Audio Dropping Out on Rega Apollo and Saturn

I still find it somewhat suspect that people are jumping to the conclusion that these players are unreliable and prone to breakdowns. I'm sure if we look at any manufacturers stats regarding their products we'd be hard pressed to find anyone with a 100% reliability score. Even carmakers such as Toyota (Lexus) and Honda (Acura) have vehicles that are lemons! I've experienced it first hand, but does that mean their whole lot is garbage?

I have not experienced any of the aforementioned problems with my Rega, and I've skipped tracks, but for the most part I play whole discs. So I guess you can add me to the "lucky" group?

Darrens, Absolutely there are plenty of people with these machines who report zero problems- as the reply from the Rega distributer may indicate. However I had 3 Apollo machines and a Saturn machine over a nearly 2 year period and every single one exhibited various combinations of the issues above. That is my own personal experience, so I am not jumping to conclusions. It has been suggested by a Rega dealer over on audioasylum that my problems and that of doug shroeder (who had 5 machines and none worked correctly) are related to RFI, and goes on to say that it is essentially just 2 guys that have problems with these machines. That theory does not hold water for me because my 3rd Apollo and my Saturn worked largely without incidnet for several months, and then started bugging out. Additionally doug shroeder had a malfucntion at an entirely different location when he took his machine to his dealer. Further I have knowledge of 3 other users that had errors on more than one Apollo machine. In total my count stands at 20 faulty machines among 8 different users. These errors include all of the known software bug issues on some of the machines, and the drop out/skip problem on others. The drop out issue is probably due to an explanation listed above. The machine sets itself to one of 3 error correction levels during initialization, and there are instances where it chooses a lower level of error correction for slightly scratched/marred discs which proves to be inadequate and causes the audio drop outs, or the "acoustic feedback" skips mentioned by a dealer above. I myself did not have drop outs, but 2 other posters above did. Other than disc initialiaztion failures and the drop out thing, most other problems are related to track access via the remote and the failure to respond to stop function and these will not be experienced by users who play entire discs. Initialization failures are in the range of about one of every 15 or 20 discs.

People should test these machines for glitches from commands issued via the controlls on the face of the units. The first two I used ALSO glitched that way. I would not be surprised in the least if the defective units still exhibit this tendency. That convinced me long ago its NOT an RF issue.

Hmmmm... and to think I passed on an 840c thinking it was less reliable! :)

Hmmm, glad checked back in on this thread. I had let it slip from my mind (all too easy these days). I have not experienced most of the problems noted above but I do tend to mostly listen to entire discs. I have not yet had a disc that refused to stop playing. However, I have occasionally had initialization problems and, now that you mention it, I've had problems skipping to the correct track (from the remote). This happened just yesterday. My recollection is that this mostly happened with CD-Rs and I had just chalked it up to the vagaries of cheap media, etc. although I am careful with my burns and always use 8x (my CD-RW won't burn any slower).

Doug is correct, you definitely learn quickly to leave the player alone until the "Initialising" (for our UK friends) finishes. Steve's information on unplugging the player is interesting. As someone who works with computers, it is feasible that, since there may be current running through the player even when switched "off", it might accumulate and eventually be confused by those premature commands. Since I unplug my equipment when thunderstorms come through, I may have inadvertently avoided some of the problems. I do think they need to be fixed if there are problems. I also wonder what that fix would entail. I'm not sure that the firmware is flashable and the chip is probably soldered to the board although I confess that I don't know for sure on either of these issues.

I will say that my Apollo is one FINE-sounding CD player. Although I have not had dozens of players in my system, I never really understood what PRAT was until I found my foot tapping with the music while listening to it.

I hope we haven't scared Steve away from this thread as he would no doubt provide valuable insight, and possibly a conduit for communication, with Rega.

Dick