To the OP: Did you enable the 176.4kHz output on your PS3? You can only do this if the PS3 is connected with HDMI to your Pioneer receiver, and if your Pioneer DAC can handle that frequency.

Basically the PS3 is upconverting the sampling rate of CD audio from 44.1kHz to 176.4kHz. That's four times the sampling rate. As always, garbage in and garbage out in upconverting so if your CD is not recorded well, you won't hear it any better upconverted.
fuad

Marantz CD5004 or CA Topaz CD10 is below RM1K. Not sure about how well could a PS3 handles music but I doubt it could beat a dedicated CDP.

The upsampling algorithm uses the power of the Cell. In fact, this was one of the earliest features of the PS3's firmware. If the CD transport is the only reason to get a CDP - allowing that a dedicated CD player doesn't mess with the digital data prior to digital delivery to the receiver/DAC, then the upsampling by the Cell makes up for the gap in fidelity. It is however seems unlikely that the BD transport could inaccurately track CD data when the data pits of BD is much smaller than CD's data pits.

If the OP had the original "fat" PS3s with SACD playback, that can be used as an excellent SACD transport. The programming on that feature was done with direct consultation with Sony's SACD engineers. It can enable a direct DSD transfer to a DSD capable receiver. Your RSX920 can only handle stereo DSD however.
fuad

Which part don't you understand?
fuad