Found cause of CD Skips. Now, what to do?

[Jeff Matthews]

I lied in my prior thread. The Cd Player skips due to vibration. Many times, it's while I am playing drums to some tunes. Sometimes, it skips when playing loud w/o drums. I played it and stomped my foot a little (not like jumping up and down). It skips.

That said, it's a HK HD7600 CD Player. I thought CD Players were able to deal w/this type of vibration. What about the ones in cars? They seem to take alot more than I dish out playing drums.

Is it time for a new CD Player? I wish not. But if so, what's a decent player that handles vibrations really well? Is my HD7600 (bought new in the late 80's) just old technology that's since improved re: handling vibrations?

[colterphoto1]

tennis balls.

[DrWho]

Wow, you should definetly upgrade the CD player....especially if you're

using the analog outputs. RAM has gotten much cheaper nowadays which

means the read ahead buffers are larger (one of the key ingredients to

vibration resistance) and the DAC's have improved immensly as well.

But if you didn't want to spend the money, there is the poor man's approach to isolation that works very well:

Take two tennis balls and cut them in half. Then place them with the

open side down under your CD player. If this isolation isn't enough to

reduce the vibrations, then the next step is to get a concrete slab and

place it between the cd player and the tennis balls.

[jerohm]

Is my HD7600 (bought new in the late 80's) just old technology that's since improved re: handling vibrations?

The lasers on older generation CD players actually tracked right on the surface of CDs. They were especially susceptible to skipping when the CD had the least amount of warping (or experienced external vibration, I guess). Newer mechanisms never touch the disc. Digital output is the great equalizer of most CD players... the mechanical mechanism has very little to do with how the player will sound ... ( unless it skips of course! ). The "high dollar DAC sounds" of just a few years ago, can be had for just a couple of bucks now-a-days and probably best located in preprocessor.

[Marvel]

Is my HD7600 (bought new in the late 80's) just old technology that's since improved re: handling vibrations?

The lasers on older generation CD players actually tracked right

on the surface of CDs. They were especially susceptible to

skipping when the CD had the least amount of warping (or experienced

external vibration, I guess).

Not true. It had to do with the beam splitter technology. I worked on

CD players. They all had a mechanism that when a CD was inserted, the

lens would track up and down (towards and away from the disc) until it

could focus the laser properly. It constantly tracked the disc that

way. Some were just better than others. I just recently threw out the

repair literature I used, or I would scan it and post it.

[jerohm]

Is my HD7600 (bought new in the late 80's) just old technology that's since improved re: handling vibrations?

The lasers on older generation CD players actually tracked right on the surface of CDs. They were especially susceptible to skipping when the CD had the least amount of warping (or experienced external vibration, I guess).

Not true. ...

Well I have a Sony CDP-C505 that I would be happy to give you (for the price of shipping), that's laser mechanism rides the surface of the CD. I replaced it years ago because it had problems with certain discs (warped, I assumed). Whether the little plastic disc (surrounding the laser LED??) that actually touched the CD was part of the laser focusing system, I have no idea.

[Jeff Matthews]

Well, let me ask you this, and see what consensus there is. Are the newer CD Players (Home Stereo Only) better capable of handling vibration? If so, a little better.... alot better.... or what? And if you are qualified to give this opinion, please explain why. I'd like to know.

Finally, if there is consensus that newer CD Players handle vibration better, are the $39 players as good as the $400 players in terms of sound quality?

[Audio Flynn]

Are the newer CD Players (Home Stereo Only) better capable of handling vibration?

===

Not the best premise for buying anything.

CHeap

-tennis or racket balls

-wine corks (works for me)

-little kids bike tire inner tube

more $

-Audio quest Sorthobane balls 9 I use under my transport)

-Spikes or cones

[Jeff Matthews]

Thanks, I might give something like that a try.

[DrWho]

Well, let me ask you this, and see what

consensus there is. Are the newer CD Players (Home Stereo Only)

better capable of handling vibration? If so, a little better....

alot better.... or what? And if you are qualified to give this

opinion, please explain why. I'd like to know.

Finally, if

there is consensus that newer CD Players handle vibration better, are

the $39 players as good as the $400 players in terms of sound

quality?

Newer cd players spin the disc faster because they can read data

faster. The internal memory is also larger because RAM is infinetly

cheaper. This allows the player to read far ahead such that if there

are any vibrations, it has plenty of time to realign and fill the

memory buffer before it runs out. This is the core concept behind every

form of vibration control, and this is why your walkmans run out of

batteries faster when you have the anti-skip protection on (because the

disc is spinning faster).

There have also been significant improvements in how the lens tracks the disc and calibrates itself to the surface.

And lastly, the moving parts of the lens will be less gunked up in a

new unit which means it will be easier for it to maintain its

precision. A good cleaning always helps an old unit, but it can only go

so far. I had an old home unit CD player wired into a PA rig for

background music before shows and I had to keep the cover off it and

help the lens track the disc at certain segments along its path. Quite

annoying I know, but you gotta do what you good do when you're working

on a $0 budget.

If you are running digital output from your CD player, then every CD

player no matter the price is going to sound identical. If you are

running the analog outputs, then I would say you might notice some

minor improvements by going with the more expensive cd players. If

you're thinking about purchasing, I would just go demo them somewhere

and see if you can hear the difference - if you can't then don't sweat

it and get the cheaper player. There are far bigger flaws in the system

to be worrying about.

[D-MAN]

Get some rubber pods (AudioQuest?) or metal "spikes" to reduce vibration.

I use the big rubber things (support 30 lbs each) under mine.

DM

[Audio Flynn]

There are far bigger flaws in the system

to be worrying about.

====

Like what powerline filtering and amplification, perhaps.

[DrWho]

or time alignment, room acoustics...and hi-tech speaker cables []

[D-MAN]

Ok, so now preventing excessive equipment vibration is being poo-pooed.

Pardon me, I must have thought the guy wanted a useful solution to prevent his cd player from skipping.

He should have been fixing his listening room all this time. Silly me!

Ok, who wants to argue about wires?! Cmon, put 'em up! Put 'em up!

DM