Yamaha CDX-2020

The so-called high-bit arms race that Yamaha initiated continued to escalate year by year, and the release of the CDX-2020 in 1988 saw the development of the New High-Bit System combining a 20-bit 8x oversampling digital filter and 22-bit operation four-DAC system. While conventional 18-bit systems had been turned into 18-bit via floating point processing by 16-bit DAC, this new 22-bit system featured a unique configuration with the latest 18-bit DAC supplemented with an external 4-bit DAC.

Because of this it was able to achieve high resolution of 8x in the time axis and 16x in the amplitude axis with a high S/N ratio reaching 120dB. The chassis was also redesigned, and the unit was replete with heavy equipment features reminiscent of the 10000 series, such as full copper plating in the body interior, spike/pad selection GP feet, a high rigidity mechanical unit equivalent to the CDX-10000, and a D/A separate power supply unit with a large two-transformer configuration. Looking back now it seems as though the high-bit arms race may have gone a bit too far, but the outcomes of light being shone upon the issue of micro-level reproducibility by high-bit and the accumulation in a short time of a knowledge base of how to deal with digital noise and mechanical vibrations undeniably live on as the assets not just of Yamaha but of the entire field of audio in Japan. The unique technology of the I-PDM 1-bit system of Yamaha’s next flagship model, the GT-CD1, couldn’t help but signal the next period of that generation’s high-bit systems.

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