YAMAHA CD-S300 CD/USB PLAYER

CD/uSB Player

This good-looking, high-performance budgetpriced wonder is choc-full of welcome surprises!

You can blame my Nana for this review. She’s 89 but she’s still as sharp as a tack. She’s lost grandpa, but she hasn’t lost her hearing… or her enjoyment of music. But she hasn’t been listening to much music lately, because her CD player carked it and she figured that her grandson, the hi-fi reviewer, was the obvious person to advise her about getting a new one.

I started off by suggesting that technology had moved on a bit, and there were better, more convenient ways she could listen to music. She cut me off at the pass before I could get too far down that track. ‘ My CDs have sentimental value for me,’ she said. ‘ They remind me of the concerts Dan and I went to when he was alive, and most of them we bought together, so they’re special.’

‘ But I could put them on a hard drive and you could use your phone to play them back, I counter-argued.’ To no avail, as it turned out. ‘ My phone screen is so small I can barely use it as it is,’ she said. ‘Besides, I have all the CDs already… all I want to do is be able to play them!’

As it turned out, although having a CD player certainly makes it easy to play back CDs, it wasn’t exactly easy finding her a suitable CD player. Slot-loaders were out because her eyesight isn’t that great and her hands are a bit shaky: I didn’t want her damaging her precious memories. Cost was definitely a factor, complicated by the fact that whatever I bought her had to sound good because, as I said, her hearing is still fine. Anyway, once I’d ruled out slot-loaders, and multi-disc carousel CD players (too big!), and the really nasty budget models, one model stood out head and shoulders above all others, but I

had no idea what it was like because I’d never reviewed it and, much to my amazement, I couldn’t find a single review of it on-line.

But I can recognise a golden opportunity when I see one, and I wasn’t about to miss the chance of being the author of the only on-line review of a Yamaha CD-S300 on the planet, but Australian Hi-Fi Magazine’s editorial policy is ‘ Print first, then on-line afterwards’, so let’s hope that no other reviewer beats me to it in the meantime…

The equipmenT

The Yamaha CD-S300 might be a budget machine—in fact it’s the lowest-priced CD player in Yamaha’s fairly extensive line-up of CD and SACD players—but it’s built pretty solid, so Yamaha is obviously not going to sacrifice its hard-earned reputation for build quality just because it’s a budget machine. It also can’t afford to skimp on quality because, unlike most manufacturers of CD players, Yamaha offers a full two-year ‘parts and labour’ warranty on the CD-S300… and that includes the laser mechanism!

When you pick a CD-S300 up, you’ll immediately feel there’s real heft in the weight of the all-steel chassis (3.5kg) and, because there’s no plastic, there’s no flex either… and this despite not being particularly large, at standard component width (438mm), with a depth of 260mm and a height of just 86mm. The thinness of the chassis is made possible because Yamaha has used quite a thin CD tray. When you press the ‘Eject’ button to bring it out you’ll find that this tray is not only quite thin, but also all plastic, so it is a little flimsy—but it’s still perfectly serviceable.

Once you have tray-loaded your CD (which can be an ordinary Red Book CD or one containing MP3 or WMA files that you’ve burned yourself onto either CD-R or CD-RW), playback can be controlled using either the pushbuttons on the front panel (Stop/Play/Pause/Skip-Search: Forward/ Reverse) or on the small infra-red remote control that is supplied with the unit.

That remote control adds the additional playback options of programmed playback, repeat playback (track, disc, programmed list, and A–B repeat) as well as random track playback. You can also switch the front panel display to show the elapsed time of the track, the time remaining on the track, and the elapsed time on the disc. And because the CD-S300 is compatible with CD-Text discs, you can also switch the display to show Album Name, Artist Name and Track Name.

The infra-red control also allows you to dim the brightness of the front-panel display through four different settings, plus you can turn it off by activating Yamaha’s ‘Pure Direct’ mode which, as implemented on the CD-S300 also switches off the digital output circuitry, which Yamaha says: ‘ achieves the

It sounds great, it’s got pretty-much every disc playback mode you could ever want and it’s well-built, with a generous warranty

lowest possible noise interference and thus highest sound quality of the analogue audio output.’ You can also switch in and out of the Pure Direct mode using the obvious button on the front panel. (When switched off, the display will come on briefly every time you press a control button so you can verify the command has been acted on.)

