Teac VRDS-20

The most remembered VRDS player, third generation VRDS after the original P-1 drive, and one of Teac's rare effort on design - not as dubious as that staple of ugly 90s design (Teac CD-5) but a bit heavy-handed nevertheless.


Anyway -
Produced some time after the original and very successful VRDS-10, the VRDS-20 was at 250,000¥ the entry into high-end audio : not real high-end but getting there.
Construction is quite massive and impressive but Teac's other usual staple (ZDII with 1/16 shift 20-bit converters) was NOT retained : the VRDS-20, as the VRDS-10 uses a Philips SAA-7350 + TDA-1547 combo in dual-mono !

Copper-plated from top to bottom, the enclosure sports eight different parts and sub-enclosures plus special adjustable feet with different metals and materials to effectively damp most of standing and airborne vibrations.
The top, side and front panels are solid aluminium (rather than pressed metal), the latter being 5mm thick.

The VRDS drive itself is the smaller of all three 1990s models, simplified from the one used in the X-1 and X-1s : no brass embedded in the aluminium platter and the bridge is of BMC (bulk mould compound, à la Sony) instead of diecast aluminium.

Output is available in analogue (single-ended RCAs plus balanced XLRs) and digital with an XLR (AES/EBU), coaxial, TOS optical (TOS = TOShiba) and an optical ST. A good thing since most people used their VRDS-10 and VRDS-20 as a drive, discarding (sadly) the Philips TDA-1547 which produced such marvelous music in Marantz players such as CD-15, CD-16 or CD-23...
Engineering is however quite different so the "sound signature" is, let's say a bit more... rigid ?

The Teac Vibration-Free Rigid Disc Clamping System represents the third excellent audiophile CD drive, alongwith the original Philips CDM series and the Sony BU-10 base. Reliability-wise, nobody did better than those three then - and certainly not now.