SONY CDP-XA7ES

Commentary

ES series CD player which adopted optical system fixed system mechanism and current pulse D/A conversion system.

Newly developed optical system fixing mechanism is adopted for the mechanism part.
In this system, the optical pickup is fixed to the main body of a strong mechanical base, and vibration of the disk surface is suppressed by a stabilizer made of brass. Thus, a mechanism with very little fluctuation is realized. This reduces the burden on the servo for correcting the operation of the optical pickup and greatly improves sound quality.
In addition, the spindle motor for rotating the disk is equipped with a BSL motor that provides high precision and quiet rotational performance with little cogging. In addition, the CDP-XA7ES uses sapphire as the spindle bearing with high hardness and low friction coefficient to improve durability.

The digital filter is equipped with a newly developed full feed-forward digital filter.
In the full-feed-forward digital filter, an FF (full-feed-forward) arithmetic block is provided to transmit data that had been truncated due to the limitation of arithmetic capability in the conventional method. This enables extremely precise musical expression and eliminates the maximum quantization noise in the audible band caused by data truncation, thereby greatly improving signal quality, especially at small levels.

The D/A converter is equipped with a current pulse D/A converter.
The current pulse D/A converter uses a current instead of a voltage to express the pulse, eliminating the effect of voltage fluctuations in principle. Moreover, it is less affected by noise from the arithmetic circuit, so it achieves a significant improvement in sound quality.

The complimentary service PLM method is used. Among the four outputs of the pulse D/A converter, two outputs of the PLM waves, which have a complementary relationship with each other, are differentially synthesized to reproduce an output waveform with less harmonic distortion.

The servo circuit is equipped with a high-precision digital servo.
This circuit uses a high sampling rate A/D and D/A converter to achieve servocontrol that better reflects the disc condition.

The drive circuit of the disc rotation system and optical pickup employs a fine drive composed of balanced push-pull capable of canceling in-phase noise components, so that noise components that adversely affect sound quality do not flow into the earth line.
In order to maintain high audio signal purity inside the chassis, we have adopted a digital minimum board. In addition to separating the digital circuit board from the audio circuit board, the digital circuit board is laid out on the mechanical deck section to minimize noise splash to the audio section.

The analog low-pass filter uses an active-type Cowell low-pass filter with excellent group delay characteristics suppress the generation of wide-area noise.

The line amplifier uses a DC servo system to eliminate the coupling capacitor from the audio signal path. In addition, a high-performance amplifier with FET input is used to separate the noise component from the low-pass filter at the front stage by the high-impedance input characteristic of FET.
In the output stage, an A-class FET suitable for small-signal amplification is operated. This FET, coupled with a straight signal output by a DC servo circuit, enhances sound quality and drive performance.

The power supply section is equipped with a twin R core transformer with two transformers in a shield case.
The R-core transformer has excellent electromagnetic characteristics and very little magnetic flux leakage. By feeding power independently to the audio circuit and digital circuit, mutual interference is eliminated.

FB chassis is used for the chassis structure.
In this structure, the entire chassis is firmly joined by the outer frame and the beams connecting the front and rear to ensure rigidity and improve vibration resistance. In addition, the inside of the chassis is plated with copper, and a high-rigidity aluminum top plate is used to make the chassis non-magnetic, thereby suppressing magnetostriction.

A center mechanical mount system is adopted, and the mechanical deck is placed in the center of the chassis to minimize the rotational moment applied to the chassis and improve stability against vibration.

Newly developed cast iron eccentric insulator is used for the leg part.
By offsetting the screw fixing position from the center of the insulator, vibration entering from the outer circumference of the insulator is mutually canceled, and by changing the insulator material to cast iron for CDP-XA7ES, further damping effect is obtained.

A newly developed static lighting type fluorescent display tube is adopted for the display, and by using a display with less switching, vibration and noise from the display tube are suppressed.

The Custom Edit function allows you to use peak search (remote control only), log ram edit, manual fader (remote control only) and variable fade.

It has a custom file function and provides custom index and delete bank functions.

Features such as Delete Play, Shuffle, Delete Shuffle, 3-way Music Scan (remote control only), Auto Space (remote control only), Timer Play, 8-mode repeat, and Index Search (remote control only) are provided.

It is equipped with two digital outputs which are coaxial with the optical system.
The digital output has an ON/OFF switch to suppress noise generation when not in use.

Equipped with two analog outputs, fixed and variable, with gold-plated terminals.
The CDP-XA7ES also has an XLR-type balanced output.

Equipped with headphone terminal with lineout linked volume.

Wireless remote control is included.

Model Rating

Type	CD Player
D/A converter	Current pulse D/A converter
Digital filter	Full-feed digital filter
Frequency characteristic	2 Hz to 20 kHz ± 0.3 dB
Total harmonic distortion factor	0.0015% or less (EIAJ)
Signal-to-noise ratio	119 dB or more (EIAJ)
Dynamic range	100 dB or more (EIAJ)
Wow and flutter	Below the measurement limit (± 0.001% W. peak) (EIAJ)
Output level	Fixed : 2 Vrms Variable : 2 Vrms to 0 V Balanced (fixed) : 5 Vrms
Digital output	Optical : -18dBm (emission wavelength 660 nm) Coaxial : 0.5Vp-p/75 Ω
Headphone output level	100 mW (32 Ω)
Power supply voltage	100 VAC, 50Hz/60Hz
Power consumption	28W
External dimensions	Width 430x Height 125x Depth 375 mm
Weight	Approx. 15.0 kg
Attachment	Wireless Remote Control RM-D920