Pioneer SA508. Suitable CD Player?

[Matthew30]

Hi All,

I am new to vintage audio. I recently acquired a very nice example of a Pioneer - SA508, it sounds fantastic when I hook it up to my bog standard hi fi speakers through the aux connection. You would not think it is just 25W per channel.

I am looking for a suitable CD player that will complement this amplifier, so I guess I am asking you guys who are much more knowledgeable than myself.

I was looking at the Denon PMA 520 DCD, primarily because it looks like the same finish and will match the amplifier nicely.

Please can you advise of any suggestions and I would very much appreciate it.

My musical tastes vary from classical to rock.

Thank you all in advance.

Matt

[paulsherwin]

There are a huge number of possible choices and everyone will have different favourites. Your choice will depend on your budget, your attitude to sound quality as opposed to styling, any favourite manufacturer, your favourite era, etc.

There are no particular players that will 'complement' the amp other than in terms of styling.

Many people like the 1980s Philips/Marantz players, which perform very well and are cheap to buy.

[bikerhifinut]

I agree with you Paul.

I guess the right answer is "any CD player, now what colour would you like it to be?".

Seconded on the 80's Philips chip based players, No2 nephew and my sister both use old Marantz CD65SE jobs ((16bit 4x oversampling), one was my old one and gifted with its partnering PM45 amp, the other I got for £25 used and serviced, and both sound, to my ears, just wonderful and I think hold their own with anything produced since. I have a high opinion of the Philips CD transports of that era too, they seem to be of "battleship" construction.

Andy.

[Edward Huggins]

So what's wrong with "just" 25 watts - that's loud - what were you expecting?
Most Hi Fi audio listening levels are around just 3 to 5 watts. A 25 watt amplfier will sound no better than a 10 watt amplifier.

[bikerhifinut]

I'd even say most of us listen at levels of less than 1 watt Edward. i have a SE EL84 amp that I measured at just less than 2watts before the distortion got to noticeable levels and it can sound quite loud in my Hi Fi with its relatively insensitive modern standmount speakers.
As a comparison my vintage leak Stereo20 is loud enough to be "too loud" for a bit of perspective. And that is nominally a 10W amp, I measured 12W at clip on mine and quite a few years ago I had it measured professionally after I refurbed it and then it was also 12W at clip and as i remember something like 0.2% distortion at 1kHz at 10W into a resistive load. (Leak claimed 0.1% at 10W but who's complaining?)
The OP is a newcomer to this type of gear and i'd wager has looked at things like those self powered computer speakers claiming 100W etc? When we all know that's basically impossible using actual real world units...
Nevertheless I wish him good success and much pleasure when he settles on his choice of CD player and realises good sound reproduction need not cost eye watering money if kit is chosen wisely.

A.

[paulsherwin]

Lots of output power is desirable in a transistor amp because they tend to sound very unpleasant when they clip on transient peaks. Valve amp clipping is much easier on the ear. 25WPC is perfectly adequate for most listeners though.

[bikerhifinut]

And (relatively) cheap to achieve in a solid state amp.

A.

[Radio Wrangler]

There's another factor in the how-much-power-is-enough business.

Loudspeakers are very inefficient and the trend of increasingly powerful amplifiers over time has been tracked by loudspeakers getting even less efficient as the price paid for getting smaller. At the lower end of the market some speakers were made more efficient so they could be bundled in systems with cheap amplifiers of lower power.

25 watts per channel is plenty into sixties/early seventies era hifi speakers, it is an awful lot into the 'music centre' speakers of the seventies. The eighties saw the rise of speakers that demanded somewhat more power to drive them to their full capabilities.

As a benchmark and an illustration of the inefficiency of speakers, a trombone played flat out produces about half a Watt of sound power, and that is rather loud.

The power level of music normally bumbles along at quite a low level, but has much higher peaks for small fractions of the time. The peaks are so big that they often drive amplifiers ino clipping.

Valve amplifiers are rather simple beasties. The valves themselves go gently non-linear at high levels and the circuits they are used in employ relatively small amounts of feedback (if any) The net result is an amplifier which when pushed into clipping does so gently. Human ears can tell, but the overall sound isn't too offensive.

Early transistor amplifiers had design problems and handed clipping very badly indeed. They clipped abruptly and would hang on in the clipped state for some time after the surge which had driven them into clipping had ended. They were OK if they never clipped, but terrible if they did. 25 Watt transistor amplifiers became the norm, where 10Watt valve amps used to be in the market.

Later transistor amps were better designed. They still sound worse than valved ones when driven into clipping, but are a lot better than early transistors. By this time though it had become cheap enough to have loads of power if you wanted it.

That's the long way of saying 25 Watts per channel is plenty, unless you go for extremely inefficient speakers.

As for a CD player, there have been many, many models made, though there have been far fewer types of internal mechanism and sets of chips for them. Badge engineering! Look inside some of the snobbiest boutique brands and you'd likely find a Philips mechanism and chipset. The boutique price got you a different opamp chip and capacitors on the output. It could make a small difference. Manufacturer's hype claimed Huuuuge differences, of course. People who fell for it had to either repeat these claims or admit they'd been suckered.

So pick something which looks OK with your amp, there were very few duff models.

Be aware, though, that the laser diodes in CD machines have a limited life and replacements might not be available. So don't sink a lot of money into a CD machine. That said, the Sony I bought in 1986 lasted about 22 years of very heavy use and it was the drawer mechanism which wore out in the end.

Philips were good and are cheap. Marantz (owned by Philips, so guess what's inside) were well liked. Sony were decent too, and their 'ES' models were built like brick-built wotsits.

