Onkyo CD players

EVBoy

EVBoy

Super Member
Onkyo CD players. I found an Onkyo DX5500 at an estate sale. It is the best sounding CD player I have ever heard. It is only a single play but is the size of a receiver.
Last week I found an Onkyo DX5700 at another estate sale. The tray opens slow and it doesn't play discs. It may be the drive belt. Has anyone ever worked on them and are they hard to work on?
 
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CD player spindles are generally direct drive, although there is usually a belt (driven by a separate motor) to open the drawer. I don't know much about repairing CD players other than replacing the drawer belt, but I probably wouldn't take a player even for free if it didn't play discs.
 
Strangely enough, even non-working ones go for big bucks on eBay. I don't know what the story is.
 
I know a fellow with one of Onkyo's older 5 disc CD players that sounds better then a bunch of single disc players. I have their 23 year old 575x AVR, perhaps when that CD player was sold, that I've replaced with a new Yamaha AVR a few years ago. Got to tell you in terms of sound quality that old Onkyo gives up nothing to the upstart Yamaha. They made some real sleepers back then.
 
Some of the sought after models (both vintage and newer) can catch decent or even serious money even if they need repair. This is partly due to collectible value, and the typical "eBay tax" effect.

The problem with CD player repairs specifically is that there aren't a lot of people who possess the knowledge and the tools to do proper and effective repairs on them outside of very basic things like changing belts and cleaning the rails on the optical transport. There seems to be a bit of mystique surround CD player repair, at least amongst those who know "just enough to be dangerous" in doing electronic repair. There's also the fact that CD as a format has been losing popularity for years, so players are still being cast off instead of collected and reused (at least the better ones) like so many other types of vintage audio components

If you need to change an optical block, you need - at a minimum - and oscilloscope and a laser power meter to do it right, plus it helps to have some other advanced electronics tools along with factory service data for the specific model you're working on. I have the tools, service data, and have been developing the skill set to restore old players as I find them fascinating, and some of them are actually much better than you would expect, given their age.

I do have a number of older Onkyo players here, including the DX-200 (only the third model they made from the 84-95 time frame), and I've found that they're all well built and sound at least better than average to my ears.
 
I have an Onkyo DX-1800 and I think it's a great sounding CDP. It was close enough in SQ to my SONY XA20ES [both were curb finds] that I decided to sell the SONY since it was still possible to get $300 for it.
 
I have an Onkyo DX-200 that I bought used from a roommate back in 1988 or so. I recently resurrected it from long-time storage, since I'm back into HiFi.

It wouldn't play discs, and I could hear the laser position motor endlessly trying to find track one. We live in a somewhat windy/dusty area, and the lens just needed a bit of swab with some Tito's to play again. Other repairs were a new pilot light bulb, and most recently a new belt for the tray, which had become slow moving.

Belt was not terrible to change, but was a bit fiddly. Lots of thin wires connecting modules that need to be moved out of the way. Picked up the belt from a seller in Germany. Good as ever now.

The player has had a long life, so I think they are built well. My roommate bought it as a demo unit from our college town HiFi shop, where it had been used for customers to demo the headphones for sale. It has a 1/4 headphone jack with volume control, so was perfect for that use.

If I recall, the dealer replaced one of the motors under warranty shortly after he purchased.

That HiFI shop is long gone, and i haven't talked to the old college roommates in decades, but the player soldiers on.
 
I really like the DX-200. Have a couple here I've refurbished, in fact. They are well built, if a little clunky internally; keeping in mind this was only their 3rd player design following the DX-5 and DX-300 which are both nearly non-existent, especially the former.

The optical block in these appears to be still be good for a long service life, unlike the Olympus/Toshiba TAOHS unit used in so many other first and second gen designs, many of which have already failed long before now.
 
I acquired an Onkyo DV-SP1000 sacd/cd/dvda player not too long ago and think these are real sleepers. 5x wolfson dacs, dsd decoding and multibit with hdmi out or 5.1 analog. Lasers available and weighs about 30 lbs.

Tremendous machine that was a collaboration between BAT, apogee and Onkyo Integra.
aka integra research 10.5 or RDV1.1 and sold for several thousand euros new and considered in the same league with linn and esoteric by reviewers at the time.
 
I have a Onkyo dx-3800. Smooth 1 bit DAC player. Plays every cd flawless. The motor driven output volume is nice if you have a amp without remote control.
I had a Onkyo dx-5500 before but unfortunately it gave problems with reading discs. Also a really good player but I like the dx-3800 more.
 
I had a dx 2800 which I am in the process of restoring. It looks well built to my unprofessional eye, and shares a few issues with other CDPs with KSS mechs, namely the spindle motor. For some reason (lack of lubrication?) mine shorted out and took out it's corresponding driver IC. The spindle motor is easy enough to replace but adjusting the spindle table height is challenging.

Otherwise mine sounded really good.
 
EVBoy said:
Onkyo CD players. I found an Onkyo DX5500 at an estate sale. It is the best sounding CD player I have ever heard. It is only a single play but is the size of a receiver.
Last week I found an Onkyo DX5700 at another estate sale. The tray opens slow and it doesn't play discs. It may be the drive belt. Has anyone ever worked on them and are they hard to work on?
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DX-5700 is a great machine. I bought one new (from Musicraft in IL) many years ago and kept it for a long time. It was HEAVILY used. It was well-designed and well-built. I had a failure in the ribbon cable that connected the laser assembly. Otherwise, I would still use it. I had other (later manufactured) Onkyo disc players over the years. They were nice also, but none were as "nice" quality-wise as that old DX-5700. Spindle motors were a weak point (i.e. prone to wear down much faster than other parts of the machine) in later model Onkyo disc players. I never saw this in the earlier, more "tank-like" models (like DX-5500, DX-5700, DX-7500). In my opinion, manufacturers should be using brushless motors for spindle drive motors anyways.
 
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