Sony SS-CS5(M1) and Sony SS-CS5M2 bookshelf speakers - measurements, comparisons, and review.

Hey guys and gals, as shown above, I have pairs of both the Sony SS-CS5 (Mark 1) and the updated Sony SS-CS5M2 (Mark 2) bookshelf speakers here at home purchased through the usual retail outlets. As you might know from discussions online and videos on YouTube, opinions can be quite polarizing regarding these speakers. I think it's a combination of the low price (with associated biases as discussed recently) and the unusual "super-tweeter", 3-driver design. In this post, let's have a look, discuss, and go over a few measurements based on what I see and hear with these transducers.

For convenience, throughout this article, I'll often use "M1" and "M2" shorthand to refer to these Sony SS-CS5 variants.

Camera upgrade: Sony (Alpha) α6700 mirrorless camera with 18-135mm f/3.5-6.5 OSS kit lens. 🙂

Hey guys and gals, just thought I'd throw in a little something this week not related to audio as I finish some further measurements on the Topping DX9 DAC I've been talking about over the last couple weeks. As I noted last time, I found an unexpected 192kHz frequency response anomaly with the DAC and I know Topping are looking into it. So I figure I'd give it a bit more time to see if they can get an updated fix out before I publish Part III. Always good I think to publish the "freshest" data.

So, this week, let's do a little show-and-tell for my new travel camera - the Sony α6700 APS-C mirrorless camera with its 18-135mm/f3.5-5.6 kit lens (~US$1400 body only, US$1800 with lens).

REVIEW: Sony HAP-S1 [by Allan Folz]

Editor's Note:

Life has been extremely hectic over the last few weeks! As a result I am extremely grateful that some fellow hobbyists like Raoul Trifan a couple weeks ago and this week Allan Folz have been able to dream up some relevant content for me :-).

For the post this week, Allan has worked on a review and discussion for the Sony HAP-S1 high-resolution audio player with integrated hard drive storage. I appreciate Allan's honest look at the device, discuss real-world situations, benefits, blemishes and quirks encountered, and by the end, provide a thorough pros/cons evaluation. Enjoy!

Sony HAP-S1 Review

Guest Post

by Allan Folz

RETRO-MEASURE: 2001 Sony SCD-CE775 5-disc SACD/CD Player (CD test)

Sony SCD-CE775 sitting below the Panasonic Blu-Ray player... A relatively large box - 17" wide, 15" deep, 5" tall.

Every once awhile, I like putting up measurements and thoughts on gear that I either own or borrowed of an older "vintage". I think it's good to have measurements of these older equipment for the sake of perspective! These days, it seems like the moment one buys a new smartphone, wait a few days and we see an announcement for the next generation of product... It was not always like this of course :-).

For this post, let's have a look at the performance of one of my favourite budget audio players that I have owned for the last 16 years - the Sony SCD-CE775, one of the earlier consumer-level SACD players released back when the SACD was viewed as the new-kid-on-the-block of digital formats. This specific model was released in 2001, at around the same time as multi-channel SACDs became available for sale - there was a copy of Kind Of Blue multichannel SACD in the box. I picked this unit up new in the summer of 2002 I believe and it has been a constant on my audio rack since then. My thought at the time was that this would be my back-up SACD/CD player, but as history would have it, with the transition to computer audio, I sold off my Sony SCD-555ES at some point back in 2004 and just stayed with this multi-changer and my old DVD player for spinning disks.

MEASUREMENTS: What 'lo-fi' looks like (SONY CFD-S05).

[Originally posted on Squeezebox Forum February 13, 2013.]

I realized over the weekend that it has been at least 10 years since I actually played any cassette tapes! My dad was interested in getting some old cassettes transferred and I discovered both my cassette players at home didn't work.

So, off to the local Wal-Mart-like big block store and I came home with this beauty :-)

The Sony CFD-S05 does a lot for $60. It's a smallish boombox CD player, cassette player, AM/FM radio... Even has a little phono plug input up front for iPod's and the like. Since the cassettes I wanted to transfer were mostly >30 years old, I certainly did not need a Nakamichi. As a "utility" audio player for the kids, although this unit isn't $20 like the absolute cheapest in the store, I suspect this is the kind of lowest end "quality" most of us would be willing to have around the house. Therefore, I figure it might be interesting to measure this unit as a "point of reference" as context to the other measurements and consider what $60 buys.

Set-up: SONY headphone out (MegaBass off) --> 0404USB, shielded phono to RCA RadioShack cables. Test signals burned on Fujifilm CD-R at 24x (no fancy media here or extra-slow 1x burning).

As you see, I've added the SB Radio, Boom, and Touch as comparisons. Note that the Radio and Boom were also measured from headphone out while Touch was with the standard RCA line out. Clearly, the Sony was outmatched by all the others. The Sony's dynamic range is about 12-bits due to high noise floor.

The most obvious anomaly is the frequency response - very nasty:

Here's the THD graph:

Again, quite poor. The elevated noise floor is clearly an issue.

Jitter, anyone?

Well, it's not good but... At ~90dB between the 11kHz signal and the tallest sideband, I'd say this is actually not terrible either! I'd be much more concerned about the other results and especially that horrifying frequency response than care about the jitter.

Conclusion?
Not unexpectedly, this is clearly not "hi-fi" (no kiddin'!). Subjectively when I plug in headphones, it's the frequency response that most noticeably makes it sound poor (gutless bass and accentuated treble, no wonder Sony included the "MegaBass" button); plus the noise level is audible with volume up a bit. I suspect that the frequency response curve was purposely "tuned" to make it sound better with the small built-in speakers (single driver) rather than achieve flat response which should be trivial with any modern DAC. Rolling off the low bass to remove rattling & midrange distortions and boosting the treble to compensate for the lack of a true tweeter. To not turn off this compensation when using the headphones is a sign of "cheapness"

Having said the above, also consider that some high-priced gear have really bad measurements yet get praised during subjective evaluation (I'm not going to name names here but look through some of Stereophile's measurements on-line).

Of interest is that the jitter test was the least concerning result even in such an inexpensive unit spinning physical media.

Now you know what a cheap lo-fi mass market boombox measures like in 2013 :-)