Marantz CD-84

Not 1st gen' but still close enough...
Launched alongwith the CD-54, the CD-84 was available later on with black looks, a "II" suffix and dual DACs.

The mechansim on both is the monster Philips CDM1 (the made in Marantz Japan version).
DACs were the fully 16bit TDA1541 with 4x oversampling, following the 14bit TDA1540 of the original CD-63, CD-73 and the 84's 1st version (14bit "extented" to 16bit resolution with a combi of df and 3rd order Bessel filtering).

This "II" version seems very rare and the "II" isn't even written on the frontplate... but it seems, however, that it had an S/P-DIF output, unlike the original version.

Although the 84/84II didn't sport the full zinc die-cast frame of the CD-34 and CD-54 but "only" a diecast aluminium sub-chassis, Marantz claimed a 10Hz chassis resonance.
Very low impedanceoutput stage, too.

A very interesting design anyway, with the "square black box" syndrom somehow only lurking at a distance.

What is lovely, in retrospective, is reading Marantz insisting on the fact that only the P and Q sub-code tags were used so far - the remaining R, S, T, U, V and W would soon serve to display graphics on a TV or text on a display by way of Marantz' GR-2 adapter !

These would be output using the "digital output for CD-Graphics or any other future system" - that would be CD-G indeed. And if CD-G didn't make it, LD-G did make it - which is a normal result since CD only was the side result of the research made on... LaserDisc :)


Much more about the CD-84 at the indispensable vintage-audio-laser.com.