Audio Dropping Out on Rega Apollo and Saturn

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

Dick, so you thought you had a perfect unit as of about 3 weeks ago when you posted? Using the commands more (as opposed to simply putting on a disc and playing it through) exposed the issues with your player?

Because the problems are intermittent it's easy to think that either it was some anomaly which cannot happen again, or that you did something wrong with the input. But, when it happens enough times over the course of days or weeks the realization comes that there IS a problem with the player.

Doug,

I suppose you could say that. It also helps when you see others are having the same issues. As I said, my recollection is that it happens with CD-Rs and it's easy to believe that the problem lies with the discs and not my $1,000 CD player. Additionally, I dismissed it as a problem *for me* since I really don't play CD-Rs that much. Sort of like it's nice to know that I can play mp3s but I almost NEVER do that. If there are issues with mp3s I would never have encountered them.

Now that I've seen the problems others are having, I'll pay more attention to the exact circumstances and report back if I come up with anything. I'll also be following these threads more closely from now on to see if we get any resolution. Given the number of units Rega has sold, unless this is a field updatable issue I doubt we'll see any resolution.

Dick