When testing your new CD-Player, make a 79 minute
audio CD-R, so you can promptly return the defective
model if it doesn't play CD-Rs properly. Sometimes
a bad unit refuses to play the outer tracks of a
CD.
There's really no excuse for a new CD player made
in this century to fail to play CD-Rs,but 3 out of 4
new component players I bought in the last
or so have been returned and refunded as defective
equipment because it could not play an entire
audio cd-r without sticking and/or skipping, what
my "not old enough to be good" shoddy too-small Philips
boom box can do withno problem as well as other CD players.
So I have one working component CD player and am
searching for another new one so I can have a backup, though
it occurs to me I can hook them both up at the time:
the "receiver" (no radio) can have both a digital CD
input as well as an analog CD input.
Component CD players are now the worst quality
consumer item I am still interested in buying,
even worse than the public domain publishers
of books.
The Cambridge (cheaper, not the "CD transport") is still
working after 6 months, the NAD and the new model
Audiolab 7000CDT is Dead On Arrival and the Yamaha it
took me a week to realize that it was mistracking in a
weird way, sounding like it was speeding up a fraction
of a second at a time, as if it were interpolating,
while when reversing a few seconds it would play
normally until it would randomly happen again.
Repeat, CD Playing is a proven *basic* technology,
and there is no excuse anytime this century for
shipping CD players that don't play CDs properly.
A CD player that can't play CDs is a 100% failure
no matter the hype about features or how *good* a
CD player sounds, when CD players do not have
an effect on sound quality unless the CD player
is mechanically noisy!
The Cambridge works, which is more than I can
say for the others, but it has a dumb
design reducing usability: it is the same as
the Yamaha and the NAD in that it can't display
a track length through the display while switching
through tracks but can only reverse starting from
a successive track, which doesn't help if it's
the last track on the disc. Along with the other two,
it has an almost a uselessly slow rewind and
fast-forward. The Cambridge has a built in
power shut off without being able to change it,
so pausing in the middle of a track fairly soon
shutdowns the player, loosing your place. I
forgot whether that NAD or Yamaha has forced
power-off. The Audiolab can display the track
length when switching tracks, and the automatic
power off can be turned off (in this more expensive
newer model, I read the older model always has a
forced power-off on idle.)
I didn't spend much time on the bad units as
there was no use in working with units that
are Defective When New.
By the way, from what I gather "CD Transports"
is the same as "CD Players" except that it
is missing an analog output, just having a
digital output. Apparently it costs hundreds of
dollars more to sell a CD Player without an analog
output than with both. Regardless, it is a
failure if doesn't play CDs. Reviews, professional
or otherwise, appear intentionally to confuse.
Repeat, CD playing is a *basic* technology and
there's no excuse for manufacturers to fall on
their face and ship faulty units!
Pluted Pup wrote:
Mid 80s Kyocera CD players were almost bullet proof.When testing your new CD-Player, make a 79 minute
audio CD-R, so you can promptly return the defective
model if it doesn't play CD-Rs properly. Sometimes
a bad unit refuses to play the outer tracks of a
CD.
There's really no excuse for a new CD player made
in this century to fail to play CD-Rs,but 3 out of 4
new component players I bought in the last
or so have been returned and refunded as defective
equipment because it could not play an entire
audio cd-r without sticking and/or skipping, what
my "not old enough to be good" shoddy too-small Philips
boom box can do withno problem as well as other CD players.
So I have one working component CD player and am
searching for another new one so I can have a backup, though
it occurs to me I can hook them both up at the time:
the "receiver" (no radio) can have both a digital CD
input as well as an analog CD input.
Component CD players are now the worst quality
consumer item I am still interested in buying,
even worse than the public domain publishers
of books.
The Cambridge (cheaper, not the "CD transport") is still
working after 6 months, the NAD and the new model
Audiolab 7000CDT is Dead On Arrival and the Yamaha it
took me a week to realize that it was mistracking in a
weird way, sounding like it was speeding up a fraction
of a second at a time, as if it were interpolating,
while when reversing a few seconds it would play
normally until it would randomly happen again.
Repeat, CD Playing is a proven *basic* technology,
and there is no excuse anytime this century for
shipping CD players that don't play CDs properly.
A CD player that can't play CDs is a 100% failure
no matter the hype about features or how *good* a
CD player sounds, when CD players do not have
an effect on sound quality unless the CD player
is mechanically noisy!
The Cambridge works, which is more than I can
say for the others, but it has a dumb
design reducing usability: it is the same as
the Yamaha and the NAD in that it can't display
a track length through the display while switching
through tracks but can only reverse starting from
a successive track, which doesn't help if it's
the last track on the disc. Along with the other two,
it has an almost a uselessly slow rewind and
fast-forward. The Cambridge has a built in
power shut off without being able to change it,
so pausing in the middle of a track fairly soon
shutdowns the player, loosing your place. I
forgot whether that NAD or Yamaha has forced
power-off. The Audiolab can display the track
length when switching tracks, and the automatic
power off can be turned off (in this more expensive
newer model, I read the older model always has a
forced power-off on idle.)
I didn't spend much time on the bad units as
there was no use in working with units that
are Defective When New.
By the way, from what I gather "CD Transports"
is the same as "CD Players" except that it
is missing an analog output, just having a
digital output. Apparently it costs hundreds of
dollars more to sell a CD Player without an analog
output than with both. Regardless, it is a
failure if doesn't play CDs. Reviews, professional
or otherwise, appear intentionally to confuse.
Repeat, CD playing is a *basic* technology and
there's no excuse for manufacturers to fall on
their face and ship faulty units!
Agreed! It's ridiculous. I don't even bother with new CD players. I
scavenge for vintage premium brand players from the 80s and 90s. They
play everything I throw at them, they have all the buttons I want, the >screens display everything I want to see.
Repeat, CD playing is a *basic* technology and
there's no excuse for manufacturers to fall on
their face and ship faulty units!
Agreed! It's ridiculous. I don't even bother with new CD players. I
scavenge for vintage premium brand players from the 80s and 90s. They
play everything I throw at them, they have all the buttons I want, the screens display everything I want to see.
No one needs physical CDs anymore, and no one needs
consumer grade CD players.
The CD 16-bit 44.1 kHz digital format is the lowest
resolution one can (barely) inagine. Why bother?
And note that only 14 bits are usable as many
CDs "steal" 2 bits to encode other information.
Repeat, CD playing is a *basic* technology and
there's no excuse for manufacturers to fall on
their face and ship faulty units!
Agreed! It's ridiculous. I don't even bother with new CD players. I
scavenge for vintage premium brand players from the 80s and 90s. They
play everything I throw at them, they have all the buttons I want, the
screens display everything I want to see.
The problem with last century players is that
they can't play CD-Rs or the CD layer of a
hybrid SACD, because those discs hadn't been invented
yet.
If only there's a sweet spot between the old and
the new, old enough to have proper buttons, display
and reliability and new enough to play those two
newer formats.
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 489 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 45:51:13 |
| Calls: | 9,670 |
| Calls today: | 1 |
| Files: | 13,719 |
| Messages: | 6,170,073 |