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REVIEW: Vacuum State Electronics Sony DVP-S9000ES CD Player/Recorder

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Model: Sony DVP-S9000ES
Category: CD Player/Recorder
Suggested Retail Price: $ 1250
Description: Sony DVP-S9000ES SACD / DVD-V player modified by Vacuum State Electronics
Manufacturer URL: Not Available
Manufacturer URL: Not Available

Review by Rip@ti ( A ) on April 06, 2003 at 23:27:29
IP Address: 212.246.188.168
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for the Sony DVP-S9000ES


This is a review of Allen Wright’s Vacuum State modification of a Sony DVP-S9000ES player. If you don’t feel like reading the whole text, here’s the deal in just three points:

1) The results of the mod are very good, even better than I was expecting.

2) The whole process took a long time, over three months from shipping to receiving. At moments, it was frustrating to wait.

3) Now that the player is back and well broken in, I’m happy I went for it. Having a S9000ES modified by VSE seems to me a very good way to get a well built and sonically outstanding 2ch player at a reasonable price.

The longer version comes here:

SOME BACKGROUND

I’ve had a DVP-S9000ES since July, 2001. While the Sony has served me well with the 70 SACDs I’ve bought thus far, I started to feel that it’d be nice to extract even more out of the new format.

Because my goal at this point is to build a good two-channel system, having my player modified seemed more cost-efficient than buying a new one of high-end quality. Also, the player’s build and looks are disarming.

CHOOSING THE MOD

In my search for a mod, staying inside the EU turned out to be the only realistic option as customs fees, taxes and shipping add-up into a dispiriting overhead once you trade over the Atlantic.

Fortunately, one of the most fascinating upgrades was available in Europe. Allen Wright’s modification consists of a new post-digital circuitry inserted in a Sony player. Eligible models at present are all that use the V24 or V24+ digital filter. The VSE PCB offers an alternative path for the DSD signal with a high-quality low pass filter, keeping it voltage-based all the way, thus making a DAC unnecessary. Here I’m out of my depth, so read the brochures yourselves.

The new circuitry leaves the original signal route intact, fully functional and delivering its goods via one pair of the player’s RCA jacks. So what is there to lose if the mod proves a disappointment? Money? There’s that. But the player will always have the op-amped output, too.

Because of the unity-gain buffer stage VSE uses, the ouput voltage of the mod is low, 0.7 V, instead of the 2 V of most CD or 1.2 V of many SACD players. It’s still more than enough for all active preamps, claims Allen. Personally, I’m happy to have a preamplifier with individually adjustable output levels for different sources, so that the volume won’t jump to ear harming levels when my kids switch to their PS2.

FIRST, PRICE

The ‘balanced option’ consists of two separate and identical PCBs feeding into XLR jacks. Installed, it costs € 1200 (c. $ 1250). The single-ended option based on just one PCB lists for € 650. The power supply upgrade is another € 250, parts & work. These prices are from last November.

A case could be made against getting a mod that is as or more expensive than the player modified, but as a design statement product, the S9000ES has a build quality that makes it reasonably priced, even at its original price point. In my opinion, the sturdy chassis and transport mechanism make it a good platform for extensive - and expensive - modifications.

After a short correspondence with Allen, I shipped my Sony to his technician Thomas Bruentrop with an order of a balanced mod and power supply upgrade.

VACUUM STATE FLUCTUATIONS, OR, LOOKING FOR MR. WRIGHT

Prior to sending the player, I found it painless communicating with Allen. He was friendly, didn’t oversell his products and had patience to answer layman’s questions.

Thomas Bruentrop did his part in less than a week but after that, things slowed down.

Allen’s part of quality control, fine-tune and break-in took nine weeks. From my P.O.V., it’s a long time.

During the wait, my appetite was whetted by Allen’s e-mail saying that, against all his expectations, the modded S9000ES sounded better than anything else he had had in his system. Allen claimed that the player now beat his analog source.

When the player was otherwise ready to ship, another week was lost as Allen realized that he needed the original remote to check whether the video output was still working properly. We were saved by Patrick Uitz, who generously sent his remote to Allen. Thank you Patrick, you’re the man.

When Allen finally commented on the long wait, he wrote: " I admit it – I have been keeping the player much longer than I should cause I just can’t imagine not having it here to play! I does sound that good!" That leaves little to gripe about, I guess.

The payment was done as a bank transfer. No problems there.

THE SYSTEM IN WAIT

While waiting, I purchased Cardas Neutral Reference XLR-terminated interconnects, both for the player/preamp and preamp/active speaker connections to have my system ready for the born-again front-end.

Now my system consisted of:

-Proceed Pre preamp.

