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Musical Fidelity Tri Vista SACD

I have been sitting on this useless $6,000.00 paper weight for some time now. Multiple attemps have been made to MF in England but they do not get back to me. Does anyone know how to get in touch with these people? I can not let this rest, and I refuse to buy or recommend any of their products.
drjohn
tpreaves's avatar
tpreaves
2,686 posts
 
Even if the cd drive is no longer made,MF should correspond with the man.Sounds like lousy customer service to me.I'd be PO'd also.
cerrot's avatar
cerrot
1,700 posts
 
Anyone can take a Phillips drive out of about a million obsolete computers and put one in a MF CD player. They knew they were crappy drives when the built the machines. The kW had a 50% failure rate. At $7k retail, they didn't care. Mine actually went back for service and came back with a new transport-and just as bad, probably worse.
You know what the real sad part is? The kW sounded friggin awesome when it played.

I found myself avoiding my sound room during the time my kW was in the rack. THAT is the ultimate smack.
elberoth2's avatar
elberoth2
1,223 posts
 
Anyone can take a Phillips drive out of about a million obsolete computers and put one in a MF CD player.

Unfortunately, that is not possible. This is niether a popular Philips CD drive, nor a DVD-rom drive. This is a dedicated Philips SACD drive.

The transport mechanism is only the part of the problem. Prolly even bigger problem is a servo board. When a drive goes, very often it takes out a servo board too. And those are literally unobtainable.

My advice: sell when it still works.
mcintech
128 posts
 
Elberoth2 is correct. I am US service manager for dCS and our P8i and Verdi Encore were also units left without parts for the same Philips Mechanism's.

The Philips 5.2 Mech is a universal CD/SACD/DVD mechanism that is totally proprietary with its own Servo Controller board. The motor driver IC's get smoked when the Chinese disc drive motors short out.

The only good news is that the lasers=OPU(Optical Pickup Units) are still available for those fortunate to have only a vision problem with good motors and good drive electronics! We also can repair about 50% of servo boards.

We are successful repairing these dCS units within parts limits.
alextychkin
87 posts
 
I've been tempted many times to upgrade my MF CD-308 to the Tri Vista (...or to something from that (in)famous French company that seems to suffer from a similar severe case of bad customer service/not returning e-mails...) A good thing I didn't and stuck with my current CDP. Still looking.
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