Review: ayre cx-7e mp CD Player


Category: Digital

I bought this ayre CD player from a ayre dealer.( THIS REALLY DID HAPPEN, I AM NOT LYING HERE. THIS AYRE CX-7MP CD PLAYER WOULD NOT READ CERTAIN TRACKS ON CERTAIN CD'S AND WHEN IT WAS HAVING THE HARD TIME READING THOSE TRACKS THE PLAYER PUT OUT VERY LOUD DISTORTION NOISES THROUGH MY SPEAKERS.
When I first got it home it would not work at all. No lights came on and no buttons worked. It was sent back for another one. The second one just did not like playing certain CD's and caused very loud distortion noises in my speakers. The player's sound is just turned up louder than most other player's so one doesn't have to turn your volume up so high this in effect causes people to think it sounds better when it really doesn't. I then put the player up for sale. I would recommend consumers look else where at other brands and save yourself a lot of money.
I did work with my dealer and the dealer spoke to me like he was trained by ayre to say that ayre can do no wrong. I also tried very hard to reason with ayre and could not get to first base with them. The just could not understand that their CD player could not track certain songs on certain CD's so they put the blame on the disc's and said the disc's were defective, yet the same disc's played perfectly on my Denon DCD-3000 CD Player. Ayre could not fix the player and returned it to me and every time I asked ayre why can my Denon CD player play the tracks but your CX-7mp can't, ayre kept changing the subject. I wasn't about the have this defective piece of junk ruin a $8000.00 pair of speakers which is why I sold the ayre, ayre products are fancy boxes with a lot of room inside, very few parts, and the parts are very cheap. IMO, look else where and get your self a quality product. By the way, I took my money from selling the ayre and bought a used Audio Research CD5 CD Player from a man who decided to retire and didn't have the space anymore for equipment. He really hated to let go of his ARC CD5 and since I have it, it has worked flawlessly..
exron
The Ayre does not handle nor like scratches on the disks its trying to play. I have had previous players that never had a problem with the same disks the Ayre yells about. It sounds like you were playing disks with a little to much damage on them for the Ayre's liking. I keep my disks in good shape so I have no problem with this any longer but did have to stop buying used disks.
Overall I really haven't had too many problems, but I have had some. When it does make that "grunting" sound and refuses to find the CD's directory, a wipe and polish with a clean cloth usually resolves the issue. I have had to rip and burn a few disks that the Ayre wouldn't play for me though.

It is still a damn fine sounding player and much better than many others that I have put up against it, so I am willing to deal with the occasional issue.
EXron....You are dead wrong about Ayre. I have an all Ayre system and it outperforms many for many years. Customer service is exemplary...the top category of all. Yes, there are scratched, or marked discs that it will not play, but for those, just copy it onto a blank disc on your computer, and it will play perfectly. By the way, the printed side if damaged is more vulnerable to unplayability than the silver side.
Sorry, but I am not dead wrong about ayre.
The player I had would not work and the support from the dealer was terrible as was from the company. In ayre's eyes they can do no wrong and they were very stubborn. My player was a piece of junk and not only did not like playing certain CD's it did not like playing a lot of CD's I would not want a arye product in my system if it was given to me for free.
Stingreen, I am not wrong about my experiences with ayre, what happened to me really did happen. as for you and your experiences, I am glad that you had a trouble free time, but just because you did and I didn't doesn't make me wrong.
Ayre with all their products just has them built with the gain up a little more than most equipment so when one first powers up a ayre unit it just sounds louder than most and right away most people say WOW that sounds good. They have a lot of people fooled with loud sounding units and hardly anything in them. Sorry, but IMO ayre is just junk.
The CX7 player always seemed to have problems reading some CD's, and for no apparent reason. As my CX7 aged it wanted to read fewer and fewer. I recently sent it back to Ayre for a transport replacement. They ahve changed to a different transport now and it has far fewer (e.g. none) issues reading CD's now.

If your player has troubles then I recommend contacting Ayre about the new drive and getting it "upgraded".
Well Harri009, you don't need to really LOL as I do take great care of my CD's by handling them at the edges like an album I have never even put a finger print on them. I have never used any on my CD's in a vehicle or any kind of slot loading CD player. These same CD's that would not work in the ayre played perfectly in my new reference player the "Audio Research CD5, and the Cary Audio Design CD-306 as well as my old Denon DCD-3000, Denon DCD-1520, and a old Kyocera DA-710cx.
Here's what would happen when using the ayre CX-7E mp that I bought brand new. On some CD's it couldn't even read the disc at all and would just get stuck. I couldn't even stop it sometimes to eject the CD. Other times it would play to a certain track number and just fast forward it's self a few minutes and the resume playing, but the worst is when it would be playing and then all of a sudden cause very loud distortion noises to come out of my speakers causing me to reach for the mute button on my preamp remote.
I can't begin to tell you the absolute bull_ _ _ _ I received from the dealer and aye when I called them both to tell them of this problem. In their mind ayre could do no wrong. I finally got the player back from the Company with a clean bill of health as stated by ayre and wouldn't you know it, it still could not play those certain CD's, so with the clean bill of health given to me by ayre I put it up for sale and bought the Audio Research CD5.
I mean no disrespect to anyone who owns ayre and likes them, I'm just telling my experiences with this company and the fact that I would never ever buy a ayre product to put in my system.
I've had Wadia's that couldn't play discs other, cheaper players could play. Often I'd buy another copy of the disc to resolve the problem. I concluded higher end gear can be finicky.