Got this beautiful few months ago. It came with cover case and box, but unluckily can not read Disc anymore . Here are few pictures to share with you. Enjoys. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing! Indeed, D-5 is the very first Discman ever made, came before the 'Discman' term was even invented. As with D-7 and D-10 Discmans, it is pretty rare in red or white, nice catch! Shame it is just a paperweight. The easiest fix would be to buy one working D-5/D-50 (most of them are still OK, unlike its younger brothers, D-5 is seemingly indestructible) and to switch the shell. Since yours looks New, there is a good chance laser is still strong, then it might be an easy fix. Just do not expect much in terms of sound quality: D-50 is the player which gave such a bad rap to CDs. Even folks at Sony must have realized that, and quickly re-designed it into D-50 MkII (later renamed as D-7) which also has brick-wall digital filter (oversampling had not been introduced yet) but sounds absolutely marvelous! My personal "dream Discman" is D-50 MkII or D-10 in red or white...
The case and in red, great find! Hopefully it's an easy fix, otherwise I'm sure there's a ton of collectors that would love to own that model and might have better resources to fix it.
Thank you all for the comments. So supprisingly my D50 started working normally as I pulled it out and plugged in a power supply last night. I do not know why, but I guess it could be related to all old components inside. It was very dry and cold these days and some stuffs may have decided to be lively again By the way, I was very suprised by the sould of this device. It sould so nice.
Maybe a dirty contact in the socket. Also capacitors can reform if they haven't dried out. Many audiophiles reckon that the earliest CD players had the best sound and things started going downhill when "Bitstream" players were introduced.
Dictionary.com says that an audiophile is a person who is especially interested in high-fidelity sound reproduction. Well, interested does not mean knowledgeable. In fact, bitstream players significantly improved CD sound quality across the board, allowing to build cheap, compact and consistently good DACs. Those audiophiles simply cannot stomach that an early 1990s $200 player can reproduce better sound than a late 1980s $5000 one. Early "audiophile" DACs used two, three, even four decoders per channel, averaging their output, just because straightforward-designed DACs were so finicky, and even with the best components they still would drift. Bitstream DACs use quite a bit of math in their design, they are much more stable and reliable. I suggest searching AVS forums and Steve Hoffman music forums for posts by jaddie, he is very knowledgeable. When people start saying inanities like "To me, an analog recording is the definition of "high resolution." An analog recording has essentially an infinite number of samples per second" you need someone who can explain them that "a CD can easily handle all the data that reconstructs the original analog tape or LP signal. Going above the CD in this case accomplishes nothing." So, he says (and proves, but people don't want to listen) that CD is better than LP and analog tape, yet going beyond CD into "hi-res audio" does not improve sound by much, there is a higher theoretical dynamic range, but CD's dynamic range and frequency range are more than enough.
Your forgeting one of the main issues with analog recording is the wear on the equipment. Some of the equipment was running 24/7 with new releases from Journey, Foreigner, and Billy Squier and my favorite, Katrina and the Waves; they knew they wanted 100's of thousands of albums on release day, back when hot bands easily sold millions of albums. Since analog was machined and digital was "burned" your going to get a lot more consistancy with CD's. I don't know if "hot stampings" is still big, but 15 years ago we talked about that alot and I'm in the camp that fresh equipment made much better pressings. At the end of the day we have to look at who's comparing what and what equipment is being used. You can tell me all day long your CD sounds better than my LP but there's so many variables that no test will every be accurate, it comes down to Dr. Fauci or jaddie to be the ultimate authority. Personally I like both formats but the satisfaction of playing an album on my vintage equipment is much more fun, but don't get me wrong, I still burn CDs all the time and own vintage players, not because they're better but I like the look of old technology. I'm going to let the audio listeners speak and I've heard the same thing for years, they don't get warmth with CDs, there's too many people out there that are in this camp to disregard it. Even more telling is that CD sales have dropped off a cliff, crappy digital has surpassed it. I like all media but when I'm in a work truck, cassettes sound fantastic, when I'm in a noisy car, CDs sound great. Sure you can show me quotes, but give me real data, place some mics, record the sound and show me how the wave forms match up. I looked up jaddie, he's kind of a dick, you guys have very similar personalities and posts, I'm not trying to be mean but there's definitely a chip on your shoulder. Most of us are a mix of young and old guys that love the hobby, conversations and disagreements are great but you need to present a lot more data and not marketing material, taking a Xanax or two might help.
