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CD player skipping - any suggestions.


Phil Meloy

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My CD player has all of a sudden started to skip. The problem is with the player not the CDs - its doing it on a range of CDs all of which are normal pre-recorded commercially manufactured CDs which are clean and in good condition. It doesn't do it on every CD but on quite a few and I think the problem is increasing. The player is a fairly good quality Technics which I suppose is about five or six years old. I've never had any kind of trouble with it previously. It may just need some kind of cleaning disc played through it but I don't know much about them. Any suggestions?

Edited by Phil Meloy
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My old Technics player which I guess may be just slightly older than yours began to develop occasional random skips. I imagine it could have been checked over by a decent engineer and possibly restored. But it's had an awful lot of use during that time. Now it's retired and replaced by a younger, and better model.

Having moving parts suggests to me that these things have a limited life and replacement may be better and cheaper than repair.

I found that those cleaning cds didn't have any effect.

Edited by JohnS
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There's a bunch of stuff that can fo wrong with cd players (at the station we've got some that are ten years old that've been through a number of repairs, but these are worth fixing: they're made to run continuously.) Your laser might be shot or the tracking might be off--suffice it to say many things can go wrong that'll cost a fair deal of money to fix, more than most cd players are worth.

My solution at home is to buy essentially disposable cd players. When it goes haywire, I give it to one of the kids and buy myself a new one.

Audiophiles will howl and call me a philistine, but frankly I can't tell the difference between a $70 machine and a $400 one. I am skeptical that they would be able to in a double blind test.

You can clean the lens by taking the machine apart and gently rubbing it (the lens, I mean) with a q-tip soaked in high purity rubbing alcohol.

--eric

Edited by WNMC
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Thanks for your reply Eric. I'll investigate the lens cleaning suggestion. I take your point about not spending too much on a CD player. I'm certainly no expert but I've always tended to feel that any extra investment in the system would reap more dividends if directed towards the speakers or the amp.

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Definitely no moisture Brad. Does get a bit of sun on it sometimes though but that's not the case at the moment. It's pretty cold in London at the moment but not indoors where the CD player is. I'm beginning to think that the tracking mechanism has gone or that a deposit has gradually built up on the lens and it's simply time to replace the unit. Thanks.

Edited by Phil Meloy
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[...] I've always tended to feel that any extra investment in the system would reap more dividends if directed towards the speakers or the amp.

I have to completely disagree here. That is simply not true. ´Neither the amp nor the speakers can improve the source material the playyer serves up. That's, if at all, a common misconception.

Then again, the quality of CD players today is almost uniformly good, and you can't go very wrong with a cheaper model. I have two more expensive ones, and I would like to take up the challenge WNMC proposed: you CAN and DO hear a difference when swapping players of varying quality on a decent amp/speaker system. Without a problem, I might add.

Cheers!

P.S.: Re your problem: From what you answered so far, I would think some mechanical part is shot to hell. The same happend to an old Philips player I had ... I did open it with a friend who knos his way around and he advised not to get it fixed ... in my case the tracking was off.

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Thanks Deus - funny thing is guys that I went home last night and played two CDs on the machine. Both played perfectly - one of the CDs was one that was previously skipping. A couple of days ago everything I tried to play would skip. I didn't have time to play any more last night but I'll be able to check it out more over the weekend. This all started last Saturday when I tried to play two brand new CDs that had come in the post that morning. I'd never had the slightest problem before that.

Edited by Phil Meloy
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[...] I've always tended to feel that any extra investment in the system would reap more dividends if directed towards the speakers or the amp.

I have to completely disagree here. That is simply not true. ´Neither the amp nor the speakers can improve the source material the playyer serves up. That's, if at all, a common misconception.

Then again, the quality of CD players today is almost uniformly good, and you can't go very wrong with a cheaper model. I have two more expensive ones, and I would like to take up the challenge WNMC proposed: you CAN and DO hear a difference when swapping players of varying quality on a decent amp/speaker system. Without a problem, I might add.

Cheers!

P.S.: Re your problem: From what you answered so far, I would think some mechanical part is shot to hell. The same happend to an old Philips player I had ... I did open it with a friend who knos his way around and he advised not to get it fixed ... in my case the tracking was off.

Years of listening to music too loud (sometimes by choice) have cost me, so I'm not ready to go too far challenging other people's hearing.

But I wonder--do you know if anyone has done a good double blind test on this question?

--eric

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To my mind there is a difference between CD players shown up by the highest quality amp and speakers (mine are a bit old fashioned - I don't own the highest end gear, but I have auditioned it). However it is also my opinion that very high quality amps and speakers show up the (severe) limitation of the CD source no matter how good the CD player being used. The limitation on CD is inherent in the medium and the set up however good can't overcome this. In fact the greatest set ups bother me because they expose the limitations of the source. I am just not a true audiophile!

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But I wonder--do you know if anyone has done a good double blind test on this question?

I've done the next best thing... My friend recently bought a Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista CD player. Only 500 made and it cost $3500 ($5000 is retail, so he got a good deal).

