SACD and DVD-a sound. Very low price

Basic CD sound is no better than my old Sony through a Cobalt DAC. Still, I got it for SACDs and DVD-as.

As an ex-audiophile, I have had many disapointments with CD sound, and had low expectations for DVD sound. My first experience with this player, an SACD of Steely Dan, Gaucho, was riveting, even though i thought I knew this song by heart. It is about as good as the MFSL LP Gaucho, played by a Dynavector MC, through a Threshold Fet-10 phone stage, for about 5% of the price. The Rolling Stones SACD was not as good, maybe the mastering, but Steely Dan DVD-As and Norah Jones, etc. were all excellent. I got this player on the cheap to try SACDs but it is good enough to keep. Video and DVD performance are fine. My review mostly assess two channel audio performance.

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Sony, Pioneer Elite

Wife Friendly Lots of features Plays all formats available Easy Setup Excellent Menu Audio and Video output kicks ass

No Video Circuit off (at $160????) Available only in silver Nothing much to say here

Got it off ebay at $159 shipping inclusive. Best $159 spent so far in 32 yrs of my life :) Ordered used 3 pairs of Acoustic Research performance series AP030 audio interconnects (open box) off ebay. Cost me $25 shipping included. Went off to bestbuy and bought Dark Side of The moon SACD and REM: In Time DVD-A. Monday morning, cables and 563A arrived. Opened the 563A box noticed it was factory sealed :) Took me 2 mins to hookup everything. Digital Co-ax (Again AR cables), 5.1 with 3 pairs of AR AP030 into my Integra DTR 6.0. I have Athena AS-F2 fronts, Athena AS-C1 center and polk RM6600 surrounds hooked with Transparent Audio speaker cables and stereophile recommended Radio Shack - UL Recognized Hookup Wire 18AWG. Popped in Lion King. Glorious Color. Note have not configured anything yet. Out of box it plays Dolby Digital 5.1. I do not have component video so I saw the S-Video colors and they look awesome. The menu of the player is very colorful/intuitive and straightforward. Did the settings recommended in the 563A manual for SACD and DVD-A. Loaded Dark Side Of The Moon. Shut off the lights. Never heard such pure sweet astounding music ever before in my life. I actually had tears in my eyes. I heard the entire SACD in one sitting and was convinced that hi rez is the way to go. Popped in REM: In TIme DVD-A. It was ok nothing as compared to SACD DSOTM. Today went to the mall and saw that Sam Goody was shutting down and had everything on 30% must go sale. Ran to the SACD / DVD-A aisle. Bought two DVD-A titles - Eagles: Hotel Cali and Bucky Pizzarelli: Swing Live (Chesky records) all for $28 tax incl. Came home, plopped Bucky in. ASTOUNDING. Heard two tracks and I was shaken. Had to confirm it so I put in the DVD-A Eagles. Same outstanding sound. I am damn impressed by what Pioneer has given us in this 563A. I would say everything. I WOULD SAY THANK YOU PIONEER for letting mere mortals like me get a chance to dive into the world of hi rez audio. The closest thing is a Denon DVD2200 which sells for around $500. I would highly recommend any folks who wants to get into hi-rez and wants to dabble in both SACD and DVD-A to go for this awesome piece of electronics.

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None

Price (under $200) Plays ever available format SACD performance better than this would cost way more $$$ DVD-V performance is top notch compared to my old Sony DVD player (it's 5 years old, 1st gen)

Remote is cheap, and lacking a few buttons for what should be easy to switch options Regular CD playback is just average Onboard DTS and Dolby Digital decoding is OK, but lacks all the options that a dedicated receiver or processor can adjust

