AS newie I want to a cost assessment for getting half decent Laser Disc home theatre.

Step1 is getting a LD Player

Step 2 is getting some movies

Step3 is open ended.


Step1 is maybe completed. I found a a CLD 2710K near me at a good ok price. In case the tests prove it is still working I will go for it a start up.

Step 2 is getting LD Movies. I have already ordered 2 movies.

Step 3 is open end with the sound.

The sound capabilities of the CLD 2710K are not as impressive as other players but I am not going to complain. I am already grateful I found a working player near me without getting involved at shipping.

I want to avoid ordering a LD from far away because the risk that the player is not going to survive the journey is rather hight unfortunately.

So what kind of sound equipment would be necessary to get out the most audio of the CLD 2710K ?

Will I notice any difference? CLD-2710K and CLD-1450
Very old thread i started.

I had one and it worked but sound and picture was not great imho.
Iirc it had no digital out or AC-3RF out.

Karaoke players ain't held in high regard usually.
Personally i would look for something with better sound outputs

Thanks for your fast reply. Getting the right LD equipment is an open-ended journey with no happy end guaranteed. I would not mind looking and finding one with better sound outputs. There is no need to rush things and I have already figured i that it might take many months to find the right player. I do not intend to rush things. In the end good sound is important to me to fully utilize the strength of the LD format so I will be very patient.

I started a year ago, with the Pioneer CLD-V250, also a karaoke player. I bought it because I had discs but no player. No digital or AC3 out, but the sound was fantastic anyway. I had it connected to a Tag Mclaren setup with a REL Storm 3 subwoofer and Polk Audio speakers (Lsi9, Csi40, LsiFx).

You need a home theater receiver and all the speakers. Same as a VCR or a Blu-ray player or anything. Skip AC-3 and spend the money on better speakers.

If you don’t have an actual home theater…or at least proper headphones, then the player doesn’t matter at all.

Thanks for the info @signofzeta. So far I do not have decent home theater yet. My set up for watching dvds, blu ray and UHD is quite basic. Just using my ps5 for that and the ps5 headset.

I want to get decent set up with good speakers to enjoy the capabilites of the LD format to the fulliest.

@roland_pater Thanks for sharing your impressions as well.

Just some maybe useful information as you go along:
If your final goal is to get surround sound from LD (no matter if your first player got digital out (Toslink) or if it will be your second player if you continue this dark path) beware of the following things (AC3 is a completely different topic).

„Normal“ LD surround sound is a digitally muxed 4.0 surround sound (one rear channel) which is embedded into the stereo signal.
To decode this your AV receiver needs to support „Dolby Pro Logic“ or any newer version of this protocol (Logic II or Logic 7 for example).
This was nothing you had to worried about until in the recent years when new receivers start to lack decoder for older audio signals, which is a shame.
So if you are going new check the supported formats. But especially regarding receivers: Do not be afraid to go second hand. They drop in value pretty fast and as long as you do not need Dolby Atmos 7.2.4 with 2464224 surround speakers and 8K passthrough you will be 100% fine (side note: DTS discs are no problem at all. The required decoder is standard in literally every device for the last two decades).

Sorry for all the brackets.

Cheers,
Markus

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer. It was very helpful to find a proper receiver. As a newbie, I am very grateful for any help.

I only plan to go the surround sound path and maybe drip my toes later in the DTS realm with later LD releases of the 90s.

AC-3 is interesting in theory but there are too many obstacles. Finding an LD with -an ac3 port is not guaranteed. Even if I am lucky enough to find such a player there is still the issue of finding the demodulator at a good price.

And to be frank as an audio noob that is just used to the simple speakers of the tv or the ps5 headset I do not need the best of the best audio equipment. Even a rather simple setup is going to impress me.-

I would recommend on getting something that can let you enjoy the capabilities of Blu-ray to the fullest. It will backdate to LD just fine if it isn’t a POS.

The thing about good audio gear is…it’s needed for anything but broadly compatible with everything and nothing sounds good without it. So just buy it. A good stereo lasts a lifetime. You can use it with a record player or a PlayStation or anything else.

Coming through TV speakers everything just sounds like TV speakers.

Minimum equipment to enjoy the sound capabilies of LD?

Look into getting what you would need for playback of an LP, then you will be just fine.

That is a great recommendation. I should really geat sound set up that I can use for Laser discs and my modern home equiment as well. TV speakers are really meh. The ps5 headphones are bit better but still far way from the optimum Dvds, Blu Rays and UHD can offer.

