I've been looking for a new cd player but have a budget of $300. Through surfing the net I found some discontinued audiophile pioneer elite cd players for sale. After researching them I became quite interested. Although some of these models are over 10 years old they seem to be SERIOUS cd players particulary the PD-93 PD-65 and the PD-75. My questions are: How well did the stable platter mechanism work? Why doesn't Elite and other highend companies use the stable platter any more? How did these players sound? Would I just be better off to purchase more modern players such as the Marantz cd5400 or the Denon DCM-380 which is HDCD? Any input is appreciated.
I've owned a PD65 for over 9 years. Its been a GREAT cd player. Never a problem, sound has been good. When I bought it new at $800 it beat out comparable players from Cal Labs costing over 1k. Time marches on and the DAC in it is dated now but it has outputs to use an outboard upsampling dac and then it makes a great transport...very elgent looking and very good at reading disks without problems. Used they go about $300 these days...highly recommended by this owner...
Today's $500 cd player outperforms cd playes costing up to 10 times as much as little as 5 years ago. I have a friend who replaced his 7 yr old 8k DAC and transport system with an NAD C542 as is amazed at how much better the NAD is. Of of all of the components in your system the CD player has improved the most over the last several years.