Is it a good idea to buy CD players over 10 years old even it is a reliable brand?
On cost consideration, I am planning to buy a 2nd hand CD Player like Accuphase DP 500 Player or Estoric X-05 which are around 10 years old or so. The price is about US$2000~3000. Of course, unlike amplifier, the CD player has a pick up head and mechanical gears, but even for the above brands which are famous for it's reliability, is it good idea to buy the quite aged CD players from them?
Thank you very much for your kind opinions, the reason for choosing 2nd hand CD player is merely on cost consideration. You can get the better sound gear on the modest price even it is an old player. I bought Marantz CD 16D once from the 2nd hand store, but the pick up head just broken after 3 months, then, I return it to the store and get money back with 20% less (That's the shop's sales rules.). I am concerning whether it is good idea to buy a 2nd hand CD player for the consideration of the possible early break down. Thank you for all of your suggestions.
Jafant makes a good point. I would check with the mfr. first to see if they still could provide service on the model you,re interested in. I,m on my 4th player. The first two had the transport breakdown. The 3rd and current player exhibited microprocessor problems. The 3rd player retailed for 4500 back in 2001. The mfr (a respected high end mfr supposedly) refused to even look at it. I now have a 35lb paperweight with no recourse. I would never buy a product from them again.
Your dealer might have the purest intentions but he is wrong. A good cd player is much like a good turntable, it ages well and can have qualities you`ll hardly find in newer players due to higher focus on oversampling, cheaper drives, smaller components a.s.on.
A local hifi dealer who has been in business since the 1940's and still going strong told me that when it comes to Dacs, CD players that you should buy new because of the advancing technology. The exception of course are preamps and amplifiers as many of you know they have not advanced that much since the early nineties plus some of the older units are built better and sound excellent. I do have an older CD player from the early nineties and I have kept it because it works good with zero problems and sounds dynamic but I think I could do better with a brand new unit.
Happy holidays to all of you. I would like to establish that I was taking about the lifespan of a single model, (for how long we at Gryphon normally keep a model in production), and not about the actual lifetime of a product. Hopefully the lifetime of a product should be way more than 10 years. Wishing all of you Happy Holidays and all the best for 2020 and thanks a lot for raising an interesting topic here at the forum.
All good advice above. Just like buying a used car, parts to repair are needed to fix them when something needs to be repaired. Personally I have in the past year purchased a few high end CDPs. Got them so cheap that I don't care if they crap out in a year (won't be happy about it) but cheap to me is good. They had issues and I am able to repair them if I need to and can find the parts, otherwise off to the recycle bin. I only use them for transports and so far, the newer models just do not sound as good for what ever reason. Granted the ones I purchased were big bucks when they were new.
So you have to be realistic with yourself when you are buying an older used piece of equipment.
I would not want to buy a 10 year old player. Especially if I don't know it's history. Even if parts are available, just seems like a PITA keeping it functioning. I, like many others, like looking around in used record shops. I spend alot of time in the CD area of the store. Currently, used CDs are cheap. Certainly cheaper than used vinyl(which I also still buy) I recently bought an Audiolab 6000cdt. It's attached to two different DACs, A cheap but lovely sounding Schiit Modi 3 with an AKM chip and my onboard ESS Sabre DAC that's in my preamp. I can toggle between the two depending on what material I'm playing. I've been very happy with the results.
I'm glad the topic of older CD players appeared here because a sentence from the current "Stereophile" review of the (very) costly Gryphon Ethos player caught my attention. Jason Victor Serinus quoted the company's sales director (Rune Skov) thusly: "That's why the lifespan for a Gryphon product can be 10-15 years." Disconcerting for a product at that price point, though the Gryphon rep didn't specify how many run hours that time period represents.
I picked up a used Esoteric SACD player a few months ago...best buy I have ever made in audio!! The player is absolutely amazing sounding and easily beat out many other far newer designs. I was looking at a used Marantz at the time, also a very nice sounding piece, BUT the Marantz was not being supported anymore. So IF the transport or laser failed, I would have been out of luck with the Marantz. That is the main thing to consider IMO, when looking at an older digital piece.
It sort of boils down to pride of ownership. A used Esoteric is a nice piece of gear that looks and feels like a fine instrument. You will appreciate the quality every time you use it. I tend to do the same thing as you're planning - I buy nice high quality used gear that I can afford. In fact I don't think I have anything in my system that is less than 10 years old. A couple years ago I went to AXPONA and concluded that my system can compete with almost anything except the super high end setups. I'm not sure we have actually come that far in sound quality between the top end gear of 20 years ago and today.
Comment #2: I don't think you can assume that players today are better than those of 20 years ago at a roughly similar price point. Companies like Madrigal, Mark Levinson, were driven to produce fantastic players in the new field. Today? I'm not sure they are and I've heard mass market players, such as a Marantz I recently auditioned ($400), that had all that digital hash jitter that we thought should have vanished by now....
From how the question is phrased, I'm sure that Faust understands that disc spinners can break down, so I'm definitely in the camp of being reluctant to buy these -- for one thing, you just simply don't know how many hours are on it. I had a wonderful Proceed PDT3 that just conked out a year ago after 18 years of use and I had used it heavily! And it was the transport mechanism and could not be serviced. So as others opined, for more expensive disc spinners make SURE that they can be serviced. I replaced my transport with a media server.
