Conference cookie::notes$archive:cd_v1

    
    How does this compare to the 2041?  What type of 'stuff' does it
    have?  
    
    						.dave.

    
    I got the 1051 last night!  Yea!  welcome me to the land of CD.
    
    I flipped in my first CD at home and attempted to enjoy the wonderful
    sounds.  I then noticed that the voices and high end were full of
    cibilence (sp) and very distorted.  So I got up and adjusted the
    OLD speakers a bit - played with the positioning, and the
    tweeter/midrange controls.  Then sat back down.  A little better,
    but still not what I nearly expected.  Nice image and nice dynamics
    - real crisp.  But it still had that harshness.  I tried again to
    do some adjustments but to no avail, I was doomed I thought, I hated
    the sound of CD.  As I got up I noticed that the sound changed
    significantly?  Then sat down again and it sounded real bad again.
    This is indeed strange I said to myself!  Then I noticed that as
    I leaned forward the sound was much better without all that high
    end distortion.  Low and behold, it was the New Rocking Chair I was
    sitting in.  It had a six inch high piece of wood running a foot 
    past my ears on either side of my head!   Talk about reflections!
    Put the chair aside, sat on the floor, and wallah!  great sound.
    
    The 1051 is nice.  A small unit with enough functions to confuse
    a moderatley intellegent person at first glance.  Over the next
    few days I'm gonna learn how cd sounds, try the Interlinks I have
    on my NAK on the Magie (nice nick names) to see (hear) the difference,
    maybe try the interlink cd for the heck of it (maybe).  Then
    rip the sucker apart and rebuild it.  Well, maybe the caps to start,
    if I can hear the difference (Mark?).
    
    						.dave.
                                                            
    I finaly get to listen to the CD's I bought 3 years ago!
    

    Yeah, I tried some Sunday using my player on someone's $20,000 system.
    
    The Interlink-CD dulls transients (as you would expect).  Plain
    old audiophile cable made piano sound closer to the speed of the
    LP.  The cable might help for poor CDs, or if you find brass and
    strings strident on your system.

                                                                        
    Hmmm.   seems the maggie developed a bug.  Does your Magnavox player
    make a lot of noise when loading (reading the contents) and ff/frw?
    Well mine DID!  and now it does even more, 'cept now it loads the disc
    spins it a bit and says 'Err' and dies.  All discs.  It clunks pretty
    loud, something I wouldn't expect from something as delicate a device. 
                                                   
    So encouragement needed please!  Am I going to have an everlasting
    problem like this or is this a real lemon.  I am replacing it tonight. 
    
    Also note.  Several times I've had to reinsert the disc 'cause it
    couldn't read the table.  Once it read Quarterflash, said there were 99
    tracks and then started on track 2.  I tried to have it play track 1
    but 'Err'. reinserted the disc and nothing. 
    
    Last night I tried 'The Wall' and nothing... I was bummed 
    
    						.dave.
    
    

    If Philips is still using a D'Arsonval movement on the laser
    positioner, you may have gotten one with a bum suspension.
    Can you tell if the laser tracks thru a slight arc (like a pivoting
    tone arm) ?
    
    Regardless, this one should go back for a sistership.
    
    Walt 

    It has the pivotal arm. - their is an arc in the drawer.
    
    I am curious tho?  doesn't anybody else own a maggie?  DO they all
    make those noises?????
    
    						.dave.

    Oh well, dave. :-)
    
    Jeff
    

    re:.7
    
    I had a similar problem to yours. I was getting pops, burps,
    etc. through the amp for a couple of days from the CD player
    (I determined by switching components and inputs around that
    it was indeed the CDP and not the amp) and thought that it
    might be from a dirty lens on the laser, so I cleaned it.
    After the cleaning, every time I tried to spin up a disc, it'd
    whir a little and then stop. I fiddled with it a little while,
    but achieved nothing, so I figured I'd have to take it into a
    repair shop (it was still under warranty). Went to sleep, and
    when I got up, one of my housemates was merrily playing CD's
    without any problem whatsoever. Since then, the player has been
    acting normally. Beats me what happened [sound of the Twilight
    Zone theme --- "doo doo DOO doo, doo doo DOO doo" --- plays in
    the background...] or how it got fixed.
    
    My 2020 also makes noises spinning up and ff/rw'ing. Outside of
    this, and the fact that there is no instantaneous random access
    (oh, and perhaps the fact that it'll only program for 15 tracks),
    I'm pleased with the player as a cheap, "few frills" player.
    
    --- jerry

   Well I got the new one last night.  No they are not sopposed to make the
   noises that my original one made.  The new one can read the TOC in
   2 seconds, the old one took 5-6 seconds.  The new one sounds better
   than the old one, no more clunks and plinks as the servo's move. 
   Sure there's the normal sound of the ff/frew but thats ok.
   
