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 May 1, 2005 Harman Kardon DVD 31 DVD-Audio/Video Player   A
few years ago a DVD player was, for all intents and purpose, only a home-theater device.
Early models were designed to play DVD-Video first, CD second, and, at least with those
original units, little else. In fact, many of the original players couldn’t even
handle CD-Rs. I know mine couldn’t.
Today, though, all that has changed -- and is precisely the reason I’m writing about Harman Kardon’s DVD 31 DVD-Audio/Video (not to mention CD, CD-R, CD-RW, MP3, VCD, and on and on) player in our "On HiFi" section and not "On HomeTheater." I found the DVD 31 to be remarkably good for audio playback, even in a top-flight system such as the one I have set up. And its asking price, a mere $349 USD, makes it a strikingly good value. For audiophiles who want good sound at an affordable price, the DVD 31 begs for a serious audition. Setup and use The DVD 31 arrived from Erickson Consumer Electronics, the Canadian distributor for Harman Kardon. It’s the top model in an admittedly small lineup. The $249 DVD 22, more or less the DVD 31's kid brother, looks similar, but it doesn’t support DVD-Audio. That’s all there is from HK. So, if you don’t care about DVD-Audio playback and only want to use your player for videos and CDs, the DVD 22 might be the better deal. But from an audiophile perspective, the lack of DVD-Audio is an issue. It’s the CD and, particularly, the DVD-Audio capability that make the DVD 31 relevant for someone looking to play some cutting-edge multichannel music selections along with their CDs and DVD-Videos, providing they have a multichannel setup. And these days the Schneider household does have that kind of setup. In fact, it’s killer. I have a full complement of PSB’s Platinum-series speakers -- M2 left and right main speakers, C2 center-channel, S2 surrounds, and a SubSonic 10 powered subwoofer. Driving those speakers is an NAD T 973 seven-channel power amp, and in front of that is an NAD T 163 preamp-processor. The tab for the PSBs is upwards of $8500; the NAD gear goes for about $3500. The DVD 31, at a paltry $349, is less than the tax we’d pay here in Canada for just the NAD electronics and a fraction of what gets charged on the PSB speakers. Functionally, once you figure out what all the buttons mean and what all your options are, the DVD 31 is pretty easy to use. However, even if you’re setting up an audio-only system, connect the DVD 31 to some sort of display device -- you’ll need it to pick and choose options only available on screen. On the backside of the DVD 31 you’ll find three sets of video outputs (composite, S-video, and component); two digital outputs (TosLink and S/PDIF); and, most importantly for audiophiles, two sets of analog outputs: the six-channel outputs for DVD-Audio and a single set of stereo output jacks. This allows you to hook the DVD 31 to the multichannel inputs on your preamp-processor or receiver as well as the stereo inputs, which I did. Setting it up this way allowed me to use the T 163 to apply Dolby Pro Logic II or DTS Neo:6 processing to the stereo inputs to extract a "synthetic" surround from two-channel sources if I wanted to. On the other hand, the signal fed through the multichannel inputs of the T 163 doesn’t undergo any type of processing, making it the purer signal path of the two. I like the option of using both.
