Audio Research CD2 randomly skips

Leanord at ARC did tell me that the Phillips transport used in the CD2 adheres very closely to the Red Book standard.Which means anything that doesn't comply with the standard will have some trouble. If the disc has flaws it won't track. What Weiserb and Whatjd said is correct from my experience. Both a friend of mine and I owned CD1's and would track anything! We both have CD2's now and do find them to be more fussy about what you play(that being said I have next to no problem with this, he on the other hand buys a lot more rare and used CD's).

To address Tswhitsel's feelings about build quality, yes the CD1 and the CD2 use a standard(read plastic)phillips transport. Aside from that, the thing is wonderfuly well made, "like a tank", the board inside is a work of art, and you need to spend mucho more to get a better constructed player, something like a Wadia 860 or the new CD3, which you can't buy new for $3K or used for around $1500!

Try cleaning or polishing some of the discs that skip with something made for that pourpose and it can't hurt to call ARC and talk to them about it. You may just have a fiber of some sort floating around in there. Do you have a cat?

To add to my post above. I did not want to imply that the CD-2 is anything but a great sounding player...because it is. The tracking concerns with mine were likely because of surface concerns with the cd's. I have a young son that grew up listening to my Jazz collection...and now he has been in three or four High School bands each year including Jazz 1 and Honors...so if he wants to take my cd's to play in his car...or at a friends..or whatever...I let him. Sharing my music with him has paid off...and he now shares his with me. This does make for less than perfect cd's ....and that's O.K. with me. So, I needed players that would be able to track these less than perfect ones.

All said, sonically the CD-2 is very good.

had my cd-2 for about 3 yrs and have had minimal skipping problems (like less than 5 times over the whole time) not recognizing a disc is a lot more frequent but usually reinserting a time or two gets the dis played. I really wanted a Wadia 860 but like Maxgain indicated, for the money the Arc was hard to beat.

Since I last posted on this topic I have bought two CD's which have both been new, recent releases. The first one would not start the disc right away and then would skip a few times during the first track. I took it back and tried another copy which plays fine. I just got another new release today which seems to make the machine search for the begining and if it finally plays it skips constantly! I am wondering if this has anything to do with simple piss poor quality control or if something worse may be at work here. Do you think that some of these "new release" CD's may have some of that copy protection crap encoded in them that is freaking out my player(CD2)? It is strange that until now damn near every CD(with the above exceptions)played fine. And just these recent releases won't? I can't point my finger at anti-copy encoding yet since the replacement copy of the first one plays, and a friend of mine turned me onto the second and his copy played fine here. Could be just a coincedence, but maybe not? Any thoughts out there?

It may be that CD's are becomming the 8-track of "the new century"...the one that began in 2001....not 2000.

Audiophile sonics and quality are not in keeping with the multi-channel/download mainstream. We must remember that one of the most successful ads of late is..."dude yur gettin a Dell".. Not exactly,..."high-end".