Repair or Replace - Marantz CD63se

Back when your CD player was current, it was an excellent value for the money. CD players have progressed since then. If it was my choice, I would go for a new unit. The transport in your player is still probably competitive but the dac section isn't.

My first choice, if you can find a good used one, is a Rotel RCD 1072. I had one and thought it was great. I wish I never sold mine. Some other excellent choices would be Cambridge, NAD and Marantz. All 3 make something in your price range. For me, I like the Cambridge. Not only for sound quality, but build quality, as well.

I'm sure there are some other brands out there that are excellent too. Other posters will probably recommend some of them. I can only recommend what I have heard myself. You should have no problem getting a CD player that will make you happy.

"Johnny ... And then what do you do when the hard drive crashes and dies? I am in the process of attempting to recover my data from an iMac hard drive that died after 6 years of use. The data had been backed up a little while ago to an Iomega hard drive that has died, as well. It is easier to purchase a new CD player, than recover. "

Don't take this the wrong way but it sounds like you're not being careful enough with your back ups. Assuming that both HD's didn't die at exactly the same time, you should have immediately copied your back up to a new HD. Also, HD's are very cheap. Get a 3rd one if you have to.

OK so I carry the one and take away the 6 , yep that's 16!
Either way at 16yrs the Marantz has provided more than your initial investment. I'd go new and never look back.

I'm with Zd542 in this, there are plenty of excellent CD players out there at reasonable prices and it makes sense to have one both to play the CDs you have and to rip discs to a hard drive if you decide to go that way.

Also agree with him about hard drives. It's absolutely true that hard drives always fail, often in less than six years, but having a cabinet full of CDs isn't failure proof, either. One of my friends had her entire collection of more 300 CDs taken by a burglar about six weeks ago. She had no backup and replacing that collection would cost thousands of dollars. The cost of the three hard drives it would have taken to store that collection and back it up to two different locations would have cost less than $200.

I have four copies of my music collection on hard drives. I back up once a week to a second drive on my desktop and alternate monthly backups on a drive in a fireproof/waterproof chest in my basement and another that lives in a locked filing cabinet in my office. With an incremental backup program, that represents about ten minutes effort on my part every week.

Thanks folks. I was certainly of the mind to just move on, but needed some encouragement! Got it. Small budget here so I'll probably go with the Marantz 5004 or maybe Rotel or Rega. We'll see. Not really in the market for ripping. I have many of them ripped to itunes already, but I don't want to lug my computer around or spend all the time ripping and getting into more equipment, though I appreciate the suggestion Johnny. I've got two kids under 2 and hardly have enough time to sit down and just listen to what I have! Guess I'll tell the shop to keep it for parts rather than pay the return shipping. Goodbye old 63SE...