The wonders of 'Hifi'

[Roy S]

...today my Pioneer multiplay CD player (part of a £2 bundle from e-bay) sounds better than my NAD C515BEE/Bushmaster combination, hey ho

http://i562.photobucket.com/albums/ss68/Lodger56/P1030003.jpg

[The Black Adder]

Pioneer made some wonderful stuff. I have also tried the Bushmaster dac on the end of my PD-91 and I have to say that the 91's internal dacs won hands down which was interesting.

[dave2010]

I don't have a Bushmaster, but the earlier model Caiman - not gatorized. I understand that many think the Bushmaster is better - it may be.

I also have a Squeezebox Touch and an SB3. Lastly I have a Marantz CD player CD 67 mk II SE. Normally I feed this via a digital cable through the SB3, and I'm happy with the results. I also stream audio from computers via the SB3 and the Caiman. However the direct output from the CD player is itself rather impressive and I wouldn't say it's inferior. I think headphone listening is better via the Caiman because there seems to be less noise. Serious headphone enthusiasts appear to think it's possible to do even better with a dedicated headphone amp. They may be right.

I can hear differences between the outputs of these different units, but they all sound pretty good to me. I could not, honestly, say that the output of the CD player is inferior when played through amp plus speakers. The CD player is pretty good.

The Touch is spare, and a really nice device, but when I did a direct comparison of the output with the SB3 I could not hear any significant difference - which I expected to, having enjoyed a few hours with the Touch. The Touch may eventually be deployed in a room/conservatory which we are currently setting up, or switched with the SB3.

Reasons why I bought the Caiman (USB model) were because of its switching and the headphone output. Previously I had tried a loaned DacMagic from Richer sounds, and that did not appear to give any audible advantages over the direct output from the CD player. I don't think it was worse, but definitely not better.

Sometimes older kit really does sound good.

[UV101]

What pioneer model is it Roy?

Dave,
That 67II SE will out perform anything you have listed there. It's also a better sounding machine than the 63 KI out the box. It's virtually identical except for the servo section which is better in the 67. I know these players inside out and I'm not surprised you prefer it. Like many CD players, not much attention is spent on the headphones circuit which is very basic.

They do mod very well

Here's one I prepared earlier

http://i497.photobucket.com/albums/rr332/Trunky1812/Marantz%20CD67%20OSE%20MKII/IMG_6730.jpg

http://i497.photobucket.com/albums/rr332/Trunky1812/Marantz%20CD67%20OSE%20MKII/Phase%202%20mods/IMG_6861.jpg

[The Black Adder]

Look like some wicked mods in there matey! :) I've been thinking of getting a clock fitted to my cdp.

[UV101]

That 67 started life with me at about the same level as the 63 I've got in the FS section. I tend to do 3 or 4 a year to fund other projects. It's been back 3 times and each time I've been asked to do more which is nice. It's quite advanced now with I think 11 of my own low noise regs. It sounds like something considerably more expensive that's for sure.

I've never found a player that didn't respond well to a clock. Even the cheap Chinese clocks on eBay are better than standard (even though they quite nonsense figures to look good) . A decent commercial well designed clock will always outperform. I guess you get what you pay for (well most of the time)! Any of the commercial clocks are pretty much a very good voltage regulator supplying a high performance oscillator.

This is an interesting read http://www.trichordresearch.com/ClocksWorks.html

What player have you got? They really aren't that difficult to fit if you have some basic soldering skills ;)

I've had a few commercial clocks before I started to build my own and out of the bunch, I'd recommend the fidelity audio ones (but then again I know Brent the owner ;)

even though I have my own clocks, I'm running one of his C3's in my own SA7001 player!

http://i497.photobucket.com/albums/rr332/Trunky1812/SA7001/c1b1544928a418066d086386f1b8d86a.jpg

[Roy S]

What pioneer model is it Roy?



PD-M603. Think it may have been down to the CD I was comparing, sounded rather bright & over detailed through the Bushmaster but the Pioneer took the edge off.

[The Black Adder]

Pioneer PD-91. Lots have modded the 91 and have always been very happy with the upgrade.

[UV101]

PD-M603. Think it may have been down to the CD I was comparing, sounded rather bright & over detailed through the Bushmaster but the Pioneer took the edge off.

Lots of older player have that character. That's what drew me towards tda1541 based players. Much more analogue sounding. Looks like the dac in that player may be pioneer proprietary.



Pioneer PD-91. Lots have modded the 91 and have always been very happy with the upgrade.
I've never played with one but just been looking at the service manual......like always, I can see stuff I'd want to do lol
It uses 2 parallel fed dacs with a receiver chip that receives the serial I2s data. Usually the serial to a parallel conversion for word reconstruction is done in the dac itself. Not seen it done like this before. Would be interesting to play with!!! It uses a pair of BB PCM65 dacs. If they are anything like the PCM63, it should be good :)

[The Black Adder]

Hi Ian.

The BB PCM65 was a custom build for Pioneer. To what I found out it's very similar to the 63 but has 64 pins and is more than twice the size! 18 Bit too.

They are huge.

Only two of the Reference range from Pioneer used the chips, PD-91 and the PD-3000.