I'm by no means an audiophile, in fact i have signifigant hearing loss, but i ran across a thread over at DP talking about using a Ps1 as a high end CD player. So i dug around a bit and found these two links: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=31123&perpage=10&pagenumber=1 http://dogbreath.de/PS1/index.html Seems interesting enough, and i'm sure i can come up with a spare SCPH-100x somewhere. Seems as if the 100x's have better audio processing, i dunno much about high end audio so i can't say myself. Seems like a worthwile weekend project tho. Anyone use a PS1 as a cd player? I mostly use xboxes, but freely admit that they sound like ass for cd playback.
Thats interesting if so. So many other parts on the first model psx are pretty sub par vs the revision. :S
I'd use the SCPH 1001 model cuz of the RCA jacks in the back for pure stereo hookup. Otherwise a PSX 7501 and up I'd use also cuz of soundscope feature it has.
If you wanted to do such a thing, you'd probably want to avoid the RCA hook ups so you could avoid the internal amp. And you most certainly wouldn't choose a transport based on visualization software. Of course, those that care about things like this are the ones whose stereo systems also contain turntables and tubes. A basic "7.1 Home Theater in a Box" isn't going to have enough clarity to resolve the differences in audio anyway. -hl718
I used to use a MegaCD I as a CD player, bought it for £5 years ago lol, old speakers wired up to a headphone jack using the MegaDrive's headphone and volume slider... aaah those were the day's...
I never had a CD player, so I used my PSX, back in the day. It was connected to my stereo anyway (in 97, my TV was a 1980 panasonic that didn't have RCA - I hooked the whole setup through an old, discarded BETAMAX. There were so many cables, consoles, and things to turn on in a certain order for it to work, that we used to call my room "The Reactor"). I had an MP3/WMA CD player that I bought about 3 years ago, but a couple months back it started dying. Now I have one of those chinese USB MP3 players, and I'm happy with that.
Hmmm I have always read (in an old UK or USA magazine, can´t remember wich one), that Saturn was the best sounding console of the two, so why not use a Saturn as a highend CD player ? But it is awesome, never the less. Heck I would love to have such a "super sound" PSX, and thank goodness, that I have an old PSX
Because nobody kisses Sega's arse like they do with Sony. It is true that the Saturn has a far superior sound processor to the PSX so logically it should be better playing audio CDs but since I'm no audiophile I don't know. I do know however that the Saturn's multi out provides crap audio. Listen through some head phones and you'll hear a slight background noise. Maybe the internal amp is of low quality? The sound processor certainly isn't though. Very nice Yamaha DSP in the Saturn. Yakumo
You know, I thought it was just me when I noticed certain music sounded a tad different when played on my Playstation 2 and my Dreamcast unit. I cannot really tell which one sounded better though...
you use a Dreamcast as a CD player? The DC has no fast forward option though! I've never used a console as a CD player. I bought a new stereo not too long ago that does MP3 (any bit rate) and WMA as well as CDDA and every possible MD format. Sounds pretty good to me playing stuff on it or even through it as an amp. Yakumo
Considering the Yamaha setup inside the Dreamcast, would it be safe to assume that CD playback would sound better on it?
No shit. I was just saying if for a party, I'd rather use some sort of visualization with the audio hooked up to speakers because it adds more to the entertainment. Of course a $100 home theater system will not have as good bass and clarity as a professional $500-$1000 set up. Remember the Memorex commercials? Anyway. The problem with vacuum tubes is that over time, especially if you kept that old record player from the 70s to play all your hendrix and carpenters records, the tubes in those things will deteriorate over time if they were made of poor quality and you'd either have to replace the whole thing or hunt down the right vacuum tubes that will work in there. Other than that if you can't afford a hi-end CD stereo system then maybe a PSX might do ok. You can only tell the difference if you are playing the song at high volumes but only then the quality of your speakers and sub-woofer matter as well. With a high quality system you can hear the difference between a 33khz audio track and a 44khz track. Boy, I miss the Audiophile show from TechTV.
That's just the point though. A $500-$1000 setup is nowhere near an audiophile quality system. You're likely to spend that much on a "Home Theater in a Box" at a major chain store. -hl718
Nah, this is mostly bullshit. Game systems are not really designed to be Hi-Fi. When was he last time anyone bought a system becuase of nice audio? Do you really think Sony/Sega/MS will spend money on good DACs? Nice pre-amps? No way. These sort of facts come around all the time. It's simply becuase anything that can read a CD reasonably will sound good. CDs have much more sonic information than a human can hear, so unless you fuck up the reading or DAC badly, they'll be pretty nice sounding. And anyone calling themselves and audiophile is usually a fucking idiot with way more money than sense.
Although you have that bloody fan on it, which would steal away any benefit other than it being an extra feature on something you already own perhaps.
If you think I'm gonna listen to the likes of the Velvet Underground on a crappy PSX you are sadly mistaken!
Great stuff! Thanks for sharing. Tapping audio directly from the AK4309 DAC, bypassing the internal opamp and replacing it with a better external output stage, is a pretty cool idea! Another possibility is to tap the digital signal before the DAC instead. And then convert it to SPDIF and use a better external DAC. bITmASTER has the schematics: http://www.syncscroller.net/psx/psx-digital-out.pdf Cheers! CF
No, I've only used my Dreamcast for listening to portions of songs over and over again. I prefer using it on my television than any other device that can plug into my tv: my PS2, etc...
