
And now a real classic of which much can be expected, the Marantz CD-85.

It has all the good components, Elna Cerafine audiofile capacitors, TDA-1541A-S1 Q-Selection DAC with nice decoupling film caps, big powersupply, a CDM1 MKII transport, single Opamps for I/V, filtering and final stage.
Just it doesn’t sound as good as a standard Nakamichi CDP-2E, the CD-85 sounds dull, lesser detailled and the sound stage is missing that spatial sound you should expect so it is time for some modifications!
Here some of the components:






And now it’s time to heat thing up!
Also on this player there where a few lose solder joints that needed to be replaced with fresh new solder. The PCB is double layered with thru hole joints so the components needed to be removed very carefully.














Wow, none of those Philips caps reached half of the values they should be, the Elna Cerafine’s lost some 25% of it’s capacity.
Some measurments, Philips are the old to be replaced:


As measured with a Red Pitaya lcr-meter @1kHz

As measured with a Red Pitaya lcr-meter @1kHz

As measured with a Red Pitaya lcr-meter @1kHz
Philips Test CD
The result:
Now it plays more like expected but not that detailed as my Nakamichi CDP-2e which I can enjoy more, it’s more pleasant to the ears, staging of instruments is easier and more stereophonic 3d feel.
The next step is to ad some Burson discrete Opamps in the final stage.