If it is not the PlayStation most curious I’ve seen, it’s probably among the best. The image that you have on these lines could well be the object of a collector, or the PSX from a gamer fond of mods who wanted to pay tribute to the first console of Sony, but the truth is that it is quite far from each other.
This PlayStation, like all those that you will find in images during the text, they are actually versions modified by audiophiles to use the console as a player on their music equipment. Yes, apparently at that time a PSX
The first PlayStation as a CD player
While we were enjoying games like Final Fantasy VII O Metal Gear Solid In Sony’s gray machine, the music world fixed its eyes on PlayStation with another objective, to take advantage of its possibilities as a CD player.
Become an object of desire for audiophiles, fans of quality sound with a special ear for audio and playb ack and recording systems, the first PlayStation
Apparently the key is in the first models of the console. The first of them, the SPCH-1001, featured dedicated audio jacks that the audiophile could take advantage of to plug into their equipment.
But even the later version, which did not include such connectors, was also a delicacy in its exquisite and expensive sound systems. The key was in how they transformed the sound to make it cleaner.
The trick with those two versions is that they both included a chip Dacian -a converter capable of transforming a digital signal into analog- which was apparently the best thing you could find for that price. There are those who went so far as to affirm that, to reach the level of quality that those versions offered, you had to target a player of more than $ 6,000
Is it really that bad?
Perhaps it was in its day, but the current consensus is that the passion for the gadget is more linked to the beauty of this type of modifications and its aura of hidden gem, than to the performance that you can extract from it compared to a current CD player.
Yes, there is talk of a warmer and cleaner sound than in other players from more than a decade ago, but nothing that leads us to think that we should go for one. PSX to listen to music. After a rigorous measurement study, the audiophile John Atkinson wrote about her the following:
“In general the measurements are quite poor. I wonder if the magic of the sound of the first PlayStation lies not in its technical excellence, but in the fact that it blurs and disguises everything that is wrong with the audio quality of a CD.
When I listened to a PSX source in a system that included a low-cost Cayin tube integrated amplifier driving Devinitive Technology Mythos ST loudspeakers, it sounded calm and revealing in a way that I wouldn’t have expected based on those measurements. “
With consoles listed on auction platforms and second-hand sales for a handful of dollars, the idea of turning an old PlayStation On a CD player it doesn’t seem like a very expensive project to tackle, but the problems with the machine itself and the need to change components may be more difficult than putting a nice case on it.
Images | German Manfred
