Denon DN-C620 Professional Broadcast CD Player

Comments about Denon DN-C620 Professional Broadcast CD Player:

I needed a single rack space CD player for my portable active monitor rack. I required the best sound quality I could manage to get, with active-balanced +4 dBm audio outputs. The Denon DN-C620 fulfills these requirments admirably.

Some have criticized the controls on the DN-C620, but my experience is that -- like any serious professional tool -- it deserves a bit of study.

True, the behavior of the audible fast search is a bit odd, but it was designed to access single data frames in Pause mode. If it starts going too fast as it keeps searching, you can stop for a moment and then start again.

You can use the setup menu to make the "Skip Back" button go back 10 seconds at a time (accounting for the most common use of the "Search" button). You can also set the "Cue" button to bring up the following track, giving you a functional "next track" button.

While the unit will never behave exactly the same way as a home CD player, using these settings takes care of the most obvious complaints.

Denon has provided an admirable variety of control options for radio stations and fixed installations (including wired, software, and infrared), but I have needed only the front panel controls and the infrared remote controller.

I've never loved slot-loading disc drives, as any gunk or grit on the discs will end up on the rubber loading rollers, and then on other discs. But, I'm not going to find a single rack space CD player with a drawer. It's a good idea to keep a supply of clean microfiber polishing cloths nearby, and to wipe both sides of each disc. Now, about the static charge that builds up... Do I finally really need a Zerostat anti-static gun after all these years?

Other than its first model, the awful DCD-2000 (a unit cloned from sister company Hitachi to get into the market way back in January, 1983), Denon has always had the best-sounding CD player for the money in the world. Fortunately, the DN-C620 is no exception to this very dependable rule.

After seeing and hearing the excellent TASCAM CD-01U Pro, I selected the DN-C620 because I felt it would be better-sounding. I can confirm that the sound quality of the Denon DN-C620 is truly stellar.

Using the balanced outputs, the bass seemed a little mushy at first. The unit arrived with its output trim controls turned up nearly to the stops. Playing a CD with a 0 dBFS test tone, I turned the output down about 12 or 15 dB to +3 dBu.

After I set up the gain structure on the entire system, the DN-C620 sounded just wonderful. The bass was deep and rock-solid, and there was the sweet high end for which I absolutely rely on Denon -- along with the kind of image depth for which one might really hope in a fine piece of professional audio equipment.