Marantz CD-16SE (1994)
The Marantz CD-16SE is a compact disc player released in 1994. It was positioned as a further refinement of the company's CD-15 flagship approach. SE stands for Special Edition, Marantz's practice of taking an already-good design and pushing it further, and the CD-16SE inherited that. It was priced at ¥240,000 in Japan.
The player is built around a Philips-sourced CDM-4MD swing-arm mechanism. It is paired with a DAC7 bit-stream D/A converter in a double differential configuration - the TDA1547 chipset that would become associated with vintage high-end Marantz and professional Philips players. On the analog side, Marantz used its proprietary HDAM, a high-speed voltage amplification module. This one is a "New" revision that moved from a 2-layer to a 4-layer PCB for improved speed, stability, and signal-to-noise.
The power supply uses a toroidal transformer, chosen for low leakage flux and low internal impedance. The display tube gets its own separate transformer to keep its noise away from the audio circuits. The chassis is zinc die-cast with copper plating to minimize high-frequency interference. Vibration control comes from a 5 mm aluminum top cover and 12 mm aluminum side panels. Specified performance: frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz ±0.2 dB, dynamic range of 97.5 dB, S/N of 110 dB, channel separation of 100 dB, and THD of 0.00135% at 1 kHz. Output is 2 V RMS from the RCA line outs at 150 Ω impedance, with a coaxial digital output at 0.5 Vp-p/75 Ω. The unit draws 17 W and weighs 14.0 kg, measuring 458 × 138 × 360 mm. A wireless remote was included.
The sources disagree a bit about which variant is which. A Dutch source describes a "CD-16 exclusive" as a special edition for the German market developed by Rainer Finck. The "CD-16SE" name appears in several other listings without that claim. Whether these are the same product is not fully clear from the available documentation. Beyond the specifications above, little else is recorded. There is no production timeline beyond the 1994 release year, no contemporary review commentary, and no service history in the Archive's files.
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