Primare V20

[Ned664]

Morning all,

Anyone using one of these as a CD player in its own right or as a transport? Impressions please, also any mechanical noise from a CD playing - a current issue for me.

Thanks

[StanleyB]

What kind of mechanical noises are you hearing? Scraping, banging, etc.?

[Ned664]

Hi Stan, it is whirring/whistle from the cd revolving or the motor revolving it. Not loud but slightly annoying in quieter passages of music. I think it is a characteristic of the Pioneer PD-D6 which is shame as what come sth rough the speakers is great!

[StanleyB]

That whirling sound indicates that the laser pickup is having problems reading the disc. It is quite a common noise when you try to play CD-RW discs, when the pickup lens is a bit fogged up from humidity over time, or when the laser is out of focus or towards the end of its lifespan. so you have quite a few different circumstances where you'll hear the same kind of sound.

[istari_knight]

This generation of Primare DVD players use the now infamous DSL-710A mech, also used by Arcam, Naim, Linn, Meridian & Ayre. Basically they are prone to premature failure, usually they stop reading either CD's or DVD's... Rarely both. There is no apparent correlation between total usage hours & failure rate, they just "go" ! These failures are often preceded by the noise you describe.

I spent a few days trying to figure it out, installing new firmware's, replacing the electrolytic capacitors but to no avail :( as they use surface mount components I was limited in what I could do... In the end I came to the conclusion the fault is mechanical in nature as one of my faulty one's played perfectly when placed on its side [!] They can be replaced with PC DVD IDE drives with a little bit of jiggery-pokery FWIW.