This Kenwood 5 disc carousel player was on a shelf collecting dust at my mom’s house. So I’ve borrowed it.
1 Bit DAC via RCA output into my SingXer SA1.
So clear but also way louder. The player must have much higher voltage output than the DISH box I’ve been using as a source, on which I had to crank the volume on the SA1 to the max to get room/house filling sound level. Now 3 o’clock is plenty for that & max is too loud.
Only issue is it will not tolerate any kind of scratch on a CD. It goes into bad jitter upon hitting any scratch.
interesting. isn’t a 1 bit DAC SACD?
The unit has it, 1 bit, on the front in the picture is all I can tell you. It also says Compact Disc Player with no reference to SACD. So I’m not sure if it’s upsampling the 16bit/44.1khz or what.
Im using the same WBC/RCA. With a few hours listening at this point, I would bet my SA1 preamp is what is keeping it from sounding very thin/cold, compared to the DISH box I was using. It’s much brighter sounding, significantly less warmth/smoothness as the DISH box, but just shy of being too bright. Its certainly got top end detail. The bass isn’t as prominent as the DISH box, or maybe the increased highs make it seem so. Over all it’s pretty balanced I’d say. Some rock vocals get a bit shouty, but only a bit & not all rock vocals. The highs don’t hurt me at high volume, but they’re all there for sure. Image & sound stage sound good to me. I might consider a passive EQ or tube buffer stage to smooth the highs a bit, inline to the preamp if I were to keep the unit as my CD player. It definitely puts out hot signal.
It’s about $90 on eBay. Like I said though, if your CDs are scratched up, don’t bother trying. It’s my mom’s player. There were 5 CDs left in it when I plugged it in & opened the tray. None would play without going into jitter. She has moved twice I think, with those 5 CDs in it going neglected. No wonder they’re scratched up. I’m OCD about keeping my CDs in good shape.
It’s plenty loud even at 12 o’clock now. Still on low gain too.
Delta-Sigma DACs are 1-bit internally.