I bought this player for the price that it was selling at, as this was my first try with SACD and I didn't want to break the bank. At the time I figured that if I didn't like it I could always put it on Ebay and pick up a really nice and expensive player sometime in the future. After just the first listen I can say that I likely won't have to buy a "better" player anytime soon unless some new format changes stuff again. I picked up a couple of SACDs to demo when I got it hooked up. First listen was Dark Side of the Moon and I was entirely amazed at how much I had been missing in the regular CD. I know that for a 70s era album, the CD was probably as good a quality as you can get, but with this format it's almost as if another part of the music reaches out and really grabs you and pulls you in deeper to the listening experience. I don't know how to better describe it, I'm not a true AudioPhile so all my descriptions may sound hokey to some readers . . . The next SACD I listend to was another one I already owned, Frampton Comes Alive (25th anniversary edition). This was another album that has more substance to the music with the new format. I can't describe the feeling of hearing Peter Frampton play the guitar and feel as if I were sitting in the audience at the concert in 1975. I can't review the DVD-A part because I haven't bought any of the discs yet. I do expect it to work just as well as the SACD playback, with the only fault possibly being that the producers might not mix DVD-A discs as well as the SACDs that I've sampled. DVD video playback was flawless on my S-video connection. I don't have a progressive scan TV yet, so I'll have to take other people's word that there is no chroma flaws that some Pioneer DVD players have been afflicted with. The only possible flaws that I can find with this player relate to regular CD playback and some Dolby Digital and DTS decoding. Regular CDs just don't sound right on this player. They are thin and somewhat "jittery" when listened too. I think this is a problem that Pioneer uses the DVD laser and decoder to read the CD data. This is sort of a cheap way of ensuring backwards compatability, and because the whole time frame of DVD is different than CDs it just doesn't sound right. The best combo players I've heard use a dedicated CD transport and decoder for the CD playback and I think this might be the only place where Pioneer cheaped out on the parts. On the other hand this does let them offer a lower priced player so it's a tradeoff. I'd reccommend that dedicated music listeners keep a good CD player around and just use this for SACD and DVD-A. DVD-V playback gives you the option of either streaming the audio track to an outboard receiver or processor, or using the built in decoder to put the surround sound out through the 5.1 output. I'd reccommend using an outboard receiver or processor. The build in Dolby Digital and DTS decoding was about average and understandably a dedicated receiver will have much more options for sound management. Also, this player comes with a $0.99 remote. It works just fine, but doesn't have a whole lot of buttons so what should be easy to accomplish tasks make you dig through onscreen menus. All in all, this is a player that I would reccommend anyone to purchase for either a first listen to SACD or as an addition to a high end listeners equipment collection. For the price you can't beat it. Sure enough there are likely $1000 players that will entirely show up this one, but for that left over $800 I can buy a whole collection of SACDs and still be entirely content.

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Sony DVP-S3000

SACD/DVD-Audio both sound great, both being a huge improvement over CD........PRICE!!!!

I don't like the scan function on SACDs...only really lets you scan at 4x normal speed which is way too slow considering alot of the music I listen to have songs that average about 7 or 8 minutes in length.

Great player for the money. I'm going to focus mainly on the stereo audio portion of this player for this review. SACDs and DVD-Audio Discs sound fantastic. I'm not running multichannel but I do have it hooked up to a decent headphone system (Headroom Little feeding Grado SR-225). I currently only have two SACDs (Darkside of the Moon and Tommy) and one DVD-Audio disc(The Flaming Lips "Pink Robots") all of which sound stunning through this player. Darkside of the Moon sounds so much better than the regular CD, which I always found grainy and with alittle too much bloom on the bottom which took way from the drive of the disc. On the SACD the Kick and the Bass sound very distinct and seperate,which adds so much more "musicality" (is that a word?) to the album. Tommy sounds just as good, very smooth and analog but not lacking in detail. The SACD really brings out the texture of this album. The Flaming Lips also sounds out of this world.....way more analog sounding than the orginal CD release. This CD will make your mind spin. I have read a few of the reviews on this page and others stating the 563a does a PCM conversion thus not using true DSD. This PCM conversion is only used for bass management purposes. You can bypass bass management by performing the following functions in the players menu system: Home Menu > Setup Navigator > Audio Out Settings > 5.1ch Audio Out > Not Connected > Digital Audio Out > Not Connected Home Menu > Initial Settings > Speakers > Audio Output Mode > 2 Channel > Channel Level > Fixed This will turn off the digital out on the player as well as bass management giving you a pure DSD signal. I also went into the speaker setup menu and turned off all of the speakers other than the front left and right. These adjustments made a very noticable difference in my player, way more analog sounding. I have not really tried the CD portion of this player yet. I did pop in Star Wars Ep II on DVD and the sound was very, very good. Much better than my older Sony 5 disc player. If you always wanted to get into SACD or DVD-Audio with out having to break the bank your, prayers have been answered.

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NAD C520, Cal Audio Delta Transport feeding Perpetual Tech. P-1a P-3a, Sony DVP-600c, and a couple of other Toshiba and Pioneer players

Good, solid performance in audio and video: plays DVD, DVD-audio, CD, SACD; also plays CD-R, CD-RW, VCD.

CD performance is average and adequate. More money gets you Pioneer DV-45a and DV-47ai.

