CDP with minimal controls on front panel


Greeting everyone and Happy Holidays.

For this Holiday season I have treated myself to a Pioneer Elite PD-D9 J SACD/CD Player. One thing I noticed about it is that on the front panel it is very minimalist IMO. There is only a power, play/stop and eject button. I guess I'm just surprised by this because I've really only seen something like this on REALLY inexpensive players. Normally lots of CDPs from other manufacturers have track control buttons to advance or go back to the previous tracks or a pause button. I guess I better not loose the remote. ;)

PD-D9

Has anyone encountered this before where a CDP or any type of player they have doesn't have many control buttons? Is there any kind of sonic benefit to this kind of design or this just normally done for aesthetics?

I tried looking in the archives but I couldn't find a thread like this pertaining to CDPs.

Thanks in advance.
128x128jedinite24
I have the PD-D6-J and it's obviously setup the same way. I assumed most of the high end CD players were similar, but it sound like these are a minimalist design.

I would assume you like the way it sounds, mines great.
my marantz cd/dvd player has only 4 buttons on the front. to do beyond play, ff, rew, eject you must use the remote. i.ve wondered about this also. my newer marantz universal player has a selection to turn the display off and play audio out only. they claim it improves the sound but since it is just ok i don,t believe it. neither of these are high end but they were not cheap either.
The Elite units also have the ability to shut off the digital display and other unnecessary digial circuits for improved sound. I can't say that I've ever heard a difference, but I do leave it in pure audio mode. For me it was a good indication that the engineers were working to optimize the design.
The Lector 0.6t twin tube cd player has only two buttons.
One for open/close and one for play. That's it. There is one power switch. Everything else you need is found on the remote, so yes you need to keep track of the remote or program a universal to accept the most common commands.
Accustic Arts players - 1 knob for standby/operate, 1 knob for forward/reverse, 1 button for play, 1 button for stop

FANTASTIC sounding unit