-Genelec 1037B active monitors.

-Cardas Neutral Reference cabling.

The Proceed Pre is a work-horse, very reliable and flexible at the same time. It has two sets of balanced inputs, individually adjustable source levels, polarity switch, Madrigal’s SSP surround processor pass-through for front L&R channels. Looking for weaknesses, the first thing to come into my mind is the two-button volume control with an awkward whole number scale from 0 to 112, but I’ve learned to live with it.

The Genelecs are unassumingly powerful and honest, used by many mixing studios. My main complaint about them is their self generated noise (audible as a very low hiss if you put your ear to the elements while the speaker is on and idle). If the gain adjustment switches don’t fix it to your satisfaction and if you are ready to sacrifice a couple decibels of the sound pressure maximum (120 dB @ 1m), you can lower the noise by having the amps turned down internally. I had mine adjusted at –4 dB by the factory. After the operation, I can hear next to nothing on the self-generated noise department but still have enough power to rock the house.

The overall sonic character of my system can be described as non-euphonic, neutral to the border of being a bit dry. An unforgiving, "pro-audio-like" combination in its way, it comes with no obvious weaknesses. On the other hand, it’s not one of those seriously expensive, magical setups that transform most everything into gold.

HOMECOMING

On a Friday night in January, the player finally returned. The new XLR-jacks looked cool, albeit the scarcity of free space available on the S9000ES’s back panel had forced Thomas to place them quite close to each other. But faced with the job myself, I would have been hard-pressed to find better place for them.

TAKE ME TO THE STATION

Put me on a train, I’ve got no expectations…

Except I did, only expectations, with the mod I went and bought without an audition.

Almost every review I’ve come across has compared this mod’s sound to that of a good analog source. Allen’s mid-process claim that my player now beats his personal vinyl system is a strong statement that I managed to take cum grano salis. I have enough experience of vinyl playback to realize that it would be a tall order to expect performance that would surpass a high-end analog rig.

On the other hand, a reviewer writing for the German magazine "Audiophile" detected certain "ethereality" to the sound (his was a single-ended mod and on the whole he liked it very much). The word "ethereal" has many connotations. Will it "lack substance"? Be weak? Powerless? Would this player present me with watercolor music, delicate but timid?

It was finally time to hear it.

WHAT ABOUT BOB?

I hooked the player up (nice feeling to plug the Cardas XLRs into the new jacks), let it run up for a couple of hours (Allen suggested a 24-hour settle time but I just couldn’t wait) before powering up the Genelecs and then put in Bill Evans Trio’s Waltz for Debbie, pushed ‘Play’ and sat through the whole disc, totally not wanting to take the notes I had the notepad and pen for. So I had to listen to it once more.

My notes:

Huh. Wow.

And then a more analytical point:

Jeez.

And then:

Layers.

Spatial separation. The stage has more width, depth, even height.

Soundstage has left the building.

The building has left the building.

Highs are high & easy. Lows are tight, sit straight.

Punch.

The paradoxical thing dawning on me during the first session was that, somehow, I was getting something less. Less distraction. Less intrusion. It was almost as if something had been taken away. Something that you get rid of with a very good piece of equipment.

The VSE mod gives the impression that someone has left the room, an invading nuisance not uncomparable to Bob in the Frank Oz film "What About Bob?" It’s difficult to put a finger on what it really consists of. Is it the specific taste of an electronic circuitry? The recognizable sound of the components used, both individually and together? Whatever it is, there’s now less of that. Bye, Bob.

CLARA ET DISTINCTA

After that first session with Debbie, now three months back as I write this, I’ve listened and relistened to my SACDs and managed to make some observations about the performance of the player. Let’s start with some of my favourite SACDs: Sonny Rollins: "Way out West", Chet Baker: "Chet", Monk: "Straight, No Chaser" and "5 by Monk by 5".

This kind of music remastered on a SACD is a match made in heaven for the modified Sony. "Way Out West" makes you smile all the way through it and Chet’s "You and the Night and the Music" is heart-wrenching and exceedingly tangible. Now, I can truly hear how big the differences between outstanding and just good recordings can be. While "Chet" is an A+, as is "Waltz for Debbie", "5 by Monk by 5" sounds duller. Sure, it’s still good, but in a side by side comparison with these masterful remasters, there’s a certain cardboard-cut quality to it. I can hear the limits of the original.

Coltrane: "A Love Supreme", "Standard Coltrane", Bill Evans: "Sunday at the Village Vanguard". The highs are liquid, there is little harshness. And the tactile, material sense of the instruments is truly strong. Again, the differences between recordings are clear. Not every track is technically perfect, everything cannot be rescued by even the most brilliant remastering work available. Again, though, the player gives one an opportunity to hear the historical layers with clarity. It’s a joy, something that my earlier system didn’t deliver.

