SONY CDP-X5000... Open house... (No, not for sale... :P)

[Maniac]

I have acquired a Sony CDP-X5000 not too long ago, and I first admire it for its fit and finish, as well as that it is one of the few CD player in this price range that provide a AES/EBU digital output, which I'm rather found of.

Enough with words, the photos are shown below.


Lousy lighting.



Flash lighting.



Dual Independent DAC, Sony's design was a rather interesting one, in that it actually tore DAC's digital and analog section apart. The digital part of the DAC is handled by a single chip, while the analog part is two chip, each handling one channel. (From the service manual, it looks like as if the chip they use can produce stereo output, but they use it as a mono chip).



Filter caps next to the transport assembly.



Transport assembly.



DC Servo caps, rather too large in physical size to be taken as a servo cap. Funny that Sony have explicit marking on the PCB for the orientation of the non-polar film cap, guess there is some truth in cap orientation for better sound theory.



Same cap, different angle.



Same cap, but even closer up. You can see Sony use a large amount of MELF caps, and according to the service manual, this is 2% precision carbon film caps. carbon film is common, but one thing I have not heard of is 2% precision ones.

You can also see the digital output circuits in the above photo. AES/EBU and coax output have pulse transformer while the optical is direct wiring.

The digital output can be switched off if you do not need it, and for best quality of digital output, Sony used a 7408 IC to control the output to each connector. This is in my opinion, one of the better way to do it, as letting a digital signal passing through a standard relay or mechanical switch is one of the worse thing you can do to a digital signal.

Anyways, that's the photo I have for now, I'll post more as I found/took them :P