Audio Dropping Out on Rega Apollo and Saturn

I just bumped into this thread. I've also had some problems with my Apollo freezing up. If I fast forward or rewind too much, it'll stop responding to any commands from the remote or face controls. It'll keep playing the current track, but won't do anything else. I have to shut it off. However, it doesn't happen when I hit the track number instead of the FF/RW buttons for some reason.

My dealer (who is great, BTW) called Rega's US distributer (who is also great). The response my dealer got was that its caused by a build up of static electricity, or something along those lines. They said that the chipset used is very similar to chipsets used in cable boxes, which can have similar issues. Sound Oraganization advised to leave it unplugged overnight to discharge the static electricity (also stated by Steve above). If it didn't work, they'd take the unit in for repair/replacement.

Since I've unplugged it overnight, I haven't had any problems. My dealer said they were told it can happen every now and again, as static electricity builds back up.

It makes sense to me for a few reasons -
I've had it a little over a year and never had any problems in the summer. The only time was in the winter, when static electricity is at a peak.
Now that I think about it, my cable box needs to be unplugged and allowed to reboot every now and again (about 2 or 3 times in the last 3 years). Its also only done this in the winter. My cable company said that it was due to static electricity.

Not that I'm saying a $1000 (or a $2200) CD player should have these problems, but it seems logical. It also seems logical that the problems would happen it the repair shop because the CD players would have been unplugged for a good amount of time before they got there.

If the thing didn't sound so good, I'd have returned it. As much as I hate to say it, I can live with having to unplug it overnight once in a while. If unplugging it stops working, I'll take it up with my dealer/Sound Organization.

Has anyone else had problems after unplugging it overnight?

Thanks for your comments Kbarkamian. Maybe there is something to your theory. But it does not explain other stuff. There are a number of other issues these machines have besides the fast foward freezing up. Is failure to initialize a disc or failure to stop static too? I used 4 of the new Rega machines over 2 years and these new Rega players do things that are plain weird on a year round basis, by contrast I never had a single problem (not a one) with the previous Rega players. I'm sticking to bugs in the operating software as the true reason these machines do the things they do. Please Let us know if the unplugging fix works long term.

I haven't ever had a disc fail to initialize. Are these originals, or are they CD-Rs? I read somewhere (maybe the manual?) that CD-Rs shouldn't be burned at more than 6x. Every disc I've burned, I've burned slower than that for this reason.

Maybe my descriptions of the problems in my previous post was misleading. The Apollo never stops playing when it "freezes". It stops responding to any commands from the remote and face plate and keeps playing until I shut it off. Also keep in mind that it never happens when I enter a track number on the remote, it only happens with RW, FF, and skip forward and backward.

The only other problem is that sometimes the display doesn't come back on after I turn it off. If I turn the unit off, it'll come back on when I turn the unit back on.

Hopefully that makes some more sense.

I unplugged it overnight about a week ago. It hasn't had any problems since. I've intentionally tried to get it to act up a few times by rewinding and fast forwarding erraticly, but it hasn't had any hiccups. The display has been fine too.

I don't know how long it'll last, but it seems like it solved the problem. Before I unplugged it, it would have acted up with far less coaxing. Its only been a week though.

Also, in my previous post, I stated "...should happen in the repair shop...", when it should have read "...it should not happen in the repair shop due to being unplugged for sufficient time."

Kbarkamian, I believe the problems will return. I had a couple units which could go a week without any problems, then they'd surface. Display not coming back on? Have not heard that one before. Add it to the list...

Kbarkamian, I was using store bought perfect condition cd's. I do have cdr's but play them on my Denon 2910. Initialization failures were in the range of 1 of every 15 or 20 discs with all 4 machines. I rarely used the fast foward/rewind function. Once in awhile I play my guitar along to certain songs and like to go back to certain parts. That's when I realized to not bother using the foward/back function, it's worthless. The freezeup you describe is fairly typical, the machine locked and no longer responded to any command. However I've had them lock up without using any function (remote or panel). I put a disc in, play a few songs, press stop and it does'nt....have to turn the power off like you did. Another time the display just froze up all on its own (track and time froze as disc kept playing), and then when I press stop, it does'nt. My experience with the unplugging "fix" is that the bugs always return without exception, so let us know if it works for you. Different machines do different things, please inform us of any other quirks you have, but use regular cd's, as cdr's can be prone to problems in any player. Any cd player can do a couple funky things, but this is usually after years of use, the regas are funky out of the box and do things I have never seen any cd player do.