And then: Pieter Wispelway: "Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Bruch", Lang Lang: "Recorded Live at Seiji Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood".

With Wispelwey’s impeccable recording I feel I begin to understand what Allen Wright meant when he wrote that the op-amp stages of Sony players can’t cope with the speedy transients inherent to the DSD, which causes thickening of the sound and general lack of focus. Now, there is no trace of "halo" around individual aural events even when they come in complex clusters. Very short moments in the music are drawn sharply against black space, like stars through Hubble, post lens update.

The same applies to Lang Lang’s piano. It’s both crips and smooth, clear and liquid. Detailed. Earlier, there was "richness" or "plumpness" detectable in his playing that I didn’t always like, but now everything sounds simpler and purer.

LISTENING TO THE MASTERS

Last November, there was discussion among the AA Inmates on the bad sound quality of Rolling Stones’ "Let it Bleed". With this player, the limits of the recording are even more pronounced than in my earlier system. But I like this ability to hear straight into the original, with all its historical imperfections. Take "Gimmie Shelter", a compelling picture of its time, full of power that the player communicates with aplomb. Technically perfect? Far from it. Engaging? Bet your bottom dollar. How about "Beggars’ Banquet" and Jagger’s tour de force "Sympathy for the Devil"? I feel I’m listening to the Master, in at least three senses of the word.

GAUGUIN’S HAND IN THEIR MANES

I often use Barb Jungr’s "Les Marquis" on "The Space Between" to test a system’s ability to present female voice. Now, the vocalist stands tall and steps unhesitantly forward without acquiring the six-feet-wide-mouth –feeling of Rebecca Pidgeon’s "Spanish Harlem". Both piano and double bass come across beautifully, each solidly in its definite place on the sound stage. With a lesser player, Jungr’s singing tends to become sweet and overly adorned. Now there’s just the sea and the sun and the blazing desperation of the narrator.

SCARY STUFF

Beck’s "Sea Change" took a few weeks to grow on me, but after an emotional break-in period, I’ve found it one of the more appealing discs in my collection. Almost barocque in its lush sonic design, it’s not music for everybody’s taste. I can imagine that soundwalls this thick and opulent turn easily mushy if the player is not up to the task. I haven’t had a chance to meet Beck’s tigers on any other players, but my DVP-S9000ES keeps them in a tight leash. It can admirably hold the music’s lower end steady and make it substantial and still balance it effortlessly with the spirit-of-air-likeness of the highs. This is music that my 10 year old son listened to for a few moments and described as "Scary stuff!" - with a big glee on his face.

THE DIFFICULT ONES

Ok, these were my favourites to start with. It’s not utterly surprising that I still like them. What about the bad ones? How would they fare?

I loaded an SACD I haven’t listened to because my system has always made it way too shrill to enjoy, Bob Dylan’s "Blonde on Blonde". The last time I spinned it prior to this, I found myself sitting on the edge of my chair, on nervous guard against those nails-on-chalkboard screeches of harmonica the Genelecs failed to protect me from. Now, while still not great, the sonics are a bit more acceptable. I managed to enjoy the disc. "4th Time Around" produced an acute urge to buy some flowers to my wife.

Miles Davis and "Sketches of Spain". Technically perhaps the most straining SACD I have, this was a disc I thought I would never listen to again. "Gillette", not "Gil Evans", sprung into my mind whenever I heard it. But now I can actually stay put in my chair as the music attacks like a fighting rooster. The brass walls are no longer neuron-burning. They are still hard-surfaced and unyielding, but part of music that has sonic substance. However, with this disc I felt that much is still to be desired, sound wise. Perhaps it’s because of the system synergy, or perhaps it’s just a bad SACD. The player can’t salvage just anything.

It’s obvious that the player has its major strength in treating each disc according to its merits. With good recordings, the results are great, but starting with a worse sound quality, there are no miracles performed. In my opinion, this is definitely good news, as it convinces me that the mod does not charm by being euphonic.

RED BOOKS

I have a large collection of CDs I plan to listen to in the future, too, no matter how many SACDs I buy.

Let’s start with Gould playing Beethoven’s "Emperor" with Stokowski and ASO. In modern terms, the dynamics of this recording feel slightly constrained when we enter Rondo; allegro, but GG’s piano sounds good. How does my player do with it? Very well. The ever so slight blurr and slush I was aware of during my previous listenings is gone. This is an impressive recording. I’m sure the master tape would lend itself magnificently for SACD-ing (any greenlight-guy out there, wake up).