Well, to all who have wondered what the fuss about high resolution audio is all about: here is your chance. This player is definitely priced at entry-level bucks. Question is: what do you get for your bucks? First off, you get the ability to actually play all currently known audio/video media formats. Regular movie-type DVD's play well. Both Dolby Digital and DTS movies are recognized and played accordingly. I am still using an older monitor, connected with S video, so I could not evaluate the Progressive Scan abilities of my new player. Given how well it delivers in the areas I could evaluate, however, my suspicion is that it definitely delivers in the Prog Scan area as well. Other reviewers who could evaluate this area have noted that no evidence of chroma bug could be seen, something of a first for a Pioneer entry-level DVD video player. Now to the audio. Although regular CD performance seems acceptable, where this unit really shows its stuff is by being fed through my independent Perpetual Technologies digital processing units, the combo of PT-1A and PT-3A. The first unit locks the digital signal into a separate digital clock, while increasing the standard 16-bit CD stream to an interpolated 24-bit digital stream, then the stream is decoded to analog and sent to my preamp. This preamp, a wonderful B&K Ref 30 which I got used in fine condition, feeds five channels of 125-watt Bryston power amps. So, I anticipated that if the digital units were getting a good regular 16-bit CD signal, they would end up as a fine 24-bit upsampled signal. Before the Pioneer player was linked into my system, I was achieving this CD sound improvement using a Sony DVD-DVPNS500v player. (It's also entry-level while lacking DVD-audio playing capacity, which Sony omits so that you won't have it all in one package. (Three cheers for Pioneer.) While both players provided good basic 16-bit output to the PT units; you can hear a noticeable difference in their respective sound qualities. The Sony produces a warmer sound, with the high end probably being somewhat rounded off in comparison to the rest of the frequency spectrum. One supposes that Sony predicted this entry-level CD/SACD/DVD player would be used in entry level systems with electronics that tend towards the bright, if not downright spiky or edgy type of sound that is characteristic of off-the-shelf electronics. The Pioneer, on the other hand, appears not to do this upper frequency rounding, so that sound is leaner, though it still appears to be quite accurate across the low to medium to high frequency ranges. If a given CD is one of the older sort that emphasized highs to begin with, I am supposing it will sound less loveable on the Pioneer, with more of the original screechy or edgy bias mastering getting through as passed on via the CD master. (Speakers in my listening HT system, by the way, are five from Definitive Technologies: BP-10's in the rear channels, and BP-20's in the front.) Playing the CD of Copland's "American" ballets (Bernstein/NY)shows that all is reproduced with startling presence, and vivid instrumental timbres, whether high or middle or low. Playing the SACD version of this same recording, the sound improves exponentially, with a greater sense of the air and acoustic around the instruments of the orchestra heard as a whole; and around the individual instruments as well. This is a bit unnerving or startling when you first listen. Music reproduction prior to high resolution formats like SACD and DVD-audio has typically meant that as an orchestra played louder, the sense of the individual sections lessened somewhat, although you could still distinguish the mix of strings, woodwinds, and brass that might be playing in a given loud passage. With SACD via the Pioneer, you will still hear the orchestra get loud. But you will also still be able to distinguish much more the aural-physical identities of the different sections playing in a specific physical or acoustic space. As others have said, this is like having a veil lifted from the music that you didn't even realize was there, until high resolution came along. Verdict: although this Pioneer player is clearly an entry-level unit, it does very well by both regular CD and SACD. What about DVD-audio? My first test recordings included Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky cantata (Yablonksy/Russian State Symphony Orchestra - Naxos), and Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony (Previn/London Symphony - EMI). The multichannel Prokofiev is vivid and sounds very genuine, as it accurately and engagingly captures how a typical Russian orchestra and chorus sounds. You gain a new respect for Prokofiev's abilities to use all the available instruments to achieve color and fireworks and drama, in both the quietly melancholy and the brash sonics of the huge battle scenes. Even though the chorus does not appear to have been miked very closely, it still achieves good presence and holds its own.

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Sony, JVC, Koss (cdplayer), Panasonic, other mass market audio brands

univeral player at bargain basement price

well, its no Denon 2900 or 5900, i guess.

just to correct what someone had written earlier regarding the SACD processing... This unit will down-convert DVD-audio discs to 2-channel digital; the SACD can't be down-converted to PCM since it is only available through the analog outputs. PCM is a digital signal, so DVD-A is downconverted if you try to run it through the digital outputs.

