Denon DCT-950R
A $499 in-dash CD receiver that was among the first to make Radio Data System tuning work in America. It also had one of the hottest tuner front ends a road tester had heard.
Overview
Start with the price: $499. For that, a driver in 1995 got a detachable-face in-dash AM/FM receiver with a built-in single-disc CD player, four channels of internal amplification, and full Radio Data System support, which is why Audio put it on the cover. RDS was still a novelty on these shores. The magazine's May 1995 issue carried the DCT-950R as one of two head units in a road-test feature, profiled by Edward J. Foster in the lab and Ivan Berger behind the wheel (Audio, May 1995, p.48).
The tuner is where the DCT-950R earns its reputation. Berger's on-road verdict was blunt: the AM section came through over a much longer range than his reference Alpine, and the FM section proved even hotter, pulling in far more stations clearly. Foster's bench numbers match. The 50-dB mono quieting sensitivity measured 3.4 dB better than the 20.3-dBf spec, which makes it 16.9 dBf actual. Selectivity was unusually high too. Adjacent-channel selectivity came in at 14.2 dB, and alternate-channel selectivity was beyond what the test gear could resolve, certainly better than 71 dB. The trade-off, as Foster explained it, is the usual one. That selectivity came at the cost of a relatively poor 3.0-dB capture ratio and higher stereo distortion figures (1.07% at 100 Hz, 0.58% at 1 kHz, and 1.81% at 6 kHz in stereo, against considerably better mono numbers). Image rejection was 49.3 dB and AM rejection 63.5 dB.
The RDS implementation separates this unit from a garden-variety CD receiver of the period. It has Program Service name and Program Type display, traffic-announcement monitoring with a "TP"/"TA" icon scheme, Alternative Frequency seeking, and a clock that set itself from RDS time signals, including automatic daylight-saving adjustment and updating as you crossed time zones. Berger demonstrated the program-type seek on a drive from New York to Philadelphia, holding the PTY button until the radio scanned from a fading New York classical station to WFLN-FM at 95.7 MHz. He never caught an RDS traffic announcement in two weeks of driving, though the unit was armed for one. Emergency alerts, when broadcast, would interrupt CD playback by switching to the tuner and ramping the volume.
The CD section is a three-beam-laser pickup feeding dual 18-bit D/A converters, with an eight-times-oversampled 20-bit digital filter and a noise shaper. Foster's lab results were strong. A-weighted signal-to-noise was 94.3 dB left and 94.1 dB right on an infinity-zero track, dynamic range was around 92.5 dB A-weighted (EIAJ), quantization noise was 94.6 dB below a 0-dB signal, and channel separation was greater than 67.6 dB worst-case from 125 Hz to 16 kHz. THD+N at 0-dB recorded level stayed under 0.03% from 20 Hz to 16 kHz with the volume backed off. He noted the output amp ran near its limits at the maximum setting of 30, where distortion approached 0.1%. Line output impedance was a low 480 ohms, so the preamp outputs would drive a remote power amp without complaint. Those outputs gave 1.48 V from a fully modulated mono FM broadcast, 0.43 V from AM, and 2.42 V from a 0-dB CD. Berger's street test on Manhattan's frost-heaved Hudson Street found the CD section took the bumps in stride.
On the amplifier side, the internal four-channel amp carries a 4-ohm wideband rating of 10 watts x 4 at 0.8% THD, with a 1-kHz rating of 14 watts x 4 at 10% THD. Foster measured 13 watts per channel into 4 ohms at clipping (roughly 1% THD) from the speaker outputs, a shade more than typical, as he put it. There are fader-controlled front and rear preamp outputs, a muting input for a cellular phone, a power-antenna control line, and a dashlight dimmer lead. The chassis measures 7⅜ inches wide by 2 inches high by 6⅜ inches deep, with a panel 7⅜ by 2¼ inches, and the whole thing weighs 4⅜ pounds. It mounts to DIN "E" and ISO standards and can act as the controller for a Denon DCH-700, DCH-600, or DCH-500 CD changer.
The ergonomics drew mixed notes. The faceplate is crowded, and Foster said so plainly. Five smaller rectangular function buttons (LOC/MON, CLK, and the RDS trio) sit above six station presets. The seek buttons are round and double as track advance and fast-scan in CD mode. A single knob steps through volume, bass, treble, fader, and balance, defaulting to volume on time-out and toggling loudness when held past two seconds (Audio, May 1995, p.52). The buttons are alternately concave and convex and are well marked, which helped identify them by touch. A wireless remote was optional. Tuning memory runs three banks of six FM presets (18 stations) and two banks of six for AM (12 stations).
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