Paul Simon’s "You’re the One" reveals now more of the materiality of the instruments. In "The Teacher", each acoustic instrument retains its organic character and stands out, clearly cut against the background, while the build-up at 1’45" is even more uplifting than before. How is this different from my earlier experience? Again, the sound is "speedier", if that makes any sense (it’s something like an increased agility of the individual aural cells making up the musical organism, whatever!). The highs are alert and perky, but in a non-panicky way, the lows are all set for a night on town. It’s not hi-rez but it’s definitely music.

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Shostakovich’s Chamber symphony. Another well produced CD by Linn. The performance is very good and involving. Imaging is splendid. Again, this is an event is space, even though the space in question is from before the SACD-inflation-phase of the audio universe: somewhat smaller, slightly more cramped and with less prospects for life supporting matter evolving. But that sustained note going through it all, like a quasar’s jet cutting through black matter… Put the lights out and I will enjoy this work with a tumbler of Midleton any night, getting sentimentally elevated by the human condition.

Another contender, one of my first CDs, Hermann Pray singing Schubert’s Schwanengesang with Philippe Bianconi on the piano. The year is 1984-85 (published and bought in ’86, played in my new, first generation Discman). This is early PCM in all its glory. I remember the disappointment and pain of listening to it through the Discman. The player kept skipping a lot and the louder passages made one feel Hermann Prey was singing in a warehouse, under gun-point. The CD is still quite bad but now perhaps a bit more listenable. Not much, though.

I have come across some concerns that tapping to the signal after the V24 filter would make the player prone to an increased noise level when playing Red Books. If there is more noise, my ears aren’t golden enough to hear it. From the three options I have for Red Books, S9000ES’s original output, the VSE mod and Bel Canto DAC 1.1, I prefer the VSE. It brings CDs quite a few steps closer to SACDs. While they still have a long stretch to cover, even my older Red Books are no longer in my black books.

OF HIS BONES ARE CORAL MADE

In audioargot everything that is deemed good is always "unrestrained", "effortless", "has separation", "firmness", "sparkle", "authority" & c. I’d like to be more original, but how do you describe good sonics without resorting to these well-tried, tired expressions? It takes a poet of higher order – or a cutting-edge advertisement company.

I’m not saying that with the mod, suddenly, Coltrane, Jagger or Jungr stepped into my living room. It’s more complicated than that. I remain aware that what I hear is a reproduction, but now I don’t feel I’m listening to a reproduction of a reproduction.

It’s like you had spent time studying finely printed books of photographs and then saw an original contact print from an 8 by 10" negative. It’s still not a window, but it has detail and resolution, finesse of tonal gradation that are impossible to reproduce with the offset printing process, no matter how well implemented. With the modified player, I felt I made a similar leap. Instead of fine prints on art books’ pages, I had a real photograph in front of me. An original Walker Evans, rich in silver bromides, or a Joel Meyerowitz, brilliantly colored.

What about my fears of timidity? Unfounded. The sound is nuanced but thin-blooded it is not. Allen’s circuitry takes the signal and comes through with it expressing such self-assuredness that at moments, with the best SACDs, one is simply left stunned. The player’s high-end is now liquidly rich and the lower end so convincing that it would give Lord Sauron pause.

VIS-À-VIS

Does my modded DVP-S9000ES sound as good as the very best players out there? I can’t answer that. Possibly not. Invest € 15 000 in a player/DAC combo and you’re bound to get a good one, better than mine. Or modify a SCD-1 or a SCD-777ES and the quality of the chassis and transport take the end-result a couple of notches higher. In any case, my VSE’d S9000ES is one of the most convincing sources this ear/brain combo - with admittedly limited experience of the highest high-end - has had the privilege to listen to.

A serious repercussion of the modification is that I will now start renewing the other components in my system. Perhaps a new preamp is in order, and new speakers. But then I need a power amp, too… The floodgates are - again - ajar.


Product Weakness: -
Product Strengths: Transparency, speed, sound stage


Associated Equipment for this Review:
Amplifier: Active speakers, see below
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): Proceed Pre
Sources (CDP/Turntable): N/A
Speakers: Genelec 1037B active speakers
Cables/Interconnects: Cardas Neutral Reference
Music Used (Genre/Selections): Jazz, rock, pop, classical
Room Size (LxWxH): 20 x 15 x 8
Time Period/Length of Audition: 3 months
Type of Audition/Review: Product Owner




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Topic - REVIEW: Vacuum State Electronics Sony DVP-S9000ES CD Player/Recorder - Rip@ti 23:27:29 04/6/03 ( 3)