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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
knghifi
1,668 posts
 
You are talking about Philips SACD drives. That is a very different design, which indeed was problematic. On the other hand, the CD-Pro2 discussed in this thread, is very reliable.
NO I'M NOT. I'm talking about Philips CD drives.

Phillips Pro transport mechanisms are serviceable and can be easily reconditioned to perform as new ...
I don't know the model I had but you can't fix something that never worked.

I remember asking Patrick @Krell why use such a unreliable transport and his answer, because it sounds good.
elberoth2's avatar
elberoth2
1,223 posts
 
What Krell model that was ?
trelja
3,223 posts
 
It used to be that Sony transports were bulletproof, and far superior to Philips units. Things completely flipped in the past decade when Sony shifted production to China, and their transports became so bad it was scary. In fact, to fix a batch of CD players where 8 or 10 were bad, ALL 12 replacements I received were also defective. Beyond incredible, yes? Conversely, the introduction of the Philips Pro2 brought rock solid reliability, and I'd not encountered a failed unit.

At any rate, while this announcement certainly is bad news to audiophiles, why on earth would Philips stay in the business? High-end audio is an absurdly small market, a company of that size would inevitably abandon us.
knghifi
1,668 posts
 
What Krell model that was ?
KPS30i. After 3 or 4 new replacements, Krell ran out of transports and gave me KPS 30i replacement. I forgot the model but 1st one had transport issues and I traded in the 2nd one. Too bad ... they sound fantastic.
dhl93449
455 posts
 
Its no surprise to me. Bryston discontinued the the BCD-1 over a year ago for the same reason, no available drives.

Phillips needs a large consumer market to keep up production and that is dwindling.

And I am not certain I see the need for real time CD playback given that the "ripped to file" systems are at least as good or better sonically, and they need much less expensive CDROM/DVDROM drives and a few chips to implement.
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