I would not buy a 10 year old player, even if its moving parts are still available as of today you have no guarantee that they will still be available a couple of years from now.
I'm not sure I even belong on this blog. I bought a used NAD CD player, built in 1999, for the princely sum of $50. The display is shot, even after replacing the backlight. But it still spins discs and has a digital output that I utilize through a fairly recent Arcam DAC. The playback, trough it's resident DAC via the analog out, is also listenable. I assume this deck will crap out, at some point, never to be repaired but replaced with a similar machine at a similar price.
Why buy a used CD player when you can buy feature festooned reliable latest technology from companies like Marantz, Sony and Arcam for an awful lot less than $2-3k?
Certainly not for sound quality either. CD players from the 80s can match recent designs, depending upon taste, but unless there’s some quaint anachronistic reason, why ever go there?
The only CD players I ever heard that stood out sonically (albeit marginally) were the Linn CD12 (scale), Rega Saturn (analogue) and the Cambridge CD4SE (vivid tones).
None of them are cheap enough or easy to get hold of to warrant my swapping them for my Marantz CD6000ki - which I think sounds more tonally balanced than any of them.
From costly experience I would advise only buying a second-hand CD player if the full transport mechanism is still available. Furthermore, if you like the sound of the player you buy, I would budget for purchasing a spare transport as soon as possible, and keep it safe. . My old Naim CDX died and a new transport is no longer available so I purchased another CDX, thinking this was a one off. That too had the same issue after a time. It appears it is common for a Naim CDX to give up at the 20 year mark. It was an expensive mistake.
Just blew a grand on an old LINN IKEMI cd player. Sounds better than streaming with the 5k dollar DAC I have. You need a have a state of the art DAC to surpass old reference cd players. So buying an old cd player is not a waste right now. Plus it's always fun to scavenge record stores for CD'S and if your cd player has a drawer mech like my LINN then it's really cool to play CD's.
@bimmerman2 mentioned the Philips TDA1541/1543 DAC. I discovered this rather spartan CD player currently available using a TDA1543. However, don’t know whose transport is used. Top loading takes the tray loading mechanics out of the equation. The price certainly isn’t bad. http://sparkler-audio.com/portfolio/S503_en.html
Yes. Consult the company of interest or its authorized repair operation for availability of critical parts and service. Keep us posted on which player you decide to purchase.
Yes, some older CD players from the 80’s and 90’s can sound wonderful. I’ve got both a Sony and a JVC CD player from the 80’s which still work perfectly, although the Sony sounds better and is built like a tank. If you do buy an older CD player, it’s a good idea to make sure it’s got a digital output in case you wanna use it as a transport so you’re able to try out different DAC’s.
Find something that uses the old school TDA1541 chip and your golden. There’s a list you can Google of the many high/low/med end players that use it. Most pleasing sound for me with CD
Yes it's a great idea. I just purchased a used Meridian 800 DVD/CD player for $1k. Some on this forum recommended I purchase a new player or a cheaper player with a DAC. That was not what I was looking for.
The Meridian 800 is a phenomenal CD player and I'm extremely happy with my purchase. I can also highly recommend a used Cary 306 CD player as well. I'm glad I went with my choice.
Great question, I am also curious, but in the $500-1k range. The logical part of my brain says buy a Cambridge Audio CXC and be done with it (I have a pretty good DAC). I do on occasion see a player that is 5-20 years old that catches my eye, but have not been able to pull the trigger on one yet. Having a laser and transport that are still available is good advice.
I am using a near-20 year old Electrocompaniet EMC-1UP, and it sounds superb. Note, however, that I did replace the (Philips) laser once.
How long will it last? Don't know, but it's built like a tank. Does it sound as good as more recent models, or streaming? Well, that would depend on the quality of the components.
In any case, I reject the notion that CD players are somehow anachronistic, and the really good ones can still produce lovely sounding music.
@melm ........................why is it many like you constantly diss a CD player and push streaming on people when they specifically ask for CD player opinions? If these people are in these forums, then they know about streaming.
I have both a music server and Esoteric SACD player and I much prefer playing the little disks even though the music is ripped to the server. If I use the server, I never fully listen to whatever is chosen in its entirety, with the CD I do.
I would make sure that replacement lasers and transports are available. I bought a used Esoteric player last summer and it would not play hybrid sacd’s. Fortunately, I also bought a Square Trade policy. They paid for a new laser mechanism and the labor to install it. I would recommend that you get a Square Trade policy or something similar, if possible.
You should also be aware that some Esoteric models need to be shipped to Japan for repairs. I don’t know what the deal is with Accuphase. If you are still considering the X-05, I would call TAP Electronics to see if they can do repairs to that particular model at their California location instead of shipping it to Japan.
For 3K you can get a very nice brand new or gently used CD player, whose sound will be very competitive and which will be guaranteed to keep playing a good deal longer.
Each unit produced had its tech test and archive not one, but two spare laser units. I think it’s safe to say that the ISIS will last longer than most of its owners and one can appreciate appreciate this attention to detail, with CD transport mechanisms getting scarcer all the time.
Hard to image. Long time ago (30 years), my friend is an audio maker and dealer, he had one Sony CD player, the sound is hard and dry......
At that time, he also imported Magnavox CD player and re-tool with some parts such as condenser and power line, and selling at double price when compare with import cost. Of course is better than original mfg.
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