[EADGBE]

More CD player shenanigans....

I still haven't gotten round to measuring the voltages in the Audio
Alchemy CD player...but I promise to do so soon!

But in the meantime, I have another question, about another CD
player...

I have a Magnavox CDB650 that I purchased new back in the 1980's.

In all this time, it has never given me any problem (touch wood).

I recently purchased a new CD that the Magnavox player WILL NOT
recognize. When I insert the CD into the player, it spins for a
moment, and then the "Error" light comes on.

This is the ONLY disc I own that this Magnavox won't recognize. It's
as if the player doesn't like the disc or something.

This is NOT a CD-R disc. It is a brand new, mint condition, store-
bought disc. It is also NOT a disc with any multimedia content on
it. It is nothing more than a normal, regular CD.

All of my other CD players have no problem playing this disc.

While I'm at it, there is another disc that is a bit weird when
inserted into the Magnavox. I have a copy of Nat King Cole's "Just
One Of Those Things" -- one of his lesser-known albums.

The disc plays fine in the Magnavox, but through the window you can
see the disc spinning VERY crooked. It is not level at all. Why
would this happen? Believe it or not, the Magnavox plays it just
fine, with no skipping or any other problems.

By the way, the disc that the Magnavox refuses to play spins perfectly
flat. No vibration at all.

[Geoff]

EADGBE wrote:


This is the ONLY disc I own that this Magnavox won't recognize. It's
as if the player doesn't like the disc or something.

I'd say the CD player doesn't like the disc then.

The disc may be faulty in a way that matters to that player , but possibly
not others. You get that...


geoff

[Dave Platt]

In article ,
Soundhaspriority wrote:

I have a Magnavox CDB650 that I purchased new back in the 1980's.

In all this time, it has never given me any problem (touch wood).

I recently purchased a new CD that the Magnavox player WILL NOT
recognize. When I insert the CD into the player, it spins for a
moment, and then the "Error" light comes on.

This is the ONLY disc I own that this Magnavox won't recognize. It's
as if the player doesn't like the disc or something.

All CDs are full of errors. The encoding scheme is designed to invisibly
correct these errors, provided that the number of errors within a single
block is less than the maximum the encoding scheme can handle. One player
may be able to read a pit, or the absence of, better than another player. I
think that in this case, your Magnavox reads enough errors in a single block
so as to make it incorrectable. In most areas of the disk, this would simply
produce a click. However, if the error is in the TOC (table of contents), it
could glitch the firmware in the player.

Overall poor reflectivity of the CD (and thus a reduced contrast and
reduced RF signal "eye" quality) might cause this. A player as old as
the CDB650 might have two things working against it, with regard to
such discs:

- It's old enough that it probably has a lot of hours on its laser.
Output may be dropping, weakening the signal detected by the
photodiode.

- It's pre-CDRW, which may very well mean that its photodiode/sensor
circuitry doesn't have an AGC feature.

If the problem is just one of poor reflectivity, there probably isn't
much that can be done with regard to this particular CD player.

The disc could have other sorts of defects, too. Check the inner rim,
and see if there's any excess plastic "flash" which makes the inner
hole less than perfect. If so, it could prevent the disc from sitting
evenly on the player's spindle - the disc might wobble when rotated,
and be difficult for the laser/optic assembly to track properly.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

[Richard Crowley]

"EADGBE" wrote ...
I recently purchased a new CD that the Magnavox player WILL NOT
recognize. When I insert the CD into the player, it spins for a
moment, and then the "Error" light comes on.

This is the ONLY disc I own that this Magnavox won't recognize. It's
as if the player doesn't like the disc or something.

This is NOT a CD-R disc. It is a brand new, mint condition, store-
bought disc. It is also NOT a disc with any multimedia content on
it. It is nothing more than a normal, regular CD.

All of my other CD players have no problem playing this disc.

Since the identity of your CD is apparently a secret, we have the option
of speculating that it might be one of those (supposedly ordinary) discs
they tried to put "copy-protection" or "digital-rights-management" on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_So...ection_scandal

[1PW]

On 08/12/2008 08:21 PM, EADGBE sent:
More CD player shenanigans....

I still haven't gotten round to measuring the voltages in the Audio
Alchemy CD player...but I promise to do so soon!

But in the meantime, I have another question, about another CD
player...

I have a Magnavox CDB650 that I purchased new back in the 1980's.

In all this time, it has never given me any problem (touch wood).

I recently purchased a new CD that the Magnavox player WILL NOT
recognize. When I insert the CD into the player, it spins for a
moment, and then the "Error" light comes on.

