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8 out of 8 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"It's about the sound"
Pros: Looks good, sounds good, plays everything. VERY INEXPENSIVE
Cons: Cheap remote, light on weight
Summary: I bought this for my bedroom as a replacement for the 15 year old Magnavox CD player which died. I don't use it for video, but bought it because it plays just about every audio format around.
The audio system of which the Pioneer is a part includes the following:
Carver C-1 Sonic Hologram Preamp
Harman Kardon T-40 turntable
Harman Kardon Citation 15 tuner
Harman Kardon Citation 22 amp
Koss CM-1020 speakers
Tascam 202 MKII cassette deck
Pioneer DV-578A DVD-A/SACD player
Even at full retail, the price to performance value of this unit is outstanding, if not unbelievable. This will play just about anything: DVD-Video, video CD, DVD-R, and video-mode DVD-RW. It plays super-high-resolution DVD-Audio and SACD (stereo and multichannel), as well as compressed audio files (MP3 and WMA) on recordable CD.
The literature says it does slide-shows of digital photos -- JPEG digital photo CDs, Fujicolor CDs, or Kodak Picture CDs. As a bonus, it has progressive scan, and lots of other nice video features including nearly twice the video processing power of previous Pioneer models with a 12-bit/108 MHz video digital-to-analog converter (DAC). I never use them. The video is fed out to the tuner card in my computer, so you can see my values! MUSIC!
There is nothing in this price range which will do what this unit will do. You would have to spend at least many hundres more to get any other combination SACD/DVD-A player. On my home theater system, I have a Sony SACD player and a JVC DVD-A player. I had to run both through two 3-channel switching boxes with lots of extra audio cables, because both SACD and DVD-A require the one six channel direct feed input on my HT preamp. This unit solves that problem.
After listening to DVD-A and SACD for some time, I really have gotten to dislike listening to CDs because CDs sound harsh and brittle. They produce listening fatigue in minutes. For serious music appreciation, I needed to resort to the long playing vinyl album. These have their own problems such as limited dynamic range, transient distortion, poor pressing quality, tape hiss and noise, scratches and thousands of pops and ticks, rumble, wow and flutter, and expensive playback equipment which needed care and tuning. And worst of all, I had to get up to flip the album half-way through!
It is hard to explain the subjective difference between the sound produced by SACD and DVD-Audio and the sound produced by a CD. Essentially, it is the difference between cool seaside air and the dry brittle air blowing out of a nozzle in a jet airplane. In a very literal sense, the CD format is like playing a violin with a hack saw -- there is simply no way to smooth out the saw teeth sufficiently to make it sound correct. SACD and DVD-Audio fix the problem by giving you enough data to filter out the audible errors created by digitizing analog sound.
C-NET did an A/B comparison between this unit and the Dennon which costs four or five times as much. They said that the Dennon sounds a bit better, but certainly does not justify the price difference. I can't tell about the video properties because I play it through a 17" computer monitor.
The trade off for the low price is that it comes with a cheap remote, and doesn't have much physical weight, which says Pioneer may be using cheaper components and may be skimping on the power supply. (There really is a relationship between the weight of audio gear really and sound quality!) But, as with all things electronic, over time, less buys more.
Strengths:
Looks good, sounds good, plays everything. VERY INEXPENSIVE
Weaknesses:
Cheap remote, unit is a bit light on weight.
