Audio Dropping Out on Rega Apollo and Saturn

I have the Apollo and don't have this problem. However, I treat my Cds more like LPs and they don't have any scratches to speak of.

Rega makes a big deal of the fact that the Apollo and Saturn analyze the CD before playing and optimize the player for each CD. It's possible that this means backing off of some of the error correction logic if able and that the player is being fooled in this particular case. This might also account for the sensitivity to vibration that Electroid mentions (although I have not experienced this). If the player were to back off of most of its error correction believing it was not necessary for a particular CD and was then hit with a large vibrational peak. Again, this is all speculation since, as far as I know, Rega has not provided details of this "optimization" routine.

Hmmm, glad checked back in on this thread. I had let it slip from my mind (all too easy these days). I have not experienced most of the problems noted above but I do tend to mostly listen to entire discs. I have not yet had a disc that refused to stop playing. However, I have occasionally had initialization problems and, now that you mention it, I've had problems skipping to the correct track (from the remote). This happened just yesterday. My recollection is that this mostly happened with CD-Rs and I had just chalked it up to the vagaries of cheap media, etc. although I am careful with my burns and always use 8x (my CD-RW won't burn any slower).

Doug is correct, you definitely learn quickly to leave the player alone until the "Initialising" (for our UK friends) finishes. Steve's information on unplugging the player is interesting. As someone who works with computers, it is feasible that, since there may be current running through the player even when switched "off", it might accumulate and eventually be confused by those premature commands. Since I unplug my equipment when thunderstorms come through, I may have inadvertently avoided some of the problems. I do think they need to be fixed if there are problems. I also wonder what that fix would entail. I'm not sure that the firmware is flashable and the chip is probably soldered to the board although I confess that I don't know for sure on either of these issues.

I will say that my Apollo is one FINE-sounding CD player. Although I have not had dozens of players in my system, I never really understood what PRAT was until I found my foot tapping with the music while listening to it.

I hope we haven't scared Steve away from this thread as he would no doubt provide valuable insight, and possibly a conduit for communication, with Rega.

Dick

Doug,

I suppose you could say that. It also helps when you see others are having the same issues. As I said, my recollection is that it happens with CD-Rs and it's easy to believe that the problem lies with the discs and not my $1,000 CD player. Additionally, I dismissed it as a problem *for me* since I really don't play CD-Rs that much. Sort of like it's nice to know that I can play mp3s but I almost NEVER do that. If there are issues with mp3s I would never have encountered them.

Now that I've seen the problems others are having, I'll pay more attention to the exact circumstances and report back if I come up with anything. I'll also be following these threads more closely from now on to see if we get any resolution. Given the number of units Rega has sold, unless this is a field updatable issue I doubt we'll see any resolution.

Dick

Fillmore, yes that's what I have experienced but I don't remember having a problem with normal CDs. I only have one hybrid SACD at this point but it seems fine as well. Not being able to see the code that went into the operating system, it's impossible to say whether an entire rewrite would be necessary or just some tweaking of the code. To my mind, a more important issue is how they would update the enormous number of machines they have sold in the past 2-3 years. If they didn't have the foresight to use a flashable chip on the logic board (or at least a pluggable chip), updating would be way too expensive a proposition if the problems were acknowledged as bugs. Some computer companies have slipped bug fixes in with feature updates to their programs. That way they don't have to admit to the bugs and don't have to notify all their customers even if the patch is user-installable. They figure that most users will eventually install the patch and the bug fix as well and they're not out the expense of all those notifications. But again, this presumes that the user CAN install the patch.

In addition, this is straight out of their Apollo manual on their website.

To the best of our understanding, there have only ever been five large multinational companies with the technology and knowledge base to develop the remarkably complex operating software for CD players.

Development of this software and chip-sets to operate CD transports was generally curtailed around eight to ten years ago. All development effort was directed towards the
design of DVD players and other advanced formats.
Rega and other specialist Hi Fi manufacturers were totally reliant on companies like Sony and Phillips to supply transports and their operating chip-sets.

In 2003 Sony stopped supply and sent the specialist Hi Fi industry into a flurry of activity in search of feasible alternatives. Many manufacturers were able to resource their supply from Far Eastern companies.

Rega has worked hard in locating a British software company who were in the development of a totally new disc operating system. A system, which was highly advanced, even in the early development stages.

Rega is the only manufacturer to develop the unique new disc operating system. Due to ever increasing computer processing power and memory fabrication it has been possible to build in an enormous amount of memory capacity. This has allowed the data retrieval to meet the original CD 'Red Book' specifications without compromise to the musical performance. All previous chip-sets were unable to achieve this due to their limited memory and signal processing capacity.

Rega's new British designed chip set contains over 20MB of memory with 32 bit digital signal processing capacity and Rega has used this computing power to give a far greater musical performance.

We hope you enjoy this very special CD player; we have spent a very long time creating it, drawing on all of our 32 years of experience in specialist Hi Fi manufacturing.