This is the ONLY disc I own that this Magnavox won't recognize. It's
as if the player doesn't like the disc or something.

This is NOT a CD-R disc. It is a brand new, mint condition, store-
bought disc. It is also NOT a disc with any multimedia content on
it. It is nothing more than a normal, regular CD.

All of my other CD players have no problem playing this disc.

While I'm at it, there is another disc that is a bit weird when
inserted into the Magnavox. I have a copy of Nat King Cole's "Just
One Of Those Things" -- one of his lesser-known albums.

The disc plays fine in the Magnavox, but through the window you can
see the disc spinning VERY crooked. It is not level at all. Why
would this happen? Believe it or not, the Magnavox plays it just
fine, with no skipping or any other problems.

By the way, the disc that the Magnavox refuses to play spins perfectly
flat. No vibration at all.


Hello to All:

Wouldn't this be a good time to try a gentle lens cleaning per Sam
Goldwasser's tips? Mfgr'd in 1980? Recently cleaned? Worth one last
try I'd think...

http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_cdfaq.html

Cheers to all.

--
1PW

@?6A62?FEH9E=6o2@=]4@ [r4o7t]

[Arfa Daily]

"geoff" wrote in message
...
EADGBE wrote:


This is the ONLY disc I own that this Magnavox won't recognize. It's
as if the player doesn't like the disc or something.

I'd say the CD player doesn't like the disc then.

The disc may be faulty in a way that matters to that player , but possibly
not others. You get that...


geoff


I'll second all that the others above have said, and agree with Geoff here.
It's not at all unusual to see players that simply won't play - or have a
lot of trouble playing - just one or two discs out of an owner's collection.
I have had them send in players for repair with an example disc, and they
are quite right, it won't play it, and of course, they have always "tried
the disc in the neighbour's machine, and it's fine !"

But if the player is trouble free with every other disc that you - and
they - put in it, including 'official' test discs with deliberate errors for
checking servo performance etc, what can you do ? You can never see anything
wrong with the eye pattern on such players, and I've even tried replacement
lasers, without altering the symptoms a jot, so I think that it must be a
case of too many errors for the player to correct, but who can tell ...

As you surmise, and Geoff says, the CD player just doesn't like the disc
then :-)

You know, I've just had a thought. Long long time ago, I had a Pioneer that
had playability problems just on certain discs. It's very very rare for
Pioneers to suffer a bad laser, and the early ones are unpleasant to replace
because of the diffraction grid adjustment that has to be done. I was loathe
to suspect the laser, so I gave Pioneer Technical a call.

In those days, they had the best guys in Tech Support that you could ever
wish for (they're actually still there, but a lot more difficult to get to
talk to now). Anyways, I asked them about this problem, and they pointed me
at the rubber deck suspensions, saying that the problem was caused by age,
and them having collapsed some. As you might imagine, I was sceptical about
this, but I ordered a set and fitted them, and lo! it cured it completely.
I can only assume that with little or no suspension left, if a slightly
eccentric or off balance disc was put in, instead of the whole deck being
able to freely 'wobble', with the deck touching the sub-chassis, vibration
was instead transferred to the lens suspension, making this vibrate at high
speed.

Given the age of the player in question, might be worth a look at ??

Arfa

[Mark D. Zacharias[_3_]]

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...

"geoff" wrote in message
...
EADGBE wrote:


This is the ONLY disc I own that this Magnavox won't recognize. It's
as if the player doesn't like the disc or something.

I'd say the CD player doesn't like the disc then.

The disc may be faulty in a way that matters to that player , but
possibly not others. You get that...


geoff


I'll second all that the others above have said, and agree with Geoff
here. It's not at all unusual to see players that simply won't play - or
have a lot of trouble playing - just one or two discs out of an owner's
collection. I have had them send in players for repair with an example
disc, and they are quite right, it won't play it, and of course, they have
always "tried the disc in the neighbour's machine, and it's fine !"

But if the player is trouble free with every other disc that you - and
they - put in it, including 'official' test discs with deliberate errors
for checking servo performance etc, what can you do ? You can never see
anything wrong with the eye pattern on such players, and I've even tried
replacement lasers, without altering the symptoms a jot, so I think that
it must be a case of too many errors for the player to correct, but who
can tell ...

As you surmise, and Geoff says, the CD player just doesn't like the disc
then :-)

You know, I've just had a thought. Long long time ago, I had a Pioneer
that had playability problems just on certain discs. It's very very rare
for Pioneers to suffer a bad laser, and the early ones are unpleasant to
replace because of the diffraction grid adjustment that has to be done. I
was loathe to suspect the laser, so I gave Pioneer Technical a call.