   I did notice that when I opened this one the transport screws were
   in place MUCH better than the old ones were - perhaps the cause of
   the damage.
   
   						.dave.
   
   ps 'The Wall' sounds great.
   
   Walt,  I found the homemade cables lacking in high high end and low low 
   end compared to both the regular cables and to the monster interlink IV.
   Is there a solution to this? - more wires/different sized wires/better
   plugs?  I would imagine the plugs are the first thing.
    

    Re: .10
    
    I will have to think about this a bit, I know of some solutions
    that have been applied to low impedance cables (for speakers)
    which could work. I am just not sure why it would be necessary.
    
    I will send you a test set I made up some time ago. Since I know
    how these sound (to me), the comparison will give me an idea what
    to do next.  
    
    Walt 

    
    Walt, Your all right.
    
    						.dave.

Oh Jeeeez, not another note on cables...	How about

CABLES_CAPS_AND_OTHER_CATHINGS.NOTE ?
					(smilie-thing)
					>>>==>PStJTT

Hi guys. Thanks for the various discussions about CDs and the Maggies in
particular. I just bought a 1051 and it works and sounds great.

One note on stupid design of the user interface, though. The keys on remote
are labelled differently than on the unit, do different things, and listen
to this: if you want to repeat a disk over and over, there's no way to do
it on the 1051 from the unit -- the REPEAT key is only on the remote. 

If you can live with that, it's a nice machine. 4x oversampling, CIRC error
correction, the usual impressive specs, and I can't make it skip even if I
shake the floor violently. 

>     < Note 341.5 by THORBY::MARRA "All I have to be is what You made me." >
>                              -< lemon or cheap? >-
>
>    Hmmm.   seems the maggie developed a bug.  Does your Magnavox player
>    make a lot of noise when loading (reading the contents) and ff/frw?
>    Well mine DID!  and now it does even more, 'cept now it loads the disc
>    spins it a bit and says 'Err' and dies.  All discs.  It clunks pretty
>    loud, something I wouldn't expect from something as delicate a device. 

        I bought a Magnavox 1041 (from Service Merchandise) about
        a month ago.  It ran great for three weeks.  This past
        weekend, I tried playing a disc that I hadn't played before,
        and after several seconds of a rubbing/scraping noise,
        the player came up with the "Err" message.
        
        I tried several other disks, including some that had worked
        the night before, and they all did about the same thing.
        A couple would load, but would make that unpleasant noise
        and come up with "Err" when I selected a track.  There
        was exactly one disc (out of 16) that would play with no
        problems throughout all this - the only disc I have that's
        made in the US.  (I don't know if that's relevant or not.)
        
        Anyway, I was going to take the player back to Service
        Merchandise (despite their 10-day policy), but that particular
        store has closed due to an electrical fire.
        
        My office (Bedford, MA) is about five miles from the repair
        place, so I left it there Monday.  I was told 7-10 days.
        After only three weeks of having the thing, that seems
        like forever! 

    Add one more to the list of Maggie 1051 buyers whose unit bit the
    dust after a couple of days.
    
    My unit worked for about 3 hours then it started skipping at track
    7 of my favorite CD; shortly after that it wouldn't play at all.
    The "ERR" light came on precisely the way you described.
    
    I returned it to SM and they graciously gave me a new one -- that
    one didn't play at all.  Returned it too.  I am currently working
    on number 5.  But from these notes, maybe this model is a piece
    of junk.  BTW - I didn't get them all from the same store, so it's
    not just a bad batch or a dropped box.  The current price in Tewksbury
    is $169.98 If anyone wants to take a chance.
    
    I was really glad to get this unit because of all the praise I had
    read here for the 1041 (and the 1051 is supposed to be just a clone
    of the 1041 with the addition of a Remote).  If there really is
    a problem, maybe I should just return the durn thing.
    
    Dirk

    :-)

        I got the 1041 back this afternoon, after five working
        days in the shop.  I asked what was wrong, and the clerk
        said that they'd seen "a lot" of CD players (Magnavox and
        others) with similar problems.  He also said that they
        simply replaced one whole assembly.  He didn't know what
        assembly, but said it was sort of like an automotive "recall".
        
        The repair slip said something like "installed all factory
        modifications".

    A friend of mine, who bought the 1041 during the changeover from
    the m0n0 (1040 e.g.) to the m0n1 series just told me he was having
    the same problem, sproadic to frequent inability to read the TOC of 
    perfectly good discs. It appears the quality between the 1040 and 
    subsequent models went way down. 
                
    Dick Rosenberg

    
    I think most of the problems are in the mechanicals of the transport.
    That was were most of the noise my 1st 1051 came from; starting
    up.  The 1051 I have now sounds and performs just fine...
    
    						.dave.

        Venture (at least here in the Chicago area) has the 2040 on
        sale for $139.99. Sounds like they might be closing out the
        14 bit units.