Hajime
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2003
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Hello there. In the past month or so I've been looking around for a new CD player within my budget of $300. Upon the reccomendations I found here I decided upon the Pioneer DV-563A and ordered it from Crutchfield.com. Well, the Pioneer came today and here are my initial impressions.
First of all, the Pioneer is about half the size of my last CD player (an old Technics). I was incredibly surprised at it's size. I knew it was small but not this small. It's very sleek and it looks well-designed. It's also incredibly light. The display is easy to read, the remote is usable though nothing to look at. I have no complaints about the build quality.
Now, my initial impressions on the sound quality of this player. The first thing I did when I got it was set it up with my Singlepower MPX3 headphone amplifier connected to the Sennheiser HD600 headphones. I plopped in a SACD (Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed) and laid back to listen to music. Well, the SACD performance was.. alright. It sounded a little murky. Everything sounded distant and the midrange was slightly recessed. I haven't heard SACD before this. I can tell you now that I am not impressed in the least bit by it coming from this player. I have no claim as an experianced audiophile - but I expect my music to at least sound good!
After the bad experiance with that SACD I decided to try another SACD (Rolling Stones - Aftermath). I got the same results as the first. Now, here I am using a supposed high-resolution format and I'm getting worse sound than my older CD Player with a regular CD. At this point I decided to give up playing SACDs on this player and I put in a regular CD (Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers). Good lord. It sounds even worse. I'm listening to "Sister Morphine" right now which is, in my opinion, a great song. This Pioneer player is mauling it.
I'm going to contact Crutchfield about returning this player tomorrow. I suppose what I've learned from this experiance is, "You get what you pay for." If you're going to only pay $180 you're not going to get much.
First of all, the Pioneer is about half the size of my last CD player (an old Technics). I was incredibly surprised at it's size. I knew it was small but not this small. It's very sleek and it looks well-designed. It's also incredibly light. The display is easy to read, the remote is usable though nothing to look at. I have no complaints about the build quality.
Now, my initial impressions on the sound quality of this player. The first thing I did when I got it was set it up with my Singlepower MPX3 headphone amplifier connected to the Sennheiser HD600 headphones. I plopped in a SACD (Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed) and laid back to listen to music. Well, the SACD performance was.. alright. It sounded a little murky. Everything sounded distant and the midrange was slightly recessed. I haven't heard SACD before this. I can tell you now that I am not impressed in the least bit by it coming from this player. I have no claim as an experianced audiophile - but I expect my music to at least sound good!
After the bad experiance with that SACD I decided to try another SACD (Rolling Stones - Aftermath). I got the same results as the first. Now, here I am using a supposed high-resolution format and I'm getting worse sound than my older CD Player with a regular CD. At this point I decided to give up playing SACDs on this player and I put in a regular CD (Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers). Good lord. It sounds even worse. I'm listening to "Sister Morphine" right now which is, in my opinion, a great song. This Pioneer player is mauling it.