my phones (again, I didn't try the supplied ones) was a bit better defined than I remembered the Sony's (but with a day's gap in listening sessions and conditions, my guess is hardly conclusive).

I was still curious whether the Aiwa used the Philips technology, so I called their 1-800 number and asked. I was handed off to a rep, and after a wait, he reported "It doesn't say Philips anywhere, so it must be an Aiwa part." I surmised that instead of asking a tech (who would've understood I was asking about a process, not a part), he'd scanned a parts book for the name "Philips."

I gritted my teeth and decided I was going to find out for sure what the Philips technology sounded like by buying a for-real Philips, and I located a Philips AZ9111/17 for $59.95 at Circuit City (their site reported it in stock at both of the closest stores). And since I'd decided to return the Aiwa the following day, the presence of both players suggested a bake-off.

The Philips has a short but well-thought-out feature list: scan (plays first 10 seconds of each remaining song), automatic volume limiter, CD-R/RW compatibility, resume, auto power off, AC adapter, and 40 seconds of third-generation buffering. That's about all I need in the way of features, and I was glad I didn't have to pay for the car pieces, because my cigarette lighter socket is dead, and my Aiwa cassette deck in the car has a front-panel mini-plug jack for CD input.

The battery compartment is on the floor of the CD compartment where its lid can't be knocked loose (the lid slides outward to expose the batteries, and it's at the edge of the inside, so it can't open with the CD lid down). The user's manual was useful, much more so than the cryptic sheet that accompanied the other players. Claimed battery life is 20 hours. On the downside, it has that annoying keypress beep, and its profile is unfortunately reminiscent of the outline of a toilet seat.

The supplied Philips AY3682 open-air over-ear headphones were better than nothing, but my MDR-V6 has spoiled me. To the best of my recollection, I'd say the standard phones that come with Sony players are both more comfortable and better-sounding.

My immediate impression on comparing the Aiwa and the Philips was that the Aiwa was much more pleasant to listen to. It sounded syrupy and warm where the Philips sounded rough. Then I realized the reason: the Aiwa was blurring a huge number of details, and I wasn't used to getting as much detail and clarity as the Philips was giving me. Call it unkind, call it harsh--with the Philips, you hear it all.

The Philips offered up a wealth of detail unheard with the Aiwa. Small mouth sounds on a Paula Cole vocal were beautifully detailed. And on the ADD remastering of the Philadelphia Orchestra's 1958 recording of Respighi's Roman trilogy (Eugene Ormandy conducting), about a minute and a half into "I pini di Villa Borghese," in the exposed section where the flute takes flurried flight in tandem with the bass clarinet, you can clearly hear the airiness of the flutist's exhalation as an entity discrete from the sound produced by the flute itself. This extremely fine detail of texture escapes the Aiwa.

As for the Philips' two-stage bass boost, I engaged it on a track with exposed kick drum. I found it unpleasantly tubby, whereas the Aiwa sounded smooth. Then I realized the Philips was probably accurately reflecting poor equalization, whereas the Aiwa was likely blurring the sad truth.

Among the three, if you have to settle for the provided earphones, I'd recommend the Sony. If you want cool features, the Aiwa is the killer bargain. If you want a severe jogging machine, of their entire stock, a local shop recommends only Sonys with G-Protection. But if you're like me, you crave the most accurate sound reproduction you can get, and if it comes cheap, so much the better. In that case, there's simply no contest. Only the Philips will do.