Overall, the DVD 31’s layout, features, and ease-of-use get high praise, but I have two caveats. One, the DVD 31 is a tad slow when reading discs, even standard CDs. You put a disc in and you have to wait just a little longer than you want to for the disc to be ready to play. This can be a bit annoying for those of us who like to rush, rush, rush with everything. Likewise, skipping from track to track isn’t as quick as with some players. Two, the DVD 31 doesn’t play the Sony-championed SACD format, which, like DVD-Audio, has multichannel capability. This keeps the DVD 31 from being a "universal player," a designation reserved for players than support all formats of the day. On the other hand, we’ll be lucky if SACD survives to 2006 after Sony releases Blu-ray players that will support high-definition video and, reportedly, a new, proprietary high-resolution multichannel music format that may well obliterate the need for SACD, or even DVD-Audio. Performance I was quite impressed with how detailed the DVD 31 sounded playing both CDs and DVD-Audio discs without sounding brittle or hard. It has a crystalline quality that used to be the domain of pricier players. If fact, ten years ago you couldn’t get a CD player priced less than, say, a thousand dollars that was audiophilesque the way the DVD 31 is. Back then they all seemed to sound edgy and, well, digitally. Not anymore; the DVD 31 is proof of that with its clean, clear, non-fatiguing sound. I’ve been playing Johnny’s Cash’s The Man Comes Around [Universal 063339] quite a bit lately. Musically, it’s great, and sound-wise it’s quite telling of a system’s abilities. The opening track is the title track, and Cash’s voice is miked very closely, revealing a lot of detail, as is his guitar, which has a rather blunt sound. On lesser players the voice becomes raspy and edgy, particularly when you play it back through neutral, revealing speakers like the PSB Platinum M2s. The guitar, too, should sound strong and immediate, but not steely and bright. The DVD 31 accomplishes getting it right, with Cash’s voice up front and immediate, but never annoying, and his guitar strong and always in control, and never hashy or bright. Even with two-channel sources, the DVD 31 lays out a well-defined stage with a credible illusion of depth. "Bridge Over Troubled Water" from the same Cash disc is a rather glorious presentation that fills the speaker end of room with a balloon of a sound -- bulbous and huge. My four-times-as-expensive Theta Data Basic/Stello DA220 transport/DAC combo can squeak out a touch more information than the DVD 31 and, therefore, it renders a more convincing illusion of depth, but it’s only a small difference and at many times the price. The Theta/Stello combo also has a slightly richer and more present sound, which some refer to as "organic" (I’m not sure why, exactly, but they do). Yes, on CDs my Theta/Stello combo is a touch better, but that’s certainly no knock against the DVD 31. The DVD 31 is an across-the-board strong performer, and when it plays back music it’s not a flat-as-a-pancake presentation; there’s cleanliness, good fullness and presence, and a credible sense of depth and space. The DVD 31 gets that stuff right -- amazingly so at its price -- and it can play DVD-Audio material, which upscale separates can’t, which I quite enjoy. We’ve had stereo for decades, but multichannel is the latest rage, and I’ve learned quite quickly that multichannel mixes mostly fall into two camps: very good and very bad. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours [Warner Brothers 48083], for example, is very bad. It’s as though the recording company took the front channels and simply threw some of the information in the back, making for a big sound with little specificity. It’s awful, and I’d rather listen to stereo -- it sounds more natural. k.d. lang’s Invincible Summer [ Warner Brothers 9 47605-9], on the other hand, is very good. In fact, it’s a lesson for how it should be done. The voice stays put at the front of the stage with remarkably good specificity. The surround channels are used sparingly, simply creating more space, which gives the presentation a bigger, more dimensional sound than plain ol’ stereo. When I played this recording for a fellow audiophile who came over, he was amazed at how pristine-sounding it was. When I told him the price of the DVD 31 he turned to a carton character with a long jaw and eyes bigger than a bug’s. All the time he thought he was listening to a digital source priced a whole lot higher. That’s what I like most about the DVD 31 -- it’s exceedingly clean and clear to the point that you forget that it’s actually bargain-priced and it becomes just another very good digital source. It draws almost no attention to itself, which is what you want. And while the DVD 31 doesn’t negate the need for the much pricier, more expensive components such as my Stello DAC and Theta transport that can resolve from CD the most microscopic of details, it’s remarkably accomplished for a fraction of the