The Internal Components Marantz CD72 MK2 SP

Ken Ishiwata is the man behind Marantz. The Marantz product that released on 90's, especially if they are made in Japan, probably they are coming from his design.

Same like mine here. This is the Marantz CD player, CD72 MK2 SP.

The SP is for "Special Edition" which better than the original CD72. I bought this unit in the second hand condition and it is quite dirty. The good things is all parts are original and never been open before. I think the unit like this, especially for the Special Edition Marantz are worth to collect.

Quite funny if you know the story behind the "Special Edition" badge from Marantz. Let me share this story. Special Edition is actually coming from the end of production of every successful Marantz products. They want to finished all of the out-of-dated technology such as the DAC IC's stock. This is because the new technology are already coming. The strategy to put this "Special Edition" on the popular product line up like this CD72 CD Player increase the sales, yet reduce the old stocks of the parts. This is a clever marketing trick.

But again, in this new millennium, the audio technology improve only in the specification number but not for the sound quality. That is why I always appreciate the vintage audio product like this as a reference to today audio product.

For this Marantz CD72 MK2 SP, the main difference of course the badge "Special Edition" at the front aluminum panel and then the beautiful thick copper chassis. Before I going into the details, I will tell you that the reason I bought this unit is because of this copper chassis that looks very appealing for me.

Special Edition have few others changes. The accessories in this unit such as power cord, RCA jacks and chassis feet's are remarkably using the high grade components.

There is a schematic drawn on top of the copper cover. This is the DAC configuration for bit-stream technology inside this unit.

Marantz call this configuration is DAC7. This configuration is using TDA1547 in pair with SAA7350. The TDA1547 is called 1 bit bit-stream DAC technology that run ultra fast sampling rate. The input is pulse density modulation which so much different with common multibit DAC that using pulse code modulation. This pulse density modulation is the same as the DSD.

As far as I know, the TDA1547 is the only modern 1 bit DAC IC that bravely stated in their datasheet as the top-performance DAC.

The conjunction with SAA7350 is to convert the PCM input to PDM required by the TDA1547. The first Marantz CD72 MK1 only using SAA7350. It is a DAC IC but can be switch to able work together with this TDA1547.

Every Marantz CD player has it's own signature on the HDAM module. This is the discrete op-amps developed by Marantz. The HDAM in this CD72 MK2 SP is only for buffer at fixed analog output. The IV and LPF stages still using the op-amps.

The others copper cover besides the main board is for covering the power transformer. This avoid any interfere cause from the transformer to the main board. This is a smart solution which not only do the isolation very well, but it make the looks better.

This old CD player has very different optical mechanism compares with recent CD player. Marantz using Philips CD mechanism with magnetic pendulum that moves the optical module smoothly compares to belt or gear driven mechanism. This is quite expensive and of course resulting better in reading than the gear driven mechanism.

I will go in detail once I dissemble all the parts. As usual, I always clean up the old unit like this by disassembly all parts in a first place.

Closer look to the optical unit in this Marantz CD player that I mentioned before.

Others section such as power supply and analog signal capacitors mostly using the Elna Silmic and Cerafine as their high grade capacitor for audio.

The cleaning proses is begin now.

But I have to stop my posting right now.

On the next post, I will convert this CD Player to become a stand-alone DAC. This will be more flexible for this unit to accept the digital input from modern player.

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