Philips made a bunch of outstanding portable cd players of wich I own 2. The first one exp 101 and a 3rd generation exp311… they sound familiar as the dcc170. I checked inside and there are plenty ic’s made by philips but the units are made in China. Could it be that part of dcc knowledge has leaked in these players? They sound sooo much better than they are supposed to…
You could have taken a picture of the IC. Yes and no, yes Philips made good DAC, no that is not a rare thing.
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Judging from the service manual: Yes it does have some chips that are definitely Philips. But no they are not DCC related (except that MP3 is a fancy version of MP1 and MP1 is based on PASC).
“Sounds better than [it’s] supposed to” is of course completely subjective. Any audio DAC probably sounds good, if configured and used correctly. Most of the time, if a digital device sounds less good, it’s because of bad filtering, cost-cutting with parts, crappy speakers, or (worst of all) my old ears that need a big boost above 10kHz or so to pick up any sound.
===Jac
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Thanks for the input Jac. And ofcourse you are right. The red expanium player sounds awesome, much better than you’ ll expect from a unit that is so cheap…
And although it is subjective (and I try not to be) it is still the best cd portable I’ve listened to…
More in this soon…
As I promised @Max . The pictures of the philips ic’s in both players.
I checked it and I don’t think there is a relation or spin off from DCC to be honest…
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