In those days, they had the best guys in Tech Support that you could ever
wish for (they're actually still there, but a lot more difficult to get to
talk to now). Anyways, I asked them about this problem, and they pointed
me at the rubber deck suspensions, saying that the problem was caused by
age, and them having collapsed some. As you might imagine, I was sceptical
about this, but I ordered a set and fitted them, and lo! it cured it
completely. I can only assume that with little or no suspension left, if a
slightly eccentric or off balance disc was put in, instead of the whole
deck being able to freely 'wobble', with the deck touching the
sub-chassis, vibration was instead transferred to the lens suspension,
making this vibrate at high speed.

Given the age of the player in question, might be worth a look at ??

Arfa


Hi, Geoff!

The problem with the insulators was just that the disc would "barely" scrape
while trying to play. It was indeed a common problem; replaced many of them.
Sometimes the drive IC would even brown the circuit board as a result.

To the OP regarding the one disc that would not play: try cleaning the disc
itself - sometimes that helps - or perhaps the store you bought it from
would let you try another copy.

As another poster suggested, cleaning the laser lens is certainly worth a
try.

Magnavox (Philips) players were sometimes picky about discs, with nothing
that could really be done about it. When people would complain, the standard
response was, "the disc is out-of-spec, not our problem". A good example of
this was the CD-63 series having problems with discs longer than 74 minutes.


Mark Z.

[Mike S.]

In article ,
Mark D. Zacharias wrote:

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...

"geoff" wrote in message
...
EADGBE wrote:


This is the ONLY disc I own that this Magnavox won't recognize. It's
as if the player doesn't like the disc or something.

I'd say the CD player doesn't like the disc then.

The disc may be faulty in a way that matters to that player , but
possibly not others. You get that...


geoff


I'll second all that the others above have said, and agree with Geoff
here. It's not at all unusual to see players that simply won't play - or
have a lot of trouble playing - just one or two discs out of an owner's
collection. I have had them send in players for repair with an example
disc, and they are quite right, it won't play it, and of course, they have
always "tried the disc in the neighbour's machine, and it's fine !"

But if the player is trouble free with every other disc that you - and
they - put in it, including 'official' test discs with deliberate errors
for checking servo performance etc, what can you do ? You can never see
anything wrong with the eye pattern on such players, and I've even tried
replacement lasers, without altering the symptoms a jot, so I think that
it must be a case of too many errors for the player to correct, but who
can tell ...

As you surmise, and Geoff says, the CD player just doesn't like the disc
then :-)

You know, I've just had a thought. Long long time ago, I had a Pioneer
that had playability problems just on certain discs. It's very very rare
for Pioneers to suffer a bad laser, and the early ones are unpleasant to
replace because of the diffraction grid adjustment that has to be done. I
was loathe to suspect the laser, so I gave Pioneer Technical a call.

In those days, they had the best guys in Tech Support that you could ever
wish for (they're actually still there, but a lot more difficult to get to
talk to now). Anyways, I asked them about this problem, and they pointed
me at the rubber deck suspensions, saying that the problem was caused by
age, and them having collapsed some. As you might imagine, I was sceptical
about this, but I ordered a set and fitted them, and lo! it cured it
completely. I can only assume that with little or no suspension left, if a
slightly eccentric or off balance disc was put in, instead of the whole
deck being able to freely 'wobble', with the deck touching the
sub-chassis, vibration was instead transferred to the lens suspension,
making this vibrate at high speed.

Given the age of the player in question, might be worth a look at ??

Arfa


Hi, Geoff!

The problem with the insulators was just that the disc would "barely" scrape
while trying to play. It was indeed a common problem; replaced many of them.
Sometimes the drive IC would even brown the circuit board as a result.

To the OP regarding the one disc that would not play: try cleaning the disc
itself - sometimes that helps - or perhaps the store you bought it from
would let you try another copy.

As another poster suggested, cleaning the laser lens is certainly worth a
try.

Magnavox (Philips) players were sometimes picky about discs, with nothing
that could really be done about it. When people would complain, the standard
response was, "the disc is out-of-spec, not our problem". A good example of
this was the CD-63 series having problems with discs longer than 74 minutes.

Yep. I have one from that series, and it chokes on many extended-length
pressed CD's. There's a place in Connecticut that can modify the pickup
circuit to handle off-spec discs better, but then CD-R playback suffers.

[EADGBE]

Thanks, as usual, for all the great info so far.

I forgot to mention that I did try cleaning the laser lens. I used
91% isopropyl alcohol, which usually works pretty well, unless there
is a better method that I don't know about.

