Pioneer PD S505

[wer]

After fighting for weeks to repair my Philips CD-104 (thank you Steve for schematics and helpful suggestions), i saw a Pioneer PD-S505 and could not resist the temptation.



Unusual is the inverted drive mechanism (stable platter transport), where you load the CD business side up. Possibly this makes the unit a bit more quiet, but a direct comparison will follow when i get home again.
What is infinitely more important for me is, that it seems to read just about any CD-R. I burned a single CD from Anderszewski's 2CD At Carnegy Hall recording, an 85 min overburn, which would only be read by BD players - Philips, Yamaha and Arcam CD-players would not even read the TOC. On the Pioneer it plays to the end without skipping  
Sound quality is good, and i am curious to  compare it to a Philips CD 104 (just bought another one in Poland, hopefully working perfectly as advertised).

[walpurgis]

Good CD player. Run it through a Monarchy Audio DAC and you'll have some pretty serious sounds.

[worcestermark]

So Werner, should I be fixing the output cable on my old Philips 104 and listening to that instead of the 90's Sony currently on CD duty?.

I play about one CD a fortnight so I just never give it much thought.

[wer]

Considering how rarely you play CD's, i probably would not bother.
Unless, of course, you fix the cable, sell the CD104 and buy some records with the proceeds 

[analogadikt]

Congratulations Werner,

This uses Pioneer's proprietary DAC known as "Legato Link Conversion" and it is supposed to be very good. I use Pioneer LD players with the same DAC for CD duty. Some info about the DACs here.
http://www.lampizator.eu/lampizator/REFERENCES/Pioneer_703/pioneer703.html

Regards,

[worcestermark]

Considering how rarely you play CD's, i probably would not bother.
Unless, of course, you fix the cable, sell the CD104 and buy some records with the proceeds 

perhaps if it sounded great, I might be bothered!. I have loads of music that never came out on lp, & life is too short to for transferring stuff. Hope you are well Werner, I often think of you & Reese out there in Spain, weather will be nicer than here in Northern Europe right now.

[wer]

I've had three CD players that - to me - sounded better than the many others i owned, and the CD 104 was one of them. DVD and BR players as a rule read anything you you load, but i find them a bit flat, not to say sterile, there is nothing captivating about them.
Having said all that, maybe i should change my mind about what i said before - if you have a bkt of time to spare, give the repair a shot 
The cover is easy to remove if you have a set of Torx screwdrivers. The audio cables are easily accessible and therefore easy to unsolder. The most difficult part is to remove the plastic collar that holds it captive in the back panel. I will probably drill a second hole and mount two RCA sockets, but that is a lot more work.

[decanterlime]

I am like you Werner. I have 5 CD players atm one of them being a Philips CD 618. Do you know what? Its my favourite one over the other Technics MASH types and a Sony because of its ease of use and totally logical lay-out.
It did blow and internal power fuse recently ( my stuff I play hard ) and has been flawless since. I do every 3 months clean the lens manually with up most care.
Cheers
Mark

[hatehifi]

I've mentioned before about liking the Legato Link Sound. I was told that the fuzzy logic upsampling was the work of the Canadian Wadia company who received an out-of-court settlement as Pioneer had't followed suit on licensing motions and Pioneer subsequently went with another chip, DAC. I like Lamponizer's suggestions. Fwiw, I've owned several Legato Pioneers. Now I'm using Sony's DVP-NS305.


Cheers!

[wer]

Well, not even seven years after i bought it, and it is already struggling 
On CDs with more than 15 or 16 tracks (quite usual with ancient jazz off 10" shellacs) it starts skipping at around that time.
Laser replacement is very expensive at around EUR 100, which is not really an option. Will take it apart tomorrow and see whether cleaning the lens and possibly cleaning and regreasing the rails might help.

Open for other ideas 

[wer]

Guess i did not expect suggestions, so i took it apart anyhow.

Having done a few laser replacements before, i was surprised by the simple layout and the clean look of the laser unit.
I believe the lens (possibly even glass?) had a bit of as film on it, but after some isopropasnol and a Q-tip it looked clean again.

It seems to hae done the job, because there was no skipping during the first three CDs i played, including two home burned ones with lots of tracks.

[hatehifi]

I love happy endings 

Cheers!

[wer]

Thank you John 

There is one offered at a reasonable price on fleabay (Germany) and i was ready to buy it because i like the sound of this mosdel

[hatehifi]

I had two over the years. Agree that the sound is non-fatiguing.
 

Cheers!

[timelog]

Some Stable Platter Mechanism version have laserdiode cover lens coming loose (glueing aging ?) and lens just drops on bottom of player and player did not any more find tracks.
One not working Pioneer PD-S701 that come to my way have dropped lens, but that easy to fix glueing carefully lens on it's place if still found inside player.   
(https://www.audio-forums.com/threads/pioneer-cd-player-repairable.94896/)