Luxman D-500

Beautifully designed CD player based on the rare Philips CDM-3 CD drive and multi-bit digital-to-analogue converters from... Burr Brown.

The D-500 is the last version of the 4-years earlier D-500X's bestseller but, paradox, it is just as pared-down as it is upgraded.

A typical Luxman contradiction : instead of starting with a 500, updated as 500X, then as 500X's, Lux chose the opposite path :
500X's > 500X'sII > 500 !

So this revised version swapped the two 16-bit TDA-1541A S2 Philips converters for Burr Brown 18-bit PCM-1701P-K chips and an equivalent replacement of the digital filter for an NPC SM5843AP.

It did also loose the myriad of top buttons (for once not an entirely good idea, visually), the variable output and attendent volume front pot, but saw a welcome swap of the TOS output for a regular 75 Ohm coaxial.

What was kept, central, crucial, was the Philips CDM-3 drive and the construction which, on all three versions, remains truly impressive :

100VA transformer with nine separate windings (five on the D-500X's), fully non-resonant chassis through the use of sub-chassis & plates and the non-symmetrical disc compartment, massive aluminium top, 70µ PCB tracks, copper heatsinks, copper-plated chassis, PC-OFC wiring, expensive caps and resistors etc - a real high-end treasure.

However, unlike the two previous versions, the D-500 didn't sell too well.
It was cheaper than the original by a sizeable margin (250k¥ vs. 350k¥), was electronically more refined but probably came too late : the japanese high-end market really was by 1994 very steadily going down.

Also, since the two previous versions sold so well despite very consequent pricetags, it is evident people could have been drawn to "upgrade" with an even better version, not a cheaper one...

The D-500 has an AZDEN T-Tag : unlike the previous two versions which were both Alpine, it fits into the all-Azden manufacturing period which lasted until about 1999, before the switch to Aimor and Goto D.S.
Azden also built some for Yamaha in the 1990s... and probably many others since the 1960s !


Nudies of a D-500 here ; this page will someday be updated with the original japanese catalog.

However : beware !
The CDM3 is not available anywhere and nobody can repair or even re-adjust it. This includes Studer/Revox who used the CDM3 in the famed A-730 series.
Unlike the CDM1 CDM, if your CDM3 is dead, it is now forever dead.