I know what you're saying... $3500 for a CD player? C'mon! At the time I had better speakers so he brought it over to my house. My CD player is an Acram CD-72, about $800 new (single disc player). I tried three different $1k players and liked the Arcam the best.

So we play the new Alison Krauss disc on my player. Sounds good. My wife just happens to be in the room... she's not really paying attention... I think she was reading. My wife is not an audiophile in any sense of the word. She just likes music... she doesn't care what it's played on.

Well, we hook up the $3500 Nu-Vista CD player and play the exact same cut off the Alison Krauss record. Before we can say anything my wife comes out of nowhere and says, "Wow! It sounds like she's in the room!! That's amazing!"

If she can hear the difference, anyone can hear the difference.

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On a cheap amp and speaker you won't hear much of a difference, that's for sure. On a better system, you will, I had similar experiences with my wife and other non-HiFi-oriented people. The better the CD player, the more carefully the parts are selected, and the better the mechanical part works, the less calculations and digital error corrections are necessary, and this make the music sound more organic.

I'd be afraid to clean the lens, the risk of damaging the surface is way too high.

I'd try cleaning the CDs with a CD spray or plain alcohol and a soft cloth, always in a centrifugal direction, to exclude it has something to do with the CDs, after all.

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My CD players have never died suddenly or completely. The first sign of failure has always been a random skip. The skips would generally increase in frequency over a period of weeks or months until I had to purchase a new CD player.

I now have three separate components in my high-quality stereo system (though some would call it "mid-fi") that can play audio CDs: a NAD C541i CD player, a Pioneer PDR-609 CD recorder, and a cheap Panasonic DVD player. I can readily hear significant differences between the three. The sonic differences happen to correlate with price (but that is not always the case).

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Hi guys - The CD player started skipping again on Saturday so I went down to a hi-fi components place about a mile away in Clapham Junction (London). I'm fortunate in that nearby there's a proper hi-fi shop which is a family business and has been there for decades - a real Aladdin's cave of new and used hi-fi equipment and parts. They also do repairs on site. They suggested I first try a cleaning disc because the problem could be a deposit build-up on the laser lens but if that didn't work then the laser was probably on the way out and would either require repair or replacement of the machine. I purchased a TDK cleaning disc for £7.50 (the most expensive out of a choice of three) and took it home and ran it through the machine (the cleaning process takes a few seconds) with the result that the CD hasn't skipped since (I've played about 20 CDs since) - in fact I think there's actually been a bit of improvement in sound quality too. Hopefully this is the end of the problem for some time to come but I'll let you know if it has a relapse. The instructions with the disc recommend running the cleaning disc in the player every month but the need for this would obviously depend on usage level. The cleaning disc is supposed to be good for 50 cleans. Thanks to everyone for your input and advice. B)

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  • 6 months later...

Since my previous post my CD player has essentially been operating fine although on a number of occassions it has begun to skip. Each time I have used the cleaner disc and the problem has been corrected. What I have now noticed over the past few months however is that it only seems to occur when I play a new CD that has just been delivered through the post. Most of the ones I buy come from the USA to the UK. This may be complete nonsense but could these CDs have picked up some kind of electrical charge in the post from a scanner or some such device which is interfering with the CD player? After I play them once they don't seem to skip again. Has anyone experienced this problem with new CDs? Perhaps my player is worn and a bit over sensitive anyway. Like I said it's not a great problem as the cleaner disc seems to work.

Edited by Phil Meloy
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Phil, I hope the problem is indeed solved, but, from experience, I suspect that your laser is on the blink (so to speak) and, in time, will stop functioning completely. These problems usually do not progress linearly; but in phases. It usually costs about $125-150 to perform a repair for this type of problem.

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Thanks Leeway - I'm pretty much resolved to getting a new CD player but am hoping to hold out until January when I should be able to pick one up at a good price in the post Xmas sales. I'll probably start a thread in a couple of months with regards to opinions on one or two that I'm considering. I've just upgraded the amplifier to a NAD C352 so I don't want to outlay any more right just now.

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  • 6 years later...

But I wonder--do you know if anyone has done a good double blind test on this question?

Yes, but that won't make any difference to those who think they actually do hear a difference.

The specs of even the cheapest CD player are identical to those of high end players. Jitter as it appears in even the cheapest cd players is 100 times below the threshold of audibility. Most CD players are made from stock parts. They're all pretty much the same inside. The differences are features and build quality.

The advice to buy cheap CD players and throw them away when they act up is great advice. I select cd players based on the clarity of the layout of the remote. That makes a big difference.

Edited by Bigshot
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Well, I ran a Memorex cleaning disc through the CD player and the voice on the cleaning CD that prompted me through the process was skipping a lot. But I just let it run and after running it I played the CD that was skipping and it played fine. The next CD I tried, the player started skipping again, so I ran the cleaning CD several times. The second offending CD is playing fine now, but I suspect there may be something more going on. An alignment problem maybe. We'll see how it performs over the next several days.

btw, I'm running a Cambridge Asur 640C, three years old.

31wLIUol-UL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Edited by papsrus
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