Cambridge Audio DVD89 muting start of tracks

John_Gateshead · 05-01-2009, 7:14 PM

Recently my old Marantz CD player has shown signs of expiring (several CDs skipping and repeating randomly) and I thought it was time to retire it. Fortunately, I already had a Cambridge Audio DVD89 player, which reportedly has good enough sound quality to play CDs with some musicality. A comparison with the Marantz - both connected to my CA Azur 540R AV receiver - suggested that, if anything, the CA player had better sound quality, even on discs that the Marantz played ok.

Unfortunately, I did this comparative audition by playing several separate tracks from my (mainly classical) CD collection, and didn't bother to listen to a work from start to finish. No sooner had the Marantz been dispatched to the garage than I realised there was an audio problem. Although each track played fine if I used the "skip" button to start it, when I listened to a whole disc, the player "muted" between tracks, cutting off about a second of the start of each track. As I'm sure you'll appreciate, this is enough to ruin the musical experience.

At first I blamed the way I had the player connected. I was listening through a digital optical connection, and I know this is really only designed for playing DVDs. However, when I plugged in a phono lead and listened to the DVD89 through that, the same thing happened....

Does anybody know why this is happening? Is there a setting on the DVD89 (or even the receiver) that might fix things? Would unplugging the optical cable make a difference? (I haven't done that so far as I may have lost the plug covers and don't want to let dust into the sockets.) It seems a shame to have to fork out for a new CD player just on account of a weird glitch like this.

Thanks for any help.

John_Gateshead · 08-01-2009, 9:13 AM

No-one?

John_Gateshead · 09-01-2009, 12:27 PM

P.S. I have just installed the (December 2007) firmware upgrade from the Cambridge Audio web site that's supposed to fix this problem amongst others, but it made no difference. I gather from snippets of other people's web postings that this is a bug with several CA DVD player models - admittedly, one that will affect only certain CD audio discs. Still, I'm disappointed in CA for claiming this was fixed when it clearly wasn't, and would advise anyone reading this to avoid CA DVD players if they want to play audio CDs as well.

Looks like I'll have to go shopping again.

jwf · 03-02-2009, 7:52 PM

I have the same problem with a Cambridge Audio DVD99, but unfortunately there's no firmware update available on CA's website for this model and dire warnings about installing the DVD89 firmware on any other model. I can't see any way of contacting CA about this!

jwf · 03-02-2009, 8:07 PM

Also - the problem seems to also affect DVD-Audio music discs. This is the reason I bought the player - Listening to Fleetwood Mac Rumours and it's noticeable because I know the songs so well.

jwf · 04-02-2009, 5:20 PM

I got this response from CA support - how can they get this SO wrong? The player seems to 'seek' between each track, motor noise etc.

Thank you for your email. I am sorry to read of the difficulty you are experiencing with your DVD player.

We have had the occasional report of this in the past, but in tests here we have found that most discs play without issue.
This is not something that is currently possible to alter.

I apologise for any inconvenience or dissatisfaction that this matter may have caused you.