Pioneer PD-306 CD-player
Soft sound, nice design, Legato Link, in a word, Pioneer. The Pioneer PD-306 cd player sounds interesting, probably thanks to the Legato Link. To picky listeners and lovers of analysis, the stereo image may seem blurry, but at the same time it has a depth and mystery that is inaccessible to most devices of this class. Acoustic space may not be accurately conveyed, but it is there and it is interesting to dive into it. The softness of the sound, apparently, is associated with a rather large drop in the high frequencies for a CD player (up to 2.5 dB at 20 kHz), but this did not affect the tonal balance.
In addition to the standard program editing functions for recording on a compact cassette, there is a Compu mode that changes the sequence of tracks in such a way as to optimally fit into a given length of a cassette side. Self-editing lasts about five seconds, while all display elements flash randomly - either for the user's entertainment, or because of the extreme complexity of the task. After that, the selected numbers remain lit. There is no peak search.
From the front panel, control is more convenient than from the remote control, besides, not all functions are available from the remote control. A maximum of three buttons (>10 and two numbers) can be pressed to directly select a song.
The Pioneer PD-306 has an optical digital output and a headphone output with volume control. The line output level can also be adjusted in 1 dB steps.
Despite the fact that the display is not capable of displaying textual information (such as No Disc), it is still possible to inform the user about possible errors during loading using two-digit alphanumeric codes, the decoding of which is given in the description.
Of the little things, it should be noted that the display is turned off from the remote control, the sync start (for recording) and the start of playback when connected to the network - for example, when working with a timer.
The Pioneer PD-306 represents one of the extremes in this test: musicality at the expense of accuracy. The center is missing, the localization is pulsing, the microdynamics are exaggerated. But the music is not lost and reaches the listener in the right mood and key.
