Magnavox CDB-650
The Magnavox CDB-650 is a compact disc player from the mid-1980s, and the audio press liked it a lot. Audio (March 1987, p.68) called it “among the best-sounding players, if not the best-sounding one, yet to be made, and its price belies its quality.” It sold for $429 at launch, which put it in the upper tier of consumer CD players at the time. It measures roughly 16.5 inches wide, 3.4 inches high and 11.2 inches deep, and weighs 7.7 pounds. Frequency response is rated at 2 Hz to 20 kHz, with amplitude linearity within ±0.01 dB and phase linearity within ±0.02°. Those are tight figures for a player with a modest Magnavox badge.
Technically, the CDB-650 was ahead of the curve for its era. It uses quadruple oversampling at 176.4 kHz, a relatively advanced approach for a 1986-1987 player, and that helped push noise and distortion well down. High Fidelity (December 1986, p.57) noted that its error-correction circuitry exploited the full theoretical potential of the CD system’s Cross-Interleave Reed-Solomon Code (CIRC). It also said the pickup assembly was designed for lower inertia and better shock/vibration resistance than most contemporaries. The rear panel has a second pair of audio output jacks in addition to the standard ones. An Auto Pause feature stops playback after each track, which some other players still lacked.
One quirk: unlike most CD players of the day, the CDB-650 needs a second press of the PLAY/REPLAY button to return to the start of the current track, rather than beginning playback on the first press. The display shows total tracks and total playing time when a disc is loaded. The owner’s manual was described as brief but complete. No production years are recorded in surviving documentation, but the review dates (late 1986 through early 1987) suggest a relatively short window of manufacture. The player is scarcely documented outside those few magazine test reports.
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