price and can deliver a wealth of musical excitement that every audio enthusiast can afford. On an absolute scale -- price not considered -- the DVD 31’s performance ranks as good. My more-expensive separates do sound a little better despite the fact that they’re not DVD-Audio-capable. When you factor in price, though, the DVD 31’s quite the sonic knockout. If I didn’t have my separates to fall back on I could listen to the DVD 31 and be quite happy with it. Contrasts, comparisons, and its video capabilities, too It was interesting to compare the DVD 31 to the Panasonic DVD-S27 that I just bought for my living-room system. The DVD-S27 retails for just 80 bucks! You won’t get decent seats at a U2 concert for that price. The DVD-S27 is not perfect by any means -- it’s a flimsy, pint-sized unit built to incredibly low standards -- but it’s a full-fledged working DVD player that plays videos and supports a good number of music-playback formats, although it won’t play back DVD-Audio discs. I also compared both players to my aging Kenwood DV/S700 that cost quite a chunk of change back in its day (before the change of the millennium -- it’s that old), but it supports just DVD-Video and CD (not even CD-R). On two-channel music, which is the only way I could compare the three sonically, none could come close to the DVD 31. The Panasonic sounds bright, edgy, and lacks detail -- precisely what you’d expect from a player that costs what it does. I can stand listening to music through it for about a minute. The DV/S700, despite its age, still cleans house on the DVD-S27 when it comes to playing back CDs; however, the DV/S700 can’t come close to matching the DVD 31’s sound quality either. The DV/S700 sounds half-decent and is something I could "make do" with if I had no other player on hand. The DVD 31, on the other hand, is much more than a player that just "makes do." The DVD 31's sound is refined, detailed, and clean, and, as I stated above, I can compare its sound to much more expensive units, which I can’t say about the other players. Sonically, it’s in a different league.
Up until this point I haven’t discussed video performance at all (deliberately; this is, after all, an "On HiFi" review). The ridiculously inexpensive Panasonic DVD-S27 clobbers my old Kenwood DV/S700, which is simply proof that today you don’t have to spend much to get half-decent picture quality from a DVD player. However, it didn’t take me long to realize that the DVD 31 was going to lay waste to the DVD-S27, although that should be no surprise when you look at their prices. A fairer comparison would, obviously, be a like-priced Panasonic model. Still, the comparison does illustrate that all DVD players are not created equal -- when you pay more you often do get more. For example, I just watched Saw the other night, an abysmal Seven knockoff that features a relentless attack of gruesome images, a preposterous story line, and, with Cary Elwes leading the way, some of the worst acting I’ve seen in years. Still, despite the rampant incompetence, the cinematographers seemed to know what they were doing as did the people who laid the film onto DVD. In its own creepy, gory, awful way, Saw looks fantastic, with a rich palette of colors, stunning contrasts, and tons of detail in its deep, dark shadows. The DVD 31 shows all that perfectly with far superior color saturation than the DVD-S27, which looks washed-out in comparison. The DVD 31 also had far better color accuracy, particularly with reds, which looked somewhat like magenta through the DVD-S27. There was also better detail with the DVD 31 and a bit more of that elusive film-like quality that videophiles search for the way that audiophiles search for lifelike sound. In short, the DVD 31 looks every bit as good as it sounds. Conclusion Too often reviewers and their reviews dwell on high-priced components that only a fraction of the population can afford. Products like the DVD 31 are often shunned in the search for the latest, greatest, and, usually, priciest. Too bad, because it’s components like the DVD 31 -- affordable and high performing -- that the audio world needs to know about. If you want to dip your toes into the world of DVD-Audio for some fun-filled multichannel-music playback, and also have a well-built, well-designed player that will play CDs, DVD-Videos and other formats remarkably well, the Harman Kardon DVD 31 will help you do just that, and not drain all that much money from your bank account. For its price, performance and versatility, the DVD 31 is most certainly a winner. …Doug Schneider Harman Kardon DVD 31 DVD-Audio/Video Player Harman Kardon Website www.harmankardon.com
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The remote may
be an all-plastic jobbie, but it’s the ideal size and weight, and the buttons, which
are a soft plastic, have just the right feel. The unit fits in your hand perfectly
and doesn’t seem cumbersome at all. The buttons even light up, which is more than
handy in the dark, where many audiophiles do their serious listening.