I don't know much beyond popular science articles, so I get my foot in it often and then I need to apologize but he seems to be a real professional, and I don't care about his attitude if what he says checks out. Anyway, this is the page he usually sends people to, oh and this too, and indeed they is very informative. Also, these articles are full of info, although they get too complicated too quickly for me to fully understand them: PDM, PWM, Delta-Sigma, 1-Bit DACs (first published May 1989) PDM, PWM, Delta-Sigma, 1-Bit DACs John Atkinson (first published June 1989) PDM, PWM, Delta-Sigma, 1-Bit DACs Peter W. Mitchell (first published January 1990) As for a chip on one's shoulder, I apologize. Don't mean to be mean It just comes across this way. The red Sony CD player looks awesome! I've recently been buying CD players on eBay, bought a bit oldish portable player from the early 1990s, it did not work, so I sent it back. So I concentrated on late 1990s to early 2000s models, all bitstream players of course. Two Sonys, three Panasonics, one Philips. Also bought a standalone player on a garage sale. Want to stock up before the CD comeback
There are many variables including the listeners hearing. I worked with an audiophile who was always going on about LPs being better than CDs. Then he moved on to Hi-Res SACD and Hi-Res downloads. At that point he decided Digital Sounded better than analogue. As "Mister X says quite a lot depends on the pressing. At the end of the 1980s we were wondering if anyone got a decent pressing of Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven is a Place on Earth" LP. The problem may have been the track order with the inner tracks sounding the worst. CD never had this problem. A problem which has affected CDs is the infamous loudness war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war Interestingly last time I looked at this the examples were of a Michael Jackson track. As for people initially saying CD was poor quality I wonder what equipment they were listening to. My first CD player was a first generation Hitachi, back when they had a single DAC with no oversampling shared between the two channels. I was actually pleased with it until after about five years it started playing up. I swapped it for a 1992 Philips CDi player (which I already had). What a revelation. I was hearing cymbals etc on CDs that I had never noticed before.
Me totally agrees with @Longman - nowadays it is not as much your hi-end front-end but The Original Masters Recording. No matter what I used for 'Van Der Graaf Generator' LIVE album, the sound was abysmal, as if someone from the audience had originally recorded the show. Then Loudness Wars turned the idea of 'juicy compression' of Disco-'Ace of Base' era into a Flat-Line... Imagine Dragons CDs are good example of some catchy tunes I use to test h/p power of my Discmans: loudness is flat-lined at its max fro the start! I hate to contradict while at my fav forum (when I want some fighting I go to Audiogon and post my loves for Shakti Stones there) but 1-bit DACs are not The Best thing since sliced bread... it took about 20+ years for the Community to actually sit and listen, but with Discmand it is a rule: 1-bit means Bad Sound... And it has nothing to do with 1-bit DACs at all!!! At the end of a day it does not actually matter: given a choice between Sony D-Z555 and 1-bit Linn Classik (which are being sold nowadays for about the same $$$) I chose Linn. The beauty of Audio - you can be totally illiterate and still be able to distinguish Bad Sound from something you actually enjoy. All you have to do is 'to listen' and also maybe someone who would help you to verbalize the differences you hear. Personally, I feel real lucky that ages ago I met a hi-end dealer in Chicago who was real patient and understanding about my then-delusions that "Digital is Digital and is the Ultimate" ((Chicago Pro Musica))
Nope! Read and pay attention Better still: listen and enjoy instead of reading all the bull written about the Ultimate Sound
I watched a video on YouTube by Does Not Compute, he had just fixed a D88 that wasn't reading discs, he found that there is a gear wheel inside that moves the laser sled that was damaged, so he fitted a new one, and it worked! Not sure if the D50 is the same, but maybe worth a look?
Luckily, @koleloi Discman is fine now. But @lupogtiboy is absolutely right: practically all Sony Discmans worth buying have this problem of a 'frozen' and sometimes even broken sled gears. Most infamous models are D-150, D-250 and D-90 where Middle Gear spins on a brass pin but oil used by Sony found a way for some kind of a chemical reaction between brass and plastic. Oil itself gets rock-solid, plastic gear turns green and then crumbles... No such problems in D-5, but if any teeth get broken you must find another Discman for a donor. Since KSS-110A mechanism is unique for this Discman, you need to buy another D-5. Luckily, unlike D-88 this D-5 model is not too expensive and there is always a few choices on eBay. here is my D-50 opened up for recap, re-calibration and cleaning: Looks very neat and considering that this is the first Discman ever made, quite easy to work on. Unlike later D-50 MkII and D-100 where things get nasty
As regards to sound quality the options are infinite as well as sound preferences i use multi graphic eq's for example and audiophiles hate them but i for one have never heard a good amplifier without them and i have had dozens of amplifiers over the years. just enjoy the sound you have, it doesn't matter if anybody else doesn't like it as it's for you're ears only lads take boomboxes for example, people love the jvc m70 some have multiples of them...well i had 2 of them the sound was flat as a pancake and i was glad to get shot of them, so just enjoy what you have ehh
