LABORATORY TEST REPORT

Newport Test Labs measured the output voltage of the Pioneer PD-30AE as almost exactly 2-volts in both left and right channels, meaning that the player will comfortably drive any ancillary component to which it could conceivably be attached, and that channel balance was an excellent 0.01dB.

Distortion at maximum output was a little higher than I am used to seeing, at 0.067% THD+N overall. The distortion spectrogram of Graph 1 shows a second harmonic at –95dB (0.00177%), a third at –105dB (0.00056%), a fourth at –125dB (0.00005%) and a fifth at –113dB (0.00022%) after which the noise floor (down at 140dB) is very clean. Nonetheless, this is self-evidently low, yet from Graph 2, which shows distortion at –10dB, it appears Pioneer is optimising performance for lower levels, where most decoding takes place, because as you can see, there are only two harmonic distortion components, both at about –115dB (0.00017%). The overall noise floor is still down at around –140dB though you can see some mains-related low-frequency noise creeping into the output… albeit at more than 124dB down. At –20dB (Graph 3), THD comprises just a second harmonic at –133dB (0.00002%) and a third at –121dB (0.00008%), which is outstanding performance.