What do you know ! I received the replacement gear today ! Took only 2 weeks to arrive, faster than in PRE-covid times, go figure !
The Philips CD824 now works !
Drawer makes a horrible noise though... not sure if it's due to crappy Chinese tolerances, or the total lack of grease on that gear since it's brand new, or the fact that everywhere I look in the drawer mechanism, all I can see is dark brown, bone dry, rock hard grease... need to clean all that, and empty a bucket of fresh plastic grease everywhere. Gonna order some...
Other contributing factor I suspect, is the mechanical design itself ?! I mean, the gear is very wobbly. It simply snaps into a recess, it's very loose to begin with. Very cheap and shitty design if you ask me !
In contrast, in my Technics players which feature the same CDM4/19 and drawer mechanism, it's much better designed I find : the gear is the same, but mounted in a different way : does not snap into plastic recesses. Instead, like you would a gear in normal times.. it's mounted onto a beefy metallic shaft. Gear is perfectly guided, zero wobble, zero play... just spins smoothly, perfect.
Another cheap looking thing on CD824, I find, is the shiny black finish of the drawer bezel. Makes it look very cheap/plasticky, and also looks out of place compared to the rest of the front panel that's flat black (which is what I like personally. Hate shiny finishes). They also placed the "OPEN" button on the drawer bezel itself ! Looks weird, and ergonomics is poor, especially when you want to CLOSE the bloody drawer. There is no" CLOSE " button... Pushing the "OPEN" button again does nothing. So either you have to brute force the drawer and push on it to force it to close, or you pressed the "PLAY" button, which again ergonomics wise is poor : what if I just want to load the CD and its TOC, but not start playing right away ? Can't do that.
So really, to me at least, it appears every aspect of the drawer thing, is poorly designed and implemented in this player... it's my biggest gripe with this player.
OK, so now it works, so let's test it against a TDA1541. The CD371 has its guts all over the shop right now, so instead I pulled the Toshiba.
Stacked the Toshiba on top of the CD824. Powered both players with their own power cable. This way I can swap from one player to the other, as fast as humanly possible : play a song, stop player, retrieve CD, open drawer of next player, press PLAY, and while it's loading the song, hurry to switch the audio cable at the back of the players. It's the best I could figure out to minimize waiting time between hearings. To make it faster/better, I could buy another audio cable so that both players are wired at the same time, and I have only to press a button on the amp to instantly switch the source. Would also need to make a copy of the test CD so that I can have the same audio CD in both players at the same time. This way I won't have to swap discs. I can just preselect the song on both players, press PAUSE on the second player. Then once I am finished listening to a song on the first player, I can just press PLAY on the second player, press the corresponding source button/selector switch on the amp, and that's it ! This way, I guess I can have a very tiny dead time between hearings. Like a coupe seconds. Would need to rip a few CD's in a lossless format like FLAC, I guess ? Of course I have already my entire collection of CD's on my computer, but back when I ripped them all, was like 20 years ago IIRC. Back then my computer didn't have quite enough storage capacity to contemplate FLAC, so instead I compressed using OGG, because 20 years ago they said OGG was better than MP3, IIRC...
Just checked, I ripped them back in the day in OGG 160kbps. A 4 minutes track weighs about 5MB.
Anyway. So I first listened to the CD824 then the Toshiba.
Again, I am not qualified to talk about audio, so just my personal feelings with my personal unofficial vocabulary, sorry it that makes no sense to anybody.
We are close to audiophool territory so arm your BS detector as well
OK now that all due precautions have been taken... here is what I thought :
At first, thought it sounded super nice, was surprised. then after a few minutes I analyzed my feelings and figured it felt like it was a bit hollow, and like it was applying some artificial digital special effects to the sound, that made it sound attractive at first, but in retrospect felt unnatural. Felt like a Hollywood movie : lots of action, special effects by the pallet, you get attracted to it like a sweet/candy, and enjoy it while the movie lasts but you know it's just cheap emotions, you know it's not real, it's all fake and overdone.
Then I rushed as fast as I could to swap the CD into the Toshiba. Sound felt less spectacular, but more natural, the music and the singer voice sound more real, and more present, like they were in your living room playing and singing live. Provided more emotions, real ones, not fake.
Played a few of my favorite tracks from Daniel Balavoine : " Tous les cris les SOS" , " Le blues est blanc " , "Un enfant assis attend la pluie", and the Toshiba gives a shiver down the spine and brings a tear to the eye. I know, I am too soft, I know...
At the end of the day I guess it doesn't make much sense to pretend that one DAC is "better" or "worse" than another... it just depends on what type of music you like to listen to, and your personal preferences.. it's like for girls or cars...
Searched ebay for decent proto boards locally so I can get fast shipping compared to China. Found that ad :
https://www.ebay.fr/itm/164167899811?hash=item26392b5aa3:g:N6QAAOSwFpNc9Mkc2,50 Euros for a set of 4 FR4 board of varied dimensions. The largest one looks like it would be just large enough to accommodate the DIP version of the shift register along one of the long edges, taking about one half of the board, and the other half would be enough space I think to fit the 7 segment LED displays.
The other boards I can reuse for whatever other project later, not a waste.
Shipping is about 4.50, twice as much as the board, but well that's the price to pay for local/fast shipping...
Might buy some from China as well so that I can have a larger stock for cheap. China also gives more choices, I can get larger boards there:
https://www.ebay.fr/itm/183544234631