Analogger into Sony cdp 520 es 2 player

[Bill K Davis]

I'm an lp guy, but I dabble in cds. I saw a Sony CDP 520 ES2 at a thrift store for $25. It lights up ,but the drawer won't open. It is heavy, and I know es means big $. It is old ,but will the quality be better than todays new cheaper stuff? Is this still a good or great cd player, or a dinosaur? I think the drawer can be fixed with about $20 worth of new belts. I keep hearing of advances in cd playback. Does this mean the old expensive models are nothing but antiques? Thanks.

[Woochifer]

Back in its day, that was one of the better CD players on the market, and one of Stereophile's recommended components. I used to see it on a lot of high end rigs, since it was one of the first CD players that really dialed down the harshness that came with the 1st generation players.

I recall that the analog section on that player used high quality and well isolated components and the overall construction quality on that unit was very good. The drawback to any vintage CD player is that the digital circuitry is way behind what's available now. The 520 ES was one of the early oversampling models, and considered advanced at that time. But, obviously the state of the art in digital circuits has advanced quite a bit since then. It has been more than 20 years since I last heard one of the 520 ES models, and even the lower end Sony CD/SACD changers nowadays are a noticeable improvement over players from the 90s, which themselves improved the performance over the mass market players from the 80s.

A friend of mine who sold those units back then indicated that the analog circuitry on that ES model set it apart from other CD players. Might be worth fixing just to see how it compares with newer CD players and their higher resolution digital circuits. For one thing, I'd be very curious!

[Bill K Davis]

Thanks ,very much for your answer. The thrift store is having a half price sale the 17th,so I might get it for $13.