What should also be obvious on the front panel is the USB port, into which you can plug a USB stick containing WMA or MP3 files, or a compatible portable player. The CD-S300 does not support lossless WMA, and only bitrates up to 320bps (including variable) as well as sampling frequencies up to 48kHz. Alongside the USB port is a switch that Yamaha cautions ‘ should be pressed whenever you insert or remove a USB device’ but does not state what might happen if you don’t. Nothing much at all happened when I deliberately ignored this warning, but I suppose you might potentially corrupt data on the USB device.

The Yamaha CD-S300 does not appear to have any type of standby power mode—either manual (usually invoked via a button on the remote control), or automatic (usually invoked after a set period of disc inactivity). This means that in order to save power (and, in most cases, extend the life of the component) you will have to manually switch the CD-S300 off at the end of each listening session.

In Use and LIstenIng sessIons

Operationally, I could not fault the Yamaha CD-S300. Disc loading and unloading is smooth, quiet and relatively quick, and all the playback features worked exactly as I’d expect, with quick responses to button-pushes and smooth cycling through tracks, no matter whether I was just skipping through tracks, or using one of the programmed modes. I did think that the front panel read-out was a touch on the small side—especially considering my Nana’s failing eyesight— but she said she could read it just fine, so probably an over-reaction on my part. She did say that the printing on the remote control was a little too small for her to see easily, but that since she thought she’d only be using the Play, Pause and Stop controls—and she could see the icons on these buttons just fine—she wasn’t concerned.

Sonically, I couldn’t fault the Yamaha CDS300 either, no matter what music I played using it. Bass was tight, tuneful, tonally accurate and extended. The midrange sound was equally good—smooth, well-balanced and articulate and the clarity with voice—in any vocal range, from bass to soprano—was excellent.

Whenever you listen to a singer who has a huge range, such as Mariah Carey, you will particularly appreciate the superb uniformity of the Yamaha CD-S300’s delivery over that range, and the complete absence of distortion. Listening to Cry, from Carey’s album ‘I Am Mariah’ the sound of her voice over the pianos is exceptionally well-rendered by the Yamaha CD-S300, but it’s the sound of her voice on her cover of George Michael’s One More Try that’s by far and away the standout as she tests the limits of her range and her ability to deliver different vocal textures. And by way of comparison, you have those backing vocals…

One of my favourite discs for evaluating the high-frequency sound of any hi-fi component, and here used to evaluate that of the Yamaha CD-S300, is Rodrigo’s ‘Concierto de Aranjuez’, which has the added bonus that no matter how many times I hear it, I never seem to tire of it… although I do swap between the various different versions I own, most often between Pepe Romero (on Philips, with Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields) and Paco de Lucía with Edmon Colomer and Orquesta de Cadaques (also on Philips). On both recordings the orchestral landscapes are rich and lush, the all-essential percussion sounds are beautifully accentuated and the sound of the guitar is captured with exceptional realism. No matter which version I played, the Yamaha CD-S300’s delivery was excellent, and was capable of revealing the emotion of the music, so you can hear the different ‘voices’ of the two guitarists, even though they’re playing the same piece. Channel balance and separation were audibly perfect, so far as I was concerned, because stereo imaging was always spot-on, and when an instrument was playing solo in one channel, there wasn’t a hint of that instrument’s sound in the other.

As some point in my listening sessions, it occurred to me that some audiophiles might be interested in using the Yamaha CD-S300 as a transport, by connecting its coaxial digital output to a DAC. Not a bad idea either, as the CD-S300 has more disc replay modes than you’ll find on most dedicated disc transports—particularly one of my favourites, that A–B repeat mode—so I connected my own much more modern (and much more expensive) DAC to the digital output of the CD-S300 to compare the sound of the two DACs. You won’t be surprised to hear that I preferred the sound through my own DAC, but you may be surprised to hear how little difference there was between the two, despite the Yamaha’s use of an older Burr-Brown converter. The takeaway here is that if you’re looking for a transport for your DAC, check out Yamaha’s CD-S300!

ConCLUsIon

Its performance as a disc transport aside, I can report that I was entirely happy with the Yamaha CD-S300’s performance as a CD player. It sounds great, it’s got pretty-much every disc playback mode you could ever want, it’s well-built, it comes with a generous warranty and yet, despite all these desirable attributes, it’s one of the lowest-priced CD players available. On yer Nan! Mannie Olsen Readers interested in a full technical appraisal of the performance of the Yamaha CD-S300 CD Player should continue on and read the LABORATORY REPORT published on the following pages. Readers should note that the results mentioned in the report, tabulated in performance charts and/or displayed using graphs and/or photographs should be construed as applying only to the specific sample tested.