I was looking at a thrift shop the yesterday and found a Yamaha CDX-910 for $20. The cosmetic condition of the case was pretty shoddy, but could be refinished fairly easily. Other than that it's missing the remote, but that's not a big issue for me at all really.

Anyway, I'm rather new to standalone CDPs. Would this be a worthy one to pick-up? Before I buy it, is there anything in particular I should check that's known to fai?

Also, I hear a lot about external DACs and was wondering if this would be worth installing some in it (if it can even have it done).

Lastly, this is if I pick it up, what should I consider for RCA cables and I hear using the digital is a no-no due to overriding the DACs.

Thanks for your time ^_^

The fact that it wasn't cared for is reason enough for me to stay away.

External DAC's are just that, external, ie. outside of the transport / seperate unit altogether.

Outside of using it for a little system in my garage, I wouldn't bother.

Alright, so here's my next question. What's a good entry level CDP to consider?

All depends on your budget and what you consider "entry level". Considering that you were looking at spending $20 for the Yammie I assume you are looikg at $200-300 as entry level, there are alot of folks here that love the Oppo players for their inherint value. If it's strictly redbook I'm partial to Rotel, Rega, Cambridge Audio,
and NAD for their value. I also believe some folks are happy with their Onkyo players.

Would I be better off running a coax from my X-Fi and using my Pioneer's DAC? The model is a VSX-515 192/24 (yes, I know I'm cheap).

You can probably drop any consideration of an external DAC from the list. If you're in the $20 range for a CD player, then $1000 for a DAC seems out-of-range.

You're not going to find a lot of differences between entry-level equipment. Sony, Yamaha, Denon, Onkyo, etc. will all pretty much give you identical end results at the bottom of their product lines.