Worth fixing?

@qialah 

I like @vinylvin 's suggestion to try cleaning the contacts.  A zero cost approach to the problem is a good starting point.

Only YOU know the sentimental value of this unit.  I spend one day a week with my tech of 25 years doing exactly that -- keeping old stereo gear with an emotional attachment to the owner(s) from ending up in the dumpster.  I refer to it as my "involuntary not-for-profit organization" in that we bring in about $1 for each $3 we spend taking care of business.  We make sure the customer is informed of "current market value" of a "questionable" piece and let them decide if they want to make the investment.  It's pretty rewarding to see grown up's brought to tears when a deceased family member's, or close friend's unit comes back to life.  Or, push the power button on piece that went to college with them and survived multiple divorces, light up and play music once again.

IF the cleaning does not solve the problem, I'd suggest contacting someone in your area that does repairs, and see what their opinion (including a rough price range for the repair) and see if your attachment to the unit exceeds this price.  $300 spent on a piece with a "current market value" of $59 (in working order) is $241 spent for sentimental reasons.  I can think of worse ways to spend money.

Junk it

Mike

@jwei. I invested $80 for a repair shop to fix my Pro-Ject P1.2 turntable which it turned out needed a motor no longer made. Won’t make that mistake again. 
 

@waytoomuchstuff.  I did clean the contacts and checked the cables,  I’m definitely not $300 worth of sentimental. 
 

Off to the recycle bin it goes.   Thanks everyone. 

hmmmm.... if the unit does something or does something in a way that no more modern unit quite does, i’d move heaven and earth [within affordability or availability of fundage] to fix it. case in point, i have an old DBX CD player, unfortunately parts are not available to fix it, but it did something NO OTHER cd player before or since would do, it had a dynamic range adjustment [expand or compress], a stereo image adjustment [ditto] and an impact adjustment [made musical leading edges sharper], those were very handy features, sometimes i had to listen to music when people were close by and i didn’t want to disturb them at night, so i’d dial back the dynamic range. on some old Elvis CDs the PTB decided to record them in very narrow stereo, so i’d use the stereo width adjustment to fix that.

i also have an old Koss ambience enhancement box that when it worked back in the day, it gave me a pretty fair [for primitive digital] approximation of a virtual room behind my listening position. cool. same thing though, no parts available to fix it. a pity. but if there were parts i’d go into hock restoring them to playability. so if you like your old Rotel CD player for similar reasons, go for it.

@vinylvin I agree. Try cleaning, swapping. 
 

@qialah 

Did you swap interconnects to see if the problem swapped channels?

Did you use the same interconnects with the replacement player? 

I sold a guy an integrated and tested it with/for him. He called when he made it home and said one channel stopped working. I told him to do some testing (swap cables) and return for a refund if he couldn’t figure it out. It was the cables. 
 

Good luck, let us know…