Ripley's Cat
25-09-2013, 09:30
Hi -
A slight change of direction in my study system means that I now have this Arcam DV89 DVD player up for grabs. Complete with 3m QED component cable and 1m QED Scart cable, it offers a very convincing SD picture.
In all honesty, it's been used as a CD player for the last three years, along with my A&R A60 and JPW Gold Monitors. It seems to bop along very nicely, indeed. A clear, peppy sound & thoroughly enjoyable. Plenty of discussion time out there on the 'net suggesting it's CD playback capabilities are on a par with Arcam's own CD62/72/73. I've not heard these players, so can't comment but would add - in the interests of honesty - that it loses out in terms of absolute clarity and detail to the Arcam CD93 that I have in my main system.
Now then - this is the bit that needs to be read carefully . . .
A few years ago, the drive went kaput. Research suggests that the DVS DSL-710A drive used by Arcam, not just in this player, but within the preceding 88 and 88plus is notoriously flaky; it can comfortably be described as the Achilles' heel of these otherwise solidly built machines.
Anyway, a quick butcher's revealed that a standard IDE cable connection along with PC-style 4 pin power cable connected the drive to the main board. So, three years ago, I decided to replace the drive with a Pioneer DVD burner that I had lying around - just to see what would happen. And sure enough, it worked perfectly . . . and has continued to do so ever since. I'm no golden ears - so it would be impossible for me to state that (outside of a lab) there was any performance deterioration by implementing this drive substitution. Suffice to say, I couldn't detect any audible or visual deterioration. I suspect that the days of building bullet-proof transports is, by and large, a lost-art and that greater emphasis is placed on error-correction further down the food-chain - hence the buying in of these cheapo transports. (I'm fairly certain that Meridian also used the DVS drive for a couple of their early DVD players.)
Additionally, it's essential for me to point out that the DVS drive wasn't housed in a standard IDE enclosure, so in order to fit the Pioneer drive in place, I needed to fashion a small section of wood that would both accommodate the IDE cable and support the drive. I then finished the job by simply using a couple of blobs of clear silicon mastic between the wood and the drive. The photos should paint the picture, but please ask for clarification.
So, a bit 'garden-shed-tech' (this is in the Fens, after all), but it works. So there.
Suspect that this will probably put most folk off, but if it doesn't sell, it'll simply become glorified attic insulation, like so much other stuff I have. Leak Troughline II with Tim de Paravicini HiFi World stereo decoder, anyone?
Peace,
Matt
A slight change of direction in my study system means that I now have this Arcam DV89 DVD player up for grabs. Complete with 3m QED component cable and 1m QED Scart cable, it offers a very convincing SD picture.
In all honesty, it's been used as a CD player for the last three years, along with my A&R A60 and JPW Gold Monitors. It seems to bop along very nicely, indeed. A clear, peppy sound & thoroughly enjoyable. Plenty of discussion time out there on the 'net suggesting it's CD playback capabilities are on a par with Arcam's own CD62/72/73. I've not heard these players, so can't comment but would add - in the interests of honesty - that it loses out in terms of absolute clarity and detail to the Arcam CD93 that I have in my main system.
Now then - this is the bit that needs to be read carefully . . .
A few years ago, the drive went kaput. Research suggests that the DVS DSL-710A drive used by Arcam, not just in this player, but within the preceding 88 and 88plus is notoriously flaky; it can comfortably be described as the Achilles' heel of these otherwise solidly built machines.
Anyway, a quick butcher's revealed that a standard IDE cable connection along with PC-style 4 pin power cable connected the drive to the main board. So, three years ago, I decided to replace the drive with a Pioneer DVD burner that I had lying around - just to see what would happen. And sure enough, it worked perfectly . . . and has continued to do so ever since. I'm no golden ears - so it would be impossible for me to state that (outside of a lab) there was any performance deterioration by implementing this drive substitution. Suffice to say, I couldn't detect any audible or visual deterioration. I suspect that the days of building bullet-proof transports is, by and large, a lost-art and that greater emphasis is placed on error-correction further down the food-chain - hence the buying in of these cheapo transports. (I'm fairly certain that Meridian also used the DVS drive for a couple of their early DVD players.)
Additionally, it's essential for me to point out that the DVS drive wasn't housed in a standard IDE enclosure, so in order to fit the Pioneer drive in place, I needed to fashion a small section of wood that would both accommodate the IDE cable and support the drive. I then finished the job by simply using a couple of blobs of clear silicon mastic between the wood and the drive. The photos should paint the picture, but please ask for clarification.
So, a bit 'garden-shed-tech' (this is in the Fens, after all), but it works. So there.
Suspect that this will probably put most folk off, but if it doesn't sell, it'll simply become glorified attic insulation, like so much other stuff I have. Leak Troughline II with Tim de Paravicini HiFi World stereo decoder, anyone?
Peace,
Matt