Page 1 of Suspicious CD player......

GRRrrr! I tried to post this earlier but Internet Exploder crashed at the very last minute. Thank-you-very-much-Microsoft.....

Anyway.

My big brother gave me his old Eclipse 101 CD player for free as he just got a nice shiny Marantz one, and he was feeling generous. I have it connected to my Digitheatre (Non-DTS) using standard analogue cables. The thing is that when I play some CDs a fuzzy/scratchy noise becomes apparent and can sound quite bad. Most CDs sound fine though.

Any idea what this is? Can I fix it? Or is the CD player just screwed?

That could explain why he gave it to me for free........

Sorry if this sounds obvious, but are the CDs themselves scratched or dirty in any way? Some CD players are better at coping with surface defects than others.

Mike

Heh thats ok, you were quite right to mention that.

I did check that, but maybe I will check it again. I thought of this though and played the same CDs on my PC to check that they were working ok and they played fine, so I know the music itself is not to blame.

Its a bit of a mystery to me.

My CD player is acting suspiciously too. It seems to think that I am having an affair with the next door neighbour`s wife.

I am though.

yopu could try cleaning the lens - carefuly !! - and don`t use one of those CD`s with little brushes on them that are suppose to clean CD players - can can cause more harm than good.

if you are happy to then take it apart and use a cotton but and clean the lens in a circular motion with on the pressure of it`s built in spring pushing it against the bud - i`ve repaired CDrom drives / cd-rw drives / audio players etc with this way and they work perfectly.

you got nothing to loose by trying this if it was free - remmeber to unplug it from the mains though (voice of experience from years past)

Cleaning the lens....hmmm......

Is this likely to be difficult? I dont really want to take it apart only to find that I cant put it back together again.

Sounds like a plan though.

depends on the player really - in my experience if you take the lid off (4 screws or so) then you can normaly see the lens without taking anything else apart - if not then you can guess where the laser is because you can tell where the disk would normaly go - after you`ve done it it`s best to put the lid back on again before you power it up and try it - CD / DVD players use infrared lasers which you can`t see and if you stare at them it doesn`t do your eyes and good at all - so don`t ! (obviously they are safe when turned off before anyone says anything !)

CDs don`t crackle if they`re scratched, they just jump.
It sounds more like an electrical problem to me. Try a new lead, try it further away from your surround amp etc. Does it work ok connected to another hi-fi - if it does then it must be interference.

"CDs don`t crackle if they`re scratched, they just jump."

Wrong. I`ve had scratched CDs cause crackling on my player before - if the error correction circuitry can`t deal with the scratches, then you get crackling or similar unpleasant noises. Some CD players have better error correction than others.

I would only suspect an electrical problem if this happened with *all* discs, not just a few.

Mike