Sony CDP-610ES (circa 1984)
The CDP-610ES was Sony's mid-priced ES-series Compact Disc player in the early CD era. It wasn't the flagship. It was a second-generation machine that period reviewers felt showed the company learning from its first two CD players, the CDP-101 and CDP-701. Audio (November 1984, p.91) described it as considerably less expensive than the top-of-the-line CDP-701 and even cheaper than the original CDP-101, while carrying convenience features developed since those models appeared. Audio (November 1984, p.95) went on to call it a slight but real sonic improvement over the CDP-101, while noting that differences between CD players of that moment were still fairly subtle.
The lab results were strong. Hirsch-Houck Labs measurements published in HiFI-Stereo (February 1984, p.40) showed intermodulation distortion of 0.002 percent at 0 dB and 0.009 percent at −20 dB. The same issue credited the 610ES with thoughtful operating details: an AUTO PAUSE button that stops the player at the end of each track, a display that toggles between elapsed time in the current track and total remaining disc time, and reliable track skipping. Its transport proved essentially immune to skipping from impacts on the case. The same review noted one quirk, though. Setting the player to repeat Track 17 made it briefly play the start of Track 18's vocal (p.43). High Fidelity (April 1984, p.47) noted the player would be sold as part of Sony's ES line and was said to use lower phase shift at high frequencies.
Known specs from period reviews:
- Intermodulation distortion: 0.002% at 0 dB; 0.009% at −20 dB
- Frequency response at 18.5 kHz: +0.2 dB left / +0.0 dB right
That is about all the contemporary record preserves. No service literature, original price, or exact production dates have surfaced in the Archive's files.
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