I will try to get a good system. It is great investment as long as I can use it on my modern day as well. In that case the purchase would not be a loss even I just end up collecting LDs without the ability to watch them.

I still hope that I am lucky to find some decent players in working orders to really enjoy the LD movies but I am also realistic enough to realise that there is no guarantee that my ld story is going to have a happy end.

So I am hesitant to get expensive hifi equiment that has only use for ld players. It would be waste of money having such stuff without a workinig player.

A system than can be used for new and old stuff on the other hand would be total different story.

I've been trudging along with a pair of powered stereo speakers. Only reason I'm still after an actual amp is so I can hook up other components as well.

Honestly anything's better than your TV's built in speaker, unless you're watching it on one of those 90s stereo CRT monsters when they could actually fit decent speakers into those things, and even then I'd recommend separate speakers because it allows you to set your stereo soundscape much wider.

Thanks for your reply as well. After doing further research I realized that getting a decent sound setup cannot be done fast. It is better to start slowly to find the right receiver for my needs.

I will start with getting some simple stereo speakers for now and then get a good Amplifier later at some point in the future.

Even the upgrade to the speakers will improve my listening experience a lot.

The rest of the equipment can wait. Getting the right LD player set up is a long-term project anyway.

Is there a certain brand of speakers that you guys @takashi and the other nice people would recommend?

If I would be looking for new speakers for Home Cinema, I would go for THX certified speakers. My reasons:
- Left, Center, Right are the same, as they should.
- Non-ported design, so they play nice with subwoofers (which is also a requirement). Filters that your receiver will apply will match better.
- These speakers are built for movies first.

French speaker manufacturer Focal are hard to beat if you can afford them, they make super expensive ultra high end models costing over €200,000 a pair but look for something used from their entry level ranges easily obtainable for a few hundred and they are still hard to beat for music or movies at least in my opinion. For AV receiver something like an Onkyo TX-609 or 709 7.2 channels can be picked up for approximately €90-150 or the even better specked 818 for a little more, as well as being compatible with all formats. The extra special thing about these models is that they are fitted with the highly regarded ADV7844 comb filter, when your new LD player is hooked up to the composite inputs of one of these beast’s I’ll guarantee that you’ll be very impressed with the picture quality they also do proper zooming too for those letterboxed LDs - believe me I own an 818 and it looks terrific when fed a LD signal, I only purchased it to compare with my Lumagen Radiance 2144 video processor and the Onkyo absolutely does not shame itself when compared to what is arguably considered the best available processor for Laserdisc.

laserfanhld-gb and ronald_pater Thx again the valuable information. Lots of info to work with.

Me again with another question. Are more modern HDMI reviever analog outputs as good in sound quality for LD discs then the older more vantage AVR? For the coolness factor it would be great to have stuff just for Laser Disc but from a ecomonical standpoint that would make no sense. I should get some equiment that offers good sound quality for LD and it also should offer good quality to improve the sound my many DVD, Blu Ray and UHD Blu Ray movies. When reesarching for good AVR and thx speakers I found one of these AVR that uses analog outpoints. The STR-DH790 from Sony. it on sale now. Any thoughts about these avr?

Or would you recommend a another more modern device with that features? The recommendations from laserfanhld-gb (some onkyo devices) should also be not forgotten.

I also got the advice from Zeta already to get something that covers all my av devices.

100% with Zeta on that one, the Onkyo models mentioned earlier although not current fit that bill fairly perfectly too

Yeah the recommend Okyo models you recommended are exciting. They should support most of the modern Blu ray formats and be very useful for Laser Disc movies.

These avrs do not support the latest stuff like DTS X and Dolby Atmos which makes them not the best fit for UHD Blu Rays but that is small drawback I can live with. Price wise the Onkyo models are also quite interesting. I have seen 609 model for just over 100 euro on Ebay.

If I’m honest most of these latest codecs really don’t excite me, my Arcam AVR600 with its 7.1 channels is only set up to work in 5.1 mode because as much as I tried to convince myself it was beneficial to operate with all channels driven I really couldn’t hear any improvement over regular 5.1 in my home theatre setup, maybe it’s just me? That seems a decent price for the 609 though one thing to be aware of with the Onkyo’s is that there seem to be quite a few offered on eBay with video working only and no audio so you’ll definitely need to confirm that it’s a fully functioning example before committing to purchase.