HK FL 8550 an incredible CD player
Written: Apr 14 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Dual 20-bit Burr Brown D/A converters
Cons: CD loading mechanism a little loud
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| dfordham's Full Review: harman/kardon FL8550 |
Let us face it, there are a lot of choices out there when it comes to CD players. Which one do you choose? Do you purchase just a cheap basic CD player or do you purchase a good quality CD player. Well, the Harman Kardon FL 8550 CD changer is the best of both worlds. Not only is it a good quality CD player but it is relatively inexpensive for the features you get in it. The FL 8550 is loaded with features. Some are your more common features such as Random, Repeat, and Delete Play modes and some are unique features such as the ability to play an HDCD (High Definition Compact Disc) and its dual 20-bit Burr Brown D/A (Digital to Analog) converters.
Likes:
Multi-disc capability: The HK FL 8550 can hold and play up to five CDs. You can even exchange up to four discs while the fifth disc plays. The CD drawer has labels for each CD (1, 2, etc) so that it is easy to determine which location a particular CD is in.
High Quality D/A converters: The HK FL8550 has dual 20-bit Burr Brown D/A converters. Burr Brown is an industry leader in the D/A converter market. Most Audiophile CD players have Burr Brown converters in them. The difference in sound is incredible. Without going into a lengthy discussion on how an analog signal gets converted to digital and then converted back to analog again, the fact that this CD player has 20-bit D/A converters means you will hear more presence in the music you listen to. The sound is more life like and enveloping. Another plus to the dual 20-bit Burr Brown converters is that the CD player does not have to have as much over-sampling to achieve a good quality sound. If a CD player uses lower quality D/A converters then the over-sampling rate is increased to achieve a better sound. The FL8550 only has 8 times over-sampling and it sounds incredible.
HDCD capability: Even though I only have one HDCD disc (that I know of so far), the FL 8550 is future ready. Although I can not really tell a huge difference between a regular CD and one that is encoded in HDCD, I can tell you this, the HDCD has more presence. From what I understand, an HDCD is encoded with more information thus making the sound more natural and lifelike. A perfect match with the 20-bit D/A converters.
Versatility: The FL 8550 has two choices for audio outputs. It has a Coaxial Digital output and a set of Analog outputs. I used the Analog outputs because I wanted to take advantage of the Burr Brown D/A converters. Although the D/A converters in my Harman Kardon AVR 65 receiver (read my review of the receiver for more information) are good, they are not as good as the Burr Brown converters.
Looks: The front panel of the FL 8550 is very clean and uncluttered. There are just enough buttons on the front panel to operate the basic functions of the CD player. The remote contains the other buttons needed to do a more in-depth operation of the CD player. This can be both good and bad.
Dislikes
Load mechanism: The disc drawer on the FL 8550 is kind of loud. Although the movement of the disc tray and drawer are very precise, the sound it makes while moving is loud. Not a real big deal but if you are in the Random play mode then the sound of the disc tray rotating can be a little annoying.
All in all, I have really enjoyed this CD player. I purchased it and the HK AVR 65 receiver at the same time and have really enjoyed the sound of both of them. The FL 8550 plays all CDs very cleanly and precisely without any distortion or additional artifacts that can be induced in the D/A conversion process. This is an excellent CD player for anyone one enjoys clean crisp sound and I would recommend it to anyone.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
dfordham
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Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 3 members
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