Audio Dropping Out on Rega Apollo and Saturn

Doug,
My dealer told me I am not the only customer who has complained about the operation of these players.

So I definitely think your preface is on to something here. I do not think it is a coincidence that there seems to be several people experiencing operational glitches on these units.

I'm debating whether I should bring up the issue with Rega, since I have not purchased one yet. And based on my recent user experience, I am hesitant to invest money into one of these CD players and may just stick with my old reliable Jolida JD100.

What was Rega's response to you when you brought this to their attention? Have they acknowledged whether they have heard similar complaints in the field? Even if they have, I doubt they would openly divulge this information to the public, unless these issues were root caused and a verified fix in place, for fear of lost sales.

Will

Rega has been absolutely silent on this issue. I have not heard from the distributor, nor Rega UK about it. The dealer insists that I am the only one of his customers who has had any issues with the units. I believe this dealer is a man of integrity, and though the odds of that are smaller, I believe it could be true because the pool of customers is smaller for him than the overall sales population for the Apollo/Saturn. Nevertheless, I see too many reports of issues from online forums, private emails, and my own experience with the units to conclude it is just my having some "bad luck". I do not believe in luck; I do, however, accept probability. The probability in this situation indicates that there are larger issues with the production of these players.

I'd like to add that those who have the machines currently and say they operate fine, you may be in for a suprise. My 3rd Apollo worked fine for 6 months before bugging out, and got worse as time went on. I am convinced that the problem is bugs in Regas new operating software. That Rega was unable to supply a properly working machine over a two year period and that Rega and distributers/dealers continue to say "your the only one" or "there's just a few" is a lie. I have owned 3 of their turntables, several of their cd players and one of their amplifiers. The whole experience with the new rega machines has led me to the decision that I personally will never buy another Rega product again.

Good Morning

The last time I posted onto a site was several years ago and gave up as basically it seemed some people did not want to be confused by the facts. At that time someone was asserting that Rega cartridges were being made in the Far East, when I corrected that and said no actually all made in the UK and hand assembled even the $145 Bias I was told that was just my "opinion".

Anyhoo, as the US Rega distributor I think I can offer a unique insight as I actually know how many units we have sold how many failures and the nature of the faults.

The first batch of Apollo's several years ago now had a sporadic issue with a chip set and the wave soldering process, it exhibited itself pretty much after a few days and we swopped out all the units concerned which was in the region of about 5%.

Since that time both the Apollo and Saturn have been remarkably reliable. Any electronic product will have the odd issue some may be down to impact damage during shipping that does not exhibit as a destroyed box. With both CD players some of the odd issues we have had relate to the unit's software getting glitched.

The Apollo and Saturn as you may be aware use a very different type of disc reading and the memory used is an order of magnitude above other units, so in some ways it is more akin to a computer than a CD player. During the "Initialization" process if the remote is pressed urging the unit to play it will still accept these commands and this over time can cause the player to misread.

Unplugging the unit and leaving overnight to fully reset in 99% of the cases that customers have called upon gets the machine back up to full reading capability.

Do we have the odd issue absolutely but no more or less than in any other area and having been involved in audio for more years than I care to mention Rega's reliability is superb and even shames way more expensive product that I have sold.

To the dealer who posted "feedback" issues we have not heard of this from any dealer that I am aware of so please give a call to ascertain what might be going on in the system.

Doug's issues seem particularly perplexing as I know that we and his retailer have not been able to duplicate many of the faults described. But as Doug will attest we and the dealer have given 100 % effort to making him a happy customer. We have been in contact Doug via your retailer and of course we communicated when you undertook your review.

So I guess to sum up if we had some widespread problem we and Rega could not afford or would continue to sell the players, but for every issue you may read about on the web you don't see the literally hundred's of customers who have a CD player that offer's amazing performance and plays music for them on a daily basis, so the ratio and outlook gets a little skewed.

Hope this may help

Best regards
Steve Daniels
The Sound Organisation