Kyocera DA-410CX, Mini Review

With the cancellation of Saturday's get-together at my place, I felt the need to do something audio related to fill the time. One of the activities I hit upon was to produce a review of my old Kyocera DA-410CX. Unfortunately, two decades of use caught up with it and it died. Failing to resuscitate the player, I'm going to have to give a brief review of the sonics without comparison or further reflection.

Kyocera was one of those few brands in the 1980s that managed to maintain a consistent level of quality with their various offerings. The brand is the high side of middle fidelity with the components enjoying above average prices to match the above average quality and sonics. This particular player, the DA-410CX, was one of the lower end CD player offerings, but was designed with many of the same sonic characteristics possessed on up to the common TOTL 710 and absolute TOTL 910 players. With a MSRP of $500 during its two years of production between 1987 and 1989, it still was not a cheap deck and supposedly the transport was OEMed to Carver and other companies.

The 410CX is an attractive unit compared to contemporary offerings with a reddish-champagne anodize to the aluminum faceplate and wood sidepanels. The overall build quality is pretty good, though wear with age and tired rubber spacers do mean the tray can need help to open and close properly due to binding. The plastic display cover, likely due to its slight slant and thus propensity to attract dust and dust cleaning cloths tends to be rather scratched up. The control buttons are fairly large and lend towards ease of use. I was unable to find technical ratings for the model outside of this brief mention: "...signal to noise ratio of over 95 db, and incredibly low total harmonic distortion of .005 at 1kHz."

As this is a common question, yes, the 410CX can play CD-Rs without trouble including black CD-Rs that not all old players can handle.

The sound of this player leans strongly towards the warm side and though a second generation deck, lacks much of the DAC harshness of the early players that lead to the misconception of CDs all having harsh treble. The bass is powerful and deep, but a bit overemphasized compared to other CD players. This characteristic is stronger with the headphone jack and is surprisingly strong, though inaccurate. The treble does roll-off a bit early and has several odd things happening with it. First, there sounds to be a slight issue with phase or something that sounds like it at the highest frequency extreme, possibly due to the implementation of the analog low-pass filters in the DAC section. The primary issue with the treble arises with the decoding of complex musical information. Sounds in the recording such as rain become jumbled and sound 'digital' such that drops sound more like beeps and dial-up modem sound. This weakness persists down into the midrange to some degree and becomes particularly evident in complex passages where the sound becomes rather congested such that instruments become difficult to separate from one another and vocalists sound as though they've a cold.

All in all, the Kyocera DA-410CX was a good player for its time, but definitely shows its age. The build quality is good, but the electronic components are sub-par performers compared to what was available just a few years later. As there is not a digital S/PDIF output (and the modification requires replacing the Sony CXD1030 with the CXD1035 --the CDX1030 is capable of digital out, but requires certain pins to be bridged, but the data sheet is not publicly available to make this change), it is not possible to use this model with an external DAC to bypass these issues. It would work fine with a secondary system and with music that isn't particularly complex or contain much in the way of treble.

A fairly attractive unit with a chatty display regularly showing various messages:


Basic backplate:


Peering inside, there's a basic Sony CXD20152 DAC and the transport floats loosely on two rubber spacers and a large spring in the rear. Note the "V. REGURATOR" :


The underside:


An understated sign of above average quality, ceramic circuit board spacers:


- JP

Excellent review.

I watch the Kyocera 610s and Kyocera 810s on ebay often. Seems the prices fluctuate often, as sometimes they can be had for a song, other times they go for $60 to almost $90.

I had heard about the decent build quality, but was under the assumption that the whole bottom of the unit was lined with ceramic, and not just the circuit board risers being ceramic donut spacers. Thanks for clarifying.

Anyhow, your review had two effects on me-

1) If I find a unit, and it's cheap, pick it up.

2) Stop watching the units on eBay, as the prices climb a bit too high for what they are, and invest in something with a more refined sound- a newer model of some brand, with better internal DAcs and ability to read difficult discs.

I'm going to go back and check some of the topics in the forum that you have written.

My weakest link in my system is by far the CD players I own. Reviews like this will help me find more precisely what I'm looking for in a CD player.

Excelent review.

Although I was hoping for a Lloyd Dobbler story instead, this will suffice.

You have to be a bit careful with the numbering of Kyocera CDPs. The 410CX is actually three years newer than the 610, 710, 810, and even the TOTL 910. Interestingly, it is the 310CX, 410CX, and 510CX that are a half design generation newer than the larger numbers and as such are better sounding decks than their predecessors. It's a common mistake to automatically assume the 610CX will be better when the 410CX because of the model -- I've read comments by Kyocera owners who have "downgraded" to the smaller numbers for better sound, such as going from the 610CX to the 310CX. So, the higher numbers will sell for more on eBay. Of course, much of this is also people wanting less common, higher MSRP units for their collection rather than going for sonics.

That said, even a slightly newer budget player, such as the Sony CDP-X111ES from 1991 that can be regularly found for <$30 sounds much better without nearly as many congestion, treble issues. The Kyocera sound is seductive, but the Sony is much more accurate and versatile. If you do like the looks and build quality of the Kyoceras, but want to improve the sound later on, look for a DA-510CX. It's the only Kyocera of this era I know to have a coaxial S/PDIF digital out -- the others only have a remote control input for connection to a receiver, but sellers often call this a digital out. Using that, you could use the player as a transport feeding even a cheap external DAC such as an Entech.

- JP

More interesting stuff, JP. I'd have thought the higher-number units would've been the better decks. Looking at the prices that one pays on the 'Bay, others seem to think so as well.

Some of the other decks mentioned that I think of are (now) The Kyocera DA-510CX, the Sony 707ES, the Sony CDP-X111ES, the Denon 1500, the Denon 1560, and the newer Samsung HD-850, Samsung HD841, and Toshiba SD-4960.

I currently have a Yamaha 5-disc "tray" player, two Optimus 5-disc cartridge-load players, a single Sony (non-ES) player, a Teac single, and a Mitsubishi 5-disc cartridge player, missing, unfortunately, the cartridge.

I'm still not in my apartment yet, but hoping that when I dig out the CD players, that maybe the Optimus cartridges may fit the Mitsu.

Thanks for your help!