How old is too old?

Some great responses about  I got a few good laughs!

Since we are a manufacturer nd a repair service when buying any audio component used you have to determine if the parts are available.  Anything can be repaired if the parts are available.  As per your question, I would get a used Cary 306 S SACD player.  In stock for it has below average sound IMO.  But once you upgrade the caps and some resistors in the power supply, the sound changes dramatically and will complete with anything you have heard.  The upgrade includes over 100 parts if I remember correctly.  We were blown away but the upgrade.

Happy Listening. 

I was already old when i designed my System/room acoustically using only my ears/brain as a tool. No it was not perfect for all others ears but perfect for mine (surrounding sound from a stereo system with holographic sound instrument volume).

i had 74 in few weeks, i designed my walking stick with a branch given to me by the river and i walk more swiftly with it.

 We will not die, the body will stay still one day...

Music exist eternally as the primes numbers music which contain everything...

I will perhaps upgrade my low cost well optimized speakers for my birthday...

@secretguy 

My two cents is to buy one with the expectation of having to buy another.  So, figure out a sliding scale based on dollars available, your age, age of player and expected longevity.  

There has got to be a sweet spot in there some where.

Your welcome.

Regards,

barts

You could always buy 2 new  and keep one for when the cd transport breaks. I love cd players. Sometimes they quit and have to unplug and do a hard reboot.sometimes they throw a fit and won't play certain discs.they skip but don't jump rope. I googled favorite cd players yesterday and found a blog with 40 pages of people's opinion about bought a certain used one but many people stated transport problems.that saved me some money. I must have 10 or so of these all currently working.some have tubes,carver ,accuphase musical fidelity, bat, mcintosh mcd 12000 tube or solid stateect. I like that one.some you can turn the tube stage off go solid state. It is known the old phillips cd 1 transports fails often .my marantz sacd 10 is about 4 k on the used market now. It's been kind to me.enjoy the search and for the streamers I have some high end of that with dac but member the cd player had dac in the beginning.

a year ago i bought a new TEAC VRDS-701T CD ’only’ transport. it has the newest version of the BIG-BOY VRDS transport and is built like a tank. when i bought it the list price was $2799. now it’s $3299. 

https://teac.jp/int/product/vrds-701t/top

most SACD’s have a CD layer, so you can play all the discs. if you buy an SACD player and want the dsd layer, you are limited to the dac inside that transport, or need a proprietary interface that works with your dac so you are limited. i wanted to use my Wadax dac with a modestly priced transport so i could play silver discs. 

as far as performance, it was just ’ok’ using a SPIDF interface into my dac......until......i hooked up my Esoteric G1X Clock to it and then it came alive and is really quite fine sounding.

but it does the job and i can now play my 4000 CD’s and 1000 SACD’s again. and it works sufficiently with my $400k Wadax. no it does not quite match streaming on the Wadax, but then nothing else does either. it’s good enough to not avoid silver discs if i want that particular music, or a friend brings a CD over with them.

for around $3k why mess with old transports and worry about it?