David

[D_S_J_R]

CD players are on the way out (well, declining) and the choice of new ones is shrinking now. The baby Denon should be fine and reliable for your needs, but a more expensive player (not necessarily for your immediate needs) such as a Rega Apollo R does have a better 'potential sound quality' in my personal experience if the system allows it and you listen with open ears and mind... All measurable so not foo opinion I believe...

The old Philips 16-bit oversampled chipset does have a grungy sonic power in the reproduction, but the general 'hf/rf noise' sprayed down the interconnects and often mains cable too dates them badly. Almost all the players I ever tried with this technology benefitted sonically from cable ferrites snapped on the mains and signal cables and on the better models, a high-current mains filter really did clean them up - I use such a player today, a once exalted Micro Seiki CD-M2 which weighs a ton...

As for vintage players, there is such a huge range of still working and very cheap machines out there. Denon made loads of good ones and the workroom system has a DCD 1520 complex heavyweight (mine has a dicky optical output now) and currently a lovely DCD 1015 which was an excellent player when new at around £320. Many old Arcams are good and some Rotels and Sony's too - a less well known 'good' Sony was the midi la-Grange model. I'm getting a slimline pro CDP-D11 shortly for use as a transport - it sounded 'dead' and 'airless' as a standalone when I first heard it.

Please excuse the audiophool mentality coming out in my. I sold this gear at the time and did many comparative dems. The Pioneer used via an 'Aux' input shouldn't be an issue apart from possibly a volume control which may be cramped towards the bottom of the rotation range with a CD-level source...

[paulsherwin]

If you are very pushed as to budget and/or want to play MP3 CDs you could just use a DVD player. These are often available FOC as people switch to Blu-ray or want an HDMI interface for their new tellies. The sound quality is a lot better than you might expect, though not as good as a good dedicated audio player. I use a kerbside Yamaha as my office player and it's absolutely fine, albeit in an undemanding environment. Some of them can be a bit mechanically noisy when playing audio CDs though.

[dave walsh]

As Paul says DVD players are abundant and even the cheapest I find to be pretty good. In fact I have one in my audio set up purely to play longer [than 80mins] audio material [up to 8 hours at exc quality is available I find on these "DVDA's" as I call them]. There's a good Pioneer PDR-509 CD Player in there as well but I often play CD's in the DVD unit!

This all reminds me of a previous time when I recorded longer audio works on VHS tape after realising the VCR spec was much higher than that of the
CD player I had.

Dave

[Matthew30]

Wow, thank you all for the replies. You all appear to be very knowledgeable, a lot more so than my simple mind.

I guess I will just find one that looks nice and sounds decent.

With regards to the amplifier, I polished it up, cleaned it thoroughly and it is just a joy to listen to. Hopefully it will last another 40 years.

[paulsherwin]

There is a school of thought in the hifi world that amps of this age always need all their electrolytic caps ripping out, but in fact most will be absolutely fine with just a squirt of Servisol in the controls and switches.

Just for your info, these are what I'm currently using with my 4 () systems:

Main system: Marantz CD42
Dining room: Tangent TDP-50
Bedroom: Argos Value DVD player chucked out by a neighbour
Office: Yamaha DVD player found in a skip

The office system normally uses my Marantz CD63 top loader, but that is undergoing repair at the moment. The Yamaha doesn't sound obviously worse.

[D_S_J_R]

PLEASE don't mind 'us' - and 'me' in particular.. Bottom line is that you're enjoying your amp, the Aux inputs should take a typical CD player without overload and you have a huge choice out there.

Good luck

[bikerhifinut]

Gonna chuck a curved ball in..............
Like Paul S and his DVD player idea, good lateral thinking Paul! most of us have a dvd player, and indeed our £30 supermarket "bluray" will play a CD but I can't comment on its critical audio quality.
BUT............... you can get good Audio out of a cheapo DVD player by dint of one of the many, now quite cheap, DACS (digital to analogue converter) that are available. And the advantage of one of these is you can usually use it with any digital source from mobile phone through tablet PC upwards and there you have a "one stop" music source especially if you use the net for radio and other music/entertainment.
And second Curved ball............. I recently bought a working unmarked "as new" Technics personal CD player at a car boot sale for the princely sum of a Fiver! And it's got a fixed level Line output as well as the volume controlled headphone output. How does it sound? Remarkably good and i reckon the transports on these had to be good to keep tracking when worn by a jogger...................................... the experts will know better but I think its to do with a large buffer memory being engineered into them?

Have fun, it needn't cost much and if DSJR can hear all these things on 16 bit Phiilips stuff, I certainly dont notice it on the 16bit 4x oversampling marantz players in my family. But I may just have cloth ears?

A.

[paulsherwin]

The built in DACs in DVD players aren't that bad. It's like any technology where very large scale integration has taken place - there's no cost advantage in implementing a lousy design on a chip rather than a good one.

[Richard_FM]

I use my Acoustic Solutions DVD player to play CDs in my bedroom.

It developed a fault & won't play DVDs any more, but managed CDs still.

Having a full LED display helps as well.

[dseymo1]

Like all such devices, the quality of DVD players varies considerably. While most are nothing to write home about, I've occasionally discovered unexpected gems, for example an early Medion DVD recorder - by no means top-end (or even midrange), but actually better at reproducing audio than many mid-priced CD players.
See what you can find, and listen; you might be surprised!

[RojDW48]

Another vote for little DVD players - I use one that cost me a pound in a charity shop as a convenient line level source for testing all sorts of devices. When not in use it is small enough to live on a shelf with the books.

[TimLiggins]

My day to day system for 30 odd years has been Pioneer A300X amp and Pioneer PD S601 CD player with Tannoy speakers. Still sounds great to me. The only fault over that time was due to a dog chasing a ball and knocking the lense out of the CD player, a 10 minute job to repair. So I can vouch for Pioneer.