I use both the CD50 ( 1985 ) and the CD 5500 (1987) players at home
The CD 50 has a full 16 bit decoder and strangely it only had one digital to analogue
converter (DAC) that was used for both the stereo channels. To provide stereo playback, a
very fast electronic switch was used to switch the analogue (music
signal) output of the DAC alternately between the these two channels, over
86,000 times a second. This is very similar to how FM stereo radio
works. This was of course followed by complex high-order filters to
remove the noise that this sort of arrangement inevitably generated, and
despite sounding unpromising on paper, the arrangement yielded very
good results. The single DAC employed was made by Burr-Brown, an American
manufacturer normally associated with high quality audiophile devices
seen on more expensive equipment.
This is a good link
The CD5500 was based largely on a Philips reference design, so when Philips acquired Marantz in 1980, all
the CD player designs are actually based on Philips schematics, but it was the
implementation of the designs on single sided PCB's and using leaded
poly caps that led to the Marantz getting a better press from the HiFi cognoscenti :-)
Some later Marantz models used ceramic
DAC capacitors as dictated by Philips but eventually they realised when the 16bit TDA1541 was introduced and used by many more CD players
like the Beogram CD 5500, Revox 226, Marantz CD94 etc that maybe there was
something about poly caps that mattered for analogue audio and the Philips CD880
and DAC960 CDP's are proof that they believed this to be so
The Beogram CDX 14bit player was based on the Philips CD104, and used two TDA1540P 14 bit DACs to derive their binary weighted current sources (each one exactly half the value of the previous) for the 10 most significant bits by time division averaging. The TDA1540 data sheet states the accuracy of the current division is dependant only on the equal mark/space ratio of a series of binary divider and this process requires "filter" capacitors which do not need to be close tolerance , however if you look deeper these capacitors appear in the signal path, the ceramic capacitors fitted to the CD104 DAC appear to affect "the sound" of it's output, and this is possibly due to losses and or dielectric hysteresis in the capacitors, so not ideal from that point of view.
Other TDA1540 based players of the time were the Loewe CD 9000 and Marantz 73
I used to have both a CDX and CD104, I sold them both to finance my CD50 and CD5500, when I did some blind AB testing with them years back, it seemed to me that mid range vocals, pop and rock sounded better on the CD50, and classical and piano, instrumentals etc seemed to sparkle and have a better soundstage with the 5500
To be honest they are both classic CDP's, but not exceptional in any way !
My father has a Marantz CD-7 74 player, and it sounds way better than anything B&O can come up with, as does the venerable link
The Arcam Alpha 5, Beogram CDX2, Beogram CD5500 and CD3300 all use the same TDA1541A DAC and SAA7220P/B 4x oversampling digital filter combination in their players.
Having heard all four, again in blind ABCD testings, with three other people whose ears are way better than mine, it was a close call between all four from what I remember, no outright winner
I have also heard many CDP's that use NOS, Bitstream and Delta-Sigma designs over the last 20 years, and the B&O 1541 DAC and 4x oversampling based players sound pretty good for the money to my ears, or maybe just right to my ears, rather than better !
