Philips CD-80-a good deal?

I recently bought one of these at Audiomart's flea market in Cherry Hill, N.J. I use it as a transport with a Parasound DAC. It is big and heavy and good as a transport. However, it has a massive transformer and there are tweakers out there that take advantage of it as a good soundign stand-alone player, but I don't have details. I tried it directly into my amp and wasn't impressed, but I don't believe in that direct stuff anyway. It plays flawlessly. If it is not too much trouble, perhaps you could forward some of the more interesting responses to this request. I do not have the manual so I don't have too much hype about the unit. And I don't know who reveiewed it. I think closer to $300 would be a better deal. best of luck bob PS: Someone near me is trying to sell the golden Marantz version of this for $800.

The Philips was a very good unit in its time, but technology has moved on. I feel $345 is to much, especially as an average laserunit quits after 5-6 years regular use..... If I were you I'd look further.

$300 would be more like it, but, with the age of this unit if the laser pick up goes out it will cost you more to fix it than it's worth. Also, an inexpensive transport can sound as good as most of the best transports with the addition of a Genesis digital lens which can be had used for about $650-$800. Goodluck. thanks, Brian@HelloHiFi.com ph805.527.9739 fax805.527.9808 www.hellohifi.com eCatalog available. New equipment demo’s by appointment. All quotes are good for 30 days. Customers in every state, & 26 countries (angol/ingles/englisch/beszelunk magyarul!/ hablamos en espanol/wir sprechen deutsch).

I had a Philips CD60 for use in the office w/ Senheiser 545. It's nice but technology has certainly changed since then! A good bet would be a decent DVD player with a 24/96 D/A. I just bought a Panasonic A310 and found it to be much more detailed, transparent, and dynamic vs. my Philips.

Agree with Ke1, the lastest quality CD and DVD/CD players have 20dB better S/N (that's 100 times less noise) and cost between $300 and $700. The CD-80's chipset was one of the best in it's day, but probably even your car's factory-installed CD player has a far superior D/A converter. Besides, the analog output buffer of the CD-80 was not the same quality as the transport or the D/A chipset, hence the high distortion figures.

Pioneer 414 DVD/CD player is cheap and good (and better than the Philips CD-80.