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My setup: Marantz SR-5400 Paradigm MiniMonitors w. CC-370 center Sony CA-70ES 5 CD player Sony DVD-535 DVD player Pioneer 563 DVD-A/SACD

Price, plays everything

none

The Pioneer DV563A is a breakthrough product. Is the picture and sound quality up to those of $1000 units from Denon andother high-end manufacturers? Maybe not, I have never seen/heard those units. Does the picture quality equal or exceed that of my (not so) old Toshiba SD-4800? Yes. Do DVD-Audio and SACD discs sound wonderful through my multi-channel setup? Yes, absolutely. Do CD's sound as good as other CD players I have heard? Sure. Can you come even close to buying any other unit that plays all the above formaats competently for under $200? NO!!! It even has decent bass management for multi channel formats. I suspect that the Pioneer is not "high end" enough for some people, and that no matter how good the unit performs, preconcieved notions of how a $179 unit should sound will influence their opinions. If you desire a DVD player that plays everything you can feed it, and DVD-Audio and SACD playback is important to you, I do not think you will be disappoined with the Pioneer DV563A My System: Onkyo TX-SR800 receiver Pioneer DV563A DVD/DVD-A/SACD Axiom M60ti mains Axiom VP100 center Axiom QS4 surrounds JBL Pro III rear surrounds Hitachi 51GWX20B

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Toshiba SD-4800

Everything so far thrown at it has been seen and heard with complete delight.

Not one.

Absolutely solid, on every level. This machine plays like a dream. DVD image quality is excellent, and playback is flawless: no skipping or player-specific video artifacts. Layer change pauses are apparent but mercifully short. SACD and DVD-Audio performance are both simply wonderful. The newly issued SACS Dylan albums sound like they were recorded yesterday. And Dark Side Of The Moon in 5.1 surround is an experience not to be missed but rather thoroughly enjoyed. And Fleetwood Mac's Rumours has never been better presented or heard in any format. Buy this machine and listen to a few of your favorite albums available in hi-def and you'll exult in hearing them again for the first time. Pioneer players have long been extremely dependable and have always offered major bang for the buck. This player meets that proud tradition. The remote, while not illuminated, is reasonably sizeable and easy to navigate. This for all those out there who obsess on remotes.

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Toshiba SD-1600 Panasonic DVDF85S

SACD and DVD audio are superb. DVD playback excellent! No tracking problems (so far) at all!

Thin sounding red book cd playback, both as player and transport

For those that want the quick and easy review...this player is astounding! It is fine as a straight DVD video player, (sorry to say, it kills my beloved laser disc player, and is incredible using component video cables through my Toshiba monitor) but SACD and DVD audio are just simply amazing! Slawman's review is totally incorrect...he must have a defective unit. This baby rocks! Alas, one mild issue...for some reason it is very thin sounding on standard red book cd's, even as a transport. But you just won't believe when you put on Miles Davis's "Round about Midnight"...Miles in right there with you! Blows the Lp away! But what really shocked me...the amazing Muddy Waters Folk Singer...the Classic DAD 24/96 DVD more than matched my MFSL Lp! Everything I have in common on other formats is bested by the SACD or DVD audio format on this player!! And I am a huge analog fan, never been much for cd. But analog takes a back seat to this! Also, this player does NOT convert SACD to PCM as some have suggestion. I saw a letter from a Pioneer tech that clearly refuted this. A few disc that will amaze you apart from the ones mentioned above... Fagan's Kamarikad (DVD-A), Carole King's Tapestry (SACD), Bjork's Vespertine (DVD-A...thanks HL for the tip on Bjork!), Terence Blanchard's Let's Get Lost (SACD), and my first disc, Basie Band Swings (title may be incorrect)? (DVD-A on Denon!). For the record, I listen only to 2 channel audio at this point. My equipment includes Sota Star Sapphire table with van den Hull one MC cartridge, JVC1010 cd player with Burr Brown mod, Musetex DAC, Audio Research SP-14 pre amp, NYAL Moscode 300 amp, Magnepan IIb speakers, Monster reference or 1000 interconnects, Monster Z-1 speaker cables. I will follow up with more details later, but gang, buy this player if you want a taste of the new higher resolution audio or are in need of a dvd player. Pioneer hit this one way out of the park!!!!

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None

Plays all formats.

None at price point.

I am using this unit as 2 channel music only player. Other reviews state that this model changes dsd to pcm. The unit has been tested on other review sites and it does not convert dsd to pcm. At $180 this unit is an over achiever. Maybe not the best build quality or most refined sound but great for the average user.

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pioneer pd-54, toshiba sd-2800, pioneer elite dv-05