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Phillips no longer producing transports

Hi folks, as many of you are no doubt aware Phillips have decided to stop producing the Pro 2 LH transport used by ARC, Ayon, Vitus and others. What does this all mean? I'm informed by one manufacturer who I wont name that their stock of transports is good for another year or so of production whilst maintaining stock for warranty service. I'm told they are now moving toward designing a server to replace cd players in future. Esoteric are still manufacturing transports, and Accuphase have moved to a proprietory transport mechanism, so cd players will still be produce into the future. But for a powerhouse like Phillips to give up on cd transports is a harbinger, a sign of things to come and the likely phasing out of cd production. It is likely in future cd production will only continue in small runs of for audiophile labels and boutique producers, and high res downloads will continue to develop and become more mainstream. I think Bob Dylan said "The times they are a changin'".
melbguy1
audiolabyrinth's avatar
audiolabyrinth
4,555 posts
 
A couple of the main engineers parted ways with philips a few years back and made their own company called stream unlimited,, this is in my Ayon owners manual, thus the pro transport rebourne!, My transport was made in 2013 for this Ayon 2s player., I also talked to paul at usa tube audio, the u.s. distributer for Ayon, He confirmed the story of stream unlimited that I researched originally to find out about the company.
jafant's avatar
jafant
19,798 posts
 
Many Thanks! Melbguy and Audiolabyrinth.
melbguy1 OP
1,438 posts
 
Stream Unlimited in its previous iteration was the Philips Audio Video Innovation Centre based in Vienna. They developed new technologies and modules for Philips into ready for market products. Whilst under Philips umbrella, this centre likely developed the cd-pro2 transport for the company, who in turn later released the CD-Pro2LF in 2006 after Philips brought product development in-house. Incidentally 'LF' is short for "Lead free" which was required after the RoHS directive introduced on the 1st of July, 2006. So to clarify, Stream Unlimited did not manufacture Pro-2LF transports as used by Ayon, ARC and others. These were produced up to recently by Philips who have now ceased production. As far as I can tell, Stream Unlimited offer an optical storage product as well as software, hardware, wireless and compliance services.

I received feedback from one manufacturer who stated they will likely move out of disc spinners altogether toward a more profitable and sustainable business model. Boulder are already part way there with a hybrid disc/streamer product.
jafant's avatar
jafant
19,798 posts
 
Let us hope that a more focused group will continue to produce CD drives, exclusively. As far as hybrid (cd/dvd drive + server/streamer) products go, those will be inferior because of multi-use ROM-based drives. Not the same quality standard.
bifwynne
2,206 posts
 
As an owner of the ARC CD-8, this is a major big deal issue for ARC. Most of their current as well most of their older CDPs use the Phillips transport. I hope ARC stockpiles enough to service what they've sold the last n++ years. I'll e mail Kal at ARC and find out if there's a back-up plan. I sure hope so. Nothing lasts for ever. Thanks for the heads-up.
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