[Franc Zabkar]

On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:21:15 -0700 (PDT), EADGBE
put finger to keyboard and composed:

More CD player shenanigans....

I still haven't gotten round to measuring the voltages in the Audio
Alchemy CD player...but I promise to do so soon!

But in the meantime, I have another question, about another CD
player...

I have a Magnavox CDB650 that I purchased new back in the 1980's.

In all this time, it has never given me any problem (touch wood).

I recently purchased a new CD that the Magnavox player WILL NOT
recognize. When I insert the CD into the player, it spins for a
moment, and then the "Error" light comes on.

Whenever I have compatibility problems like this, I burn a copy of the
disc. The copy usually plays flawlessly. If it doesn't, then I'd
suspect something is wrong with the contents of the disc, perhaps copy
protection as mentioned elsewhere. Is it possible that older players
can't handle CDs with combined audio and data, and is your CD one of
these?

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

[Tim]

In article ,
says...
On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:21:15 -0700 (PDT), EADGBE
put finger to keyboard and composed:

More CD player shenanigans....

I still haven't gotten round to measuring the voltages in the Audio
Alchemy CD player...but I promise to do so soon!

But in the meantime, I have another question, about another CD
player...

I have a Magnavox CDB650 that I purchased new back in the 1980's.

In all this time, it has never given me any problem (touch wood).

I recently purchased a new CD that the Magnavox player WILL NOT
recognize. When I insert the CD into the player, it spins for a
moment, and then the "Error" light comes on.

Whenever I have compatibility problems like this, I burn a copy of the
disc. The copy usually plays flawlessly. If it doesn't, then I'd
suspect something is wrong with the contents of the disc, perhaps copy
protection as mentioned elsewhere. Is it possible that older players
can't handle CDs with combined audio and data, and is your CD one of
these?

- Franc Zabkar

I would ask how large the data is on it. Some players cannot handle a
disc with more than 80 mins of audio on it. Some have a problem with
more than 74 mins. I have a factory Madonna CD that is 74:30 and it will
not play in one of my players, but it is fine in all the others. Audio
CDs can contain up to 99 minutes of data (874MB), but they have to be
carefully written at a very low speed.

- Tim -

[Franc Zabkar]

On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:50:24 -0300, Tim put finger to
keyboard and composed:

I would ask how large the data is on it. Some players cannot handle a
disc with more than 80 mins of audio on it. Some have a problem with
more than 74 mins. I have a factory Madonna CD that is 74:30 and it will
not play in one of my players, but it is fine in all the others. Audio
CDs can contain up to 99 minutes of data (874MB), but they have to be
carefully written at a very low speed.

- Tim -

I have an old Philips/Marantz player that won't play 80 min CDs. As
for wobble, ISTR I once played a CD that was either recorded
eccentrically, or was not clamped centrally. The player's voice coil
positioner visibly wobbled from side to side but tracked the disc
perfectly.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

[Geoff]

Arfa Daily wrote:
"geoff" wrote in message
...
EADGBE wrote:


This is the ONLY disc I own that this Magnavox won't recognize. It's as
if the player doesn't like the disc or something.

I'd say the CD player doesn't like the disc then.

The disc may be faulty in a way that matters to that player , but
possibly not others. You get that...


geoff


I'll second all that the others above have said, and agree with Geoff
here.

An option is to dupe it to a good quality CD-R. But if the laser is a bit
'down' it may not like CD-Rs either....

geoff

[Samuel M. Goldwasser]

EADGBE writes:

Thanks, as usual, for all the great info so far.

I forgot to mention that I did try cleaning the laser lens. I used
91% isopropyl alcohol, which usually works pretty well, unless there
is a better method that I don't know about.

Should be adeqate, and if there was no obvious change one way or the
other, the lens was probably clean enough.

--
sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ: http://www.repairfaq.org/
Repair | Main Table of Contents: http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/
+Lasers | Sam's Laser FAQ: http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasersam.htm
| Mirror Sites: http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_mirror.html

Important: Anything sent to the email address in the message header above is
ignored unless my full name AND either lasers or electronics is included in the
subject line. Or, you can contact me via the Feedback Form in the FAQs.

[Arfa Daily]

"EADGBE" wrote in message
...
Thanks, as usual, for all the great info so far.

I forgot to mention that I did try cleaning the laser lens. I used
91% isopropyl alcohol, which usually works pretty well, unless there
is a better method that I don't know about.


IPA is fine, although 'electronics grade' is usually a little purer